CITY OF HUDSON – Saying broadband is for today’s commerce
what the highway system was for 1950s business, Governor Cuomo announced
Wednesday that the newly merged Charter Communications and Time Warner
Cable will deliver high-speed broadband to rural areas of the Hudson Valley
within the next two years.
Speaking in the City of Hudson, the governor said one cannot be competitive
without broadband.
“It is Eisenhower’s road system of the ‘50s, it is what
Governor Smith and DeWitt Clinton did with the Erie Canal. It’s
what we did with the New York State Thruway system. You have to be able
to get there. Broadband is that basic requirement,” he said.
The state told Charter it would allow the merger with Time Warner if
it increased the minimal broadband speed to 100 megabits and that service
all of the state including the sparsely populated areas with state subsidies.
That means rural areas of Columbia and Sullivan counties will be services
with high-speed cable.
The cable company now said it would service 80 percent of its state
territory by 2017 and all of it by 2019.
