March 7, 2005
Making a connection | The governor wants broadband in 90% of Maine communities by 2010. Can he do it?
By Vanessa Cirulli
In the past few months, Dana Rae Warren has spent more time on the road than in her home in Searsmont. Frequently traveling to Portland, Boston or New York for work, Warren usually gets only a few days in Searsmont before having to turn around and head south again.
As a documentary filmmaker and a supervising producer for a national television series, her work involves collaborations with many people outside Maine ˆ certainly outside of Searsmont. But Warren lives in one of the many Maine communities that do not have a provider of high-speed Internet service. Her home office lacks the capability to transfer the large digital files common to filmmaking, and impedes her ability to do the research necessary for efficient production. As a result, "I'm driving around the country trying to solve systemic problems," she says, and "I end up hiring other people to do things I could otherwise do."
Welcome to the Maine version of the digital divide, in which the state's more populous areas are relatively well served by multiple high-speed Internet options, while rural regions often are forced to rely on outmoded dialup access. (Firm numbers to quantify the problem are hard, if not impossible, to come by since broadband is unregulated by the state.) Until recently, changing that fact has been the work of small regional groups or individual towns, several of which have embarked upon grassroots campaigns to lure an individual provider to town, á la Stonington's ultimately successful negotiations with Verizon (see "The need for speed," Aug. 16, 2004), in an effort to boost local economic development.
Then, in January, Gov. John Baldacci announced the creation of Connect Maine, an initiative that aims to provide 90% of Maine communities with broadband by 2010. (Connect Maine's other goal is that 100% of Maine communities have quality wireless cell phone service by 2008.) While observers are united in their belief that universal broadband access is a critical element in business attraction and retention, questions remain about how, exactly, Baldacci can reach the goal he's set, given the high cost of extending broadband service to thinly populated areas.
While plans for the cell phone portion of Connect Maine have begun to take shape ˆ a wireless task force was named in late February ˆ a task force has yet to be assigned to the broadband side. According to Lynn Kippax, Baldacci's spokesman, Connect Maine will "try to find a way for business and the government and the public to come together to increase and strengthen Maine's broadband capacity." But "there's not one plan here," says Kippax, "no 15-step investment."
Phil Lindley, spokesman and utilities analyst for the Maine Public Utilities Commission, agrees, saying, "There's lots of ways to skin this cat and we should be looking at all of them." In a Dec. 30 letter to the chairs of the Legislature's utilities and energy committee, Lindley notes that broadband deployment could be improved by "providing incentives for DSL, cable providers and wireless service, and encouraging new technologies such as BPL, broadband over power lines," for which a pilot is being proposed for the Kennebunk area. But each community's needs are different, Lindley says, and broadband deployment hinges on "what [the community] needs, what they've got, what the topography isˆ You want to be technology agnostic," he says. "It doesn't matter what the technology is, so long as it gets there."
Chris Burke, director of the Maine Internet Service Provider Association, agrees: "If you don't have Internet access you are not part of the global market," she says, "and if you're not part of the global market, you are not in the market ˆ period."
'One man's garbage is another man's dinner'
Although complaints abound about the gaps in broadband service across Maine, access has increased in recent years, according to the PUC. Where in 2002, "the market was dominated by either the local incumbent telephone company providing DSL service or cable TV companies providing cable broadband service in a few areas," Lindley's report states, "currently many areas are served by a combination of DSL, cable, fixed wireless and WiFi broadband service."
Still, there are obstacles to expanding service further. To get DSL through their phone lines, businesses need to be within approximately three miles of the central hub, and even then there are holes in the service. Satellite service is available to anyone with an unobstructed view to the southern sky, but features relatively high installation and monthly costs, and variable quality and reliability. And laying cable out to rural areas and down streets with just a few homes on them isn't cost effective for cable companies.
"To lay cable is a big financial commitment," says Cathy Hounsell, Maine spokesperson for Greenwood, Colo.-based Adelphia, one of the largest ISPs in the country. "To build a mile of cable costs us about $15,000-$30,000," she says. "There have to be enough people on the line to warrant extending it." So for rural areas of Maine where many roads lack the 25-30 homes per mile Adelphia needs to make laying cable financially viable, the return on an ISP's investment is both lower and more time-consuming.
One option for expansion to rural areas is government subsidy, according to many ISPs. "We've done everything we can without subsidies," says Hounsell. "Logically, one would assume that if there was assistance to expand the lines, that would be of interest to us."
But until then, the rural broadband conundrum creates a perfect opportunity for smaller players, says Alan Shark, managing director of the Rural Broadband Coalition in Washington, D.C. According to RBC, rural America is home to nearly a quarter of the nation's population. "It's a large number of people who are not being served because the technology providers do not have the models," Shark says. The bigger companies "are chasing after bigger dollars."
