🔒Internet access has come light years, but some issues echo those of the ‘90s

In the mid-1990s, internet connections, if available in Maine, were dial-up. A handful of internet service providers, like GWI, which began in 1994, were formed to provide local internet, which was then used mostly by businesses.

Twenty-five years later, there are 80 service providers across Maine, according to Broadbandnow.com. Companies that were formed to fill local needs have expanded and found innovative ways to provide service across the state.

Axiom Technologies, for instance, a Machias company led for many years by Susan Corbett to provide internet to underserved Washington County, partnered with Microsoft to use unused TV “white space” to bring internet to remote and geographically challenged areas.

GWI, led by Fletcher Kittredge, brought together public and private forces to form the Three-Ring Binder, a 185,000-mile open-access fiber optic system to loop the state. It was completed in 2012.

Internet is an economic necessity in 2019, providing vital services including telehealth, which hooks up patients with health care, providing more education options and allowing people to work from home.

The importance of the internet to the state’s economy was first recognized by the Legislature In 1995, when private providers were concerned about long-distance telephone fees charged to rural Mainers with dial-up service. The state amended its information access law, allowing internet service providers to use telephone lines without long-distance toll charges.
 

“Computer-based information services and information networks are important economic and educational resources that should be available to all Maine citizens at affordable rates,” the 1995 law said. “It is the policy of the state that affordable access to those information services that require a computer and rely on the use of the telecommunications network should be made available in all communities without regard to geographic location.”

Nine years later, the state formed the ConnectME authority to help fund service to underserved areas.

Since 2010, ConnectME has been awarded $5 million in federal grants for Maine’s broadband initiative. Another $25.4 million, accounting for 0.7% of all federal infrastructure grants, was awarded to broadband infrastructure projects in Maine, according to Broadbandnow.com.

It has paid off. Since 2011, access to a wired connection of at least 10mbps — considered the minimum by the Federal Communications Commission — has improved from 84.6% to 98.4% of Mainers.

In the past two years, Maine has entered a new era for broadband as recognition of how vital increased access is to the economic foundation of the state has emerged.

The 2018 Maine Broadband Action Plan concluded that access issues will not be solved by the private sector alone — there is a new push for municipal broadband and more state funding.

In many ways, the narrative echoes that 1995 legislative statement.

“Communication is the bedrock of today’s economy,” Peggy Schaffer told the Committee on Appropriations and Financial Affairs recently. “A reliable, secure, high-speed broadband is the only tool that fulfils that requirement.”

Schaffer was speaking as small business advocate for the Secretary of State’s Office and co-chair of the Maine Broadband Coalition in support of two bills that would provide $100 million in bonds for rural internet access. In March, she was named head of ConnectME.

“We cannot afford to leave this much of Maine out of the 21st century economy by leaving them with little or no connectivity and call it good enough,” she said.