Train tracks wind through downtown Winlock.
Above Saraha Pizza in Winlock, owner Bill Smith set up a community space where people can connect to the internet for free. He hopes it’ll benefit Winlock students now going to school virtually. It helps that the shop is on what Smith called the “blessed side” of Winlock.
For Winlock residents, internet connectivity largely depends on which side of the tracks they’re on. On the east side of the train tracks, ToledoTel offers fiber internet — “the best option in the city by far,” according to Mayor Brandon Svenson.
But on the west side, most individuals are connected by DSL, an older technology that is failing many residents.
“Some of my employees and people in the area, it sounds like they have internet from 1989. Dial-up speed, almost,” Smith said.
While governing the city and trying to address the issue, Svenson is also living it. His home on King Road is on the west side, where the internet is slow at best. Now with both his sons at home doing virtual school, there’s not enough connectivity to go around, and his 13-year-old can’t hold a connection long enough to complete virtual class.
So for the last few days, Svenson has been setting up a DIY-style office in a building he owns on the east side, where he shuttles his son each morning to attend online class. Svenson spends the day driving back and forth, picking his son up for lunch and dropping him back off.
“It’s this little game I’ve been playing for the last few days so he can get his schooling done,” Svenson said. “I’m fortunate enough to be able to pull this off, but I’m basically one of the only ones who can.”
Using the website speedtest.net, Svenson found the connection at his home to have a download speed of 2.59 megabits per second (Mbps). Doing the same test at his building on the east side, the speed jumped to 10.63 Mbps. City hall enjoys a speed of almost 20 Mbps. According to the FCC, a speed of 10 Mbps is necessary just to download a file. By comparison, speedtest.net gauged The Chronicle’s newsroom internet at more than 73 Mbps.
Svenson said he’s spoken to ToledoTel about expanding the infrastructure to meet the needs of more Winlock residents, but the project would be extremely expensive.
“By the time you get the millions of dollars together and put it in, I wonder if we’re not going to have some satellite options,” he said. “So I don’t know what the answer is here.”
Right now the issue is even more stressed, with hundreds of kids having to rely on the internet to go to school during the era of COVID-19. Winlock School District Superintendent Dr. Garry Cameron said Winlock Miller Elementary is connected to ToledoTel and doesn’t have many issues within the school.
But during the pandemic, the school is working to get families hotspots to ensure reliable connection.
According to the district’s Distance Learning Director Megan Evander, 100 families in the district didn’t have access to the internet at the beginning of the year. And connecting them means more than dropping off a hotspot — the effectiveness of the devices can vary significantly depending on where they’re placed. Evander described working with families to properly place their hotspots.
“I’m like ‘where’s the nearest window and is there a tree by that window?’” Evander said. “We’re just learning a lot about what’s working.”
She said the strategy is panning out, but she’s still receiving calls about students getting dropped from Zoom calls.
The mayor received one of the hotspots, too, although he said it worked even worse than the home’s already-slow internet.
“I think (the hotspot) was even worse,” Svenson said “And I spoke with another parent from the school today who said the hotspot they got from the school didn’t work worth a crap either.”
For some Winlock residents, it’s worse than just slow internet. Shyrl Blum works at Paul’s Automotive and Towing on the west side of the tracks, where the internet is slow but workable. But when Blum goes home, just a few miles west, there’s nothing.
When asked what you do when you need to check email, Blum laughed and gave a simple answer: “You don’t.”
She used to use Winlock Timberland Library’s internet, but the pandemic has curtailed much of their in-person services.
Blum said the site above Sahara Pizza would be perfect for her. Although Smith posted it on Facebook, Blum hadn’t heard about it before speaking to The Chronicle. And how would she see the post, Blum said, when she doesn’t have internet?