The solution to the lack of rural broadband deployment then, Shark says, comes in the form of different business models that focus on creative solutions including public and private collaborations and the use ˆ and invention ˆ of new technologies. "One man's garbage is another man's dinner," Shark says.
Fletcher Kittredge, founder and CEO of Great Works Internet in Biddeford, would agree. His firm is one of many emerging small, independent ISPs that, he says, don't need the same profit margins as the major Maine providers, Adelphia, Verizon and Time Warner. In 2002 GWI launched DSL service in six southern Maine markets and within a year expanded to 50 urban and rural communities in Maine and along the New Hampshire coast. Like many Maine companies, GWI does much of its advertising via word of mouth. Rural Maine "is where [emerging ISPs] live," Kittredge says. "They don't need to market because these people" ˆ potential customers ˆ "are their neighbors."
Now, according to Kittredge, 50% of GWI's business is in the 57% of Maine that is classified as rural. GWI works to solve rural broadband access, he says, by extending the otherwise limited three-mile DSL radius with remote terminals on top of telephone poles. Plans to expand this strategy statewide are complicated, but it could eventually provide broadband to some areas currently without access.
According to Kittredge, the governor's goal to have 90% of Maine wired for broadband by 2010 is conservative. "Five years is a lifetime in this business," he says. In that time, he says, new solutions are going to be found, and some of them will come from surprising places. "There's a lot of ingenuity in rural Maine. People are used to coming up with innovative solutions to problems."
Unplugged
One such company to take matters into its own hands is Houlton-based Pioneer Wireless. The company's name is no joke, says Tim McAfee, general manager and network engineer: "We pioneered a [broadband] delivery method that was nonexistent to the state of Maine." The company grew out of a 2001 effort by McAfee and another manager at F.A. Peabody Co., an insurance company in Houlton, to solve their Internet communication problems. With eight branch offices from Fort Kent to Lincoln and a large shared database, the company foresaw the need for its own network to keep internal communication costs down as its branch offices multiplied. "We looked at the fact that we could build our own [network] and save money on telecom charges," says McAfee, "and then we could build it big enough to service our community."
Pioneer leases space on existing television, radio or cellular towers to transmit signals over microwave radio frequencies; service is available in a 35-mile radius of each tower. Using this technology, Pioneer can deploy broadband to a rural area much faster than either DSL or cable, McAfee says. And by waiting up to 16 months to recoup its costs, Pioneer says it can offer the customer a competitive price ˆ commercial service runs $199 for installation, with a $44.95 monthly fee.
The company's service is available from Fort Kent down to Calais and out to Medway. Total revenues for 2004 came in at just over a million dollars, but in the past six months Pioneer's business has tripled, McAfee says, and he expects it to triple again in the next six months. To what does Pioneer owe its success? "Wireless companies are going places that other companies aren't going," McAfee says. It costs Pioneer $700 and some patience to gain a customer, McAfee says. But when one neighbor gets a taste for wireless, he adds, others are soon to follow.
According to McAfee, Pioneer is "way ahead of Baldacci's plan. And we did it with our own money." But not all companies will have their own money to invest the way Pioneer did, says McAfee: "They're going to need subsidies."
Although Kippax says it's too soon to know how the administration will respond to the concept of subsidies, "It's always better to find a private investor," he says.
Regardless of how Baldacci's Connect Maine plan plays out, advancements in broadband technology have given competitive economic opportunities to more people in rural Maine than ever before, says Dana Rae Warren. "I grew up in Maine, and I wouldn't be able to stay here without developments in technology," she says. "You shouldn't have to move to Boston or New York in order to contribute to the economy."
As a documentary filmmaker and a supervising producer for a national television series, her work involves collaborations with many people outside Maine ˆ certainly outside of Searsmont. But Warren lives in one of the many Maine communities that do not have a provider of high-speed Internet service. Her home office lacks the capability to transfer the large digital files common to filmmaking, and impedes her ability to do the research necessary for efficient production. As a result, "I'm driving around the country trying to solve systemic problems," she says, and "I end up hiring other people to do things I could otherwise do."
Welcome to the Maine version of the digital divide, in which the state's more populous areas are relatively well served by multiple high-speed Internet options, while rural regions often are forced to rely on outmoded dialup access. (Firm numbers to quantify the problem are hard, if not impossible, to come by since broadband is unregulated by the state.) Until recently, changing that fact has been the work of small regional groups or individual towns, several of which have embarked upon grassroots campaigns to lure an individual provider to town, á la Stonington's ultimately successful negotiations with Verizon (see "The need for speed," Aug. 16, 2004), in an effort to boost local economic development.
Then, in January, Gov. John Baldacci announced the creation of Connect Maine, an initiative that aims to provide 90% of Maine communities with broadband by 2010. (Connect Maine's other goal is that 100% of Maine communities have quality wireless cell phone service by 2008.) While observers are united in their belief that universal broadband access is a critical element in business attraction and retention, questions