LIBERTY — Trustees received a glimpse of what one of the new internet options in the township would look like, thanks to a presentation from one of the company’s representatives.

Stephen Kristan, representing Lumos, a telecommunications provider that serves Virginia and North and South Carolina, explained that during his time as a broadband coordinator for the Eastgate Regional Council of Governments, issues with internet service in the state were recognized.

“We have a huge problem in Ohio — less than 38% of the houses in Ohio have access to fiber; and when you say ‘what does that mean’, that means we’re behind the times,” Kristan said. “I think if you look at the rankings, we’re in the bottom third of the country.”

Kristan said state and federal government programs require areas to have fiber for “lots of different reasons,” and through his broadband coordinator role with Eastgate, he is recruiting companies to come to Northeast Ohio.

Kristan, who joined Lumos as its director of market development a month after leaving Eastgate, said he spoke with its representatives for a year and a half and convinced it to come to Ohio as one of its first three states.

Kristan said the company was funded by a private equity company, meaning it is not looking for broadband access money, federal grants or township money to come to the area. Kristan said he’s heard from municipalities expressing skepticism because of that, adding that Lumos believes the Mahoning Valley has potential.

“People don’t know sometimes what they have now, but they do know it doesn’t work very well at times,” Kristan said. “What I mean by that, when you go back a couple years, when we were in the throws of COVID, we realized the weaknesses of broadband; you know, they don’t have a strong connection.”

“What would happen, oftentimes, as we got more and more people on, the technology wasn’t keeping up,” he added.

Kristan recalled the older networks, DSL, and coax, which were the cable companies. He said they were designed to have information flow down, but not a lot of information was being sent back up.

Kristan said technology couldn’t handle the symmetrics, having upload and download speeds flowing at the same rate.

“Why is that important? Because as you do video conferencing, you do streaming, you do telehealth, you’ve got to go back and forth, up and down, it’s got to be the same speed,” Kristan said.

He said it was “especially important” with gaming, as it factors in latency, the time it takes for data to travel from one point in a network to another and back, which matters especially for online games.

Kristan also noted the longer lifespan of fiber cables — 20 to 30 years, according to the federal government.

Trustee Greg Cizmar asked what goes into houses for the service to be used.

Kristan said installers place wires into a “right-of-way” on the house’s side of the sidewalk.

“What we do is, typically every two houses, we have a little box that goes into the ground — we typically nickname it a flower pot, but it’s flush so you can cut over it,” Kristan said. “It’s a connecting box for service, as we go to that connecting box, and then we run a wire or cable from that box into their house.”

Trustee Arnie Clebone asked Kristan if he had any statistics or knowledge as to how fiber would help the neighborhood, whether it be for residents or businesses.

Kristan said that during his time with Eastgate, he spoke with Realtors about the No. 1 question they received regarding relocation, which was having quality internet.

Kristan said that he wasn’t speaking on behalf of the Youngstown / Warren Regional Chamber, but with its housing strategy, there will be 20,000 jobs that will need filled in the next decade.

“We don’t have enough people here to fill those jobs. We may have to bring people from the outside, maybe from Cleveland, Akron, Pittsburgh,” Kristan said. “This area is a great area to live and raise a family, and we want to have it and make it attractive, but what happens is if people don’t have internet, they can’t work from home.”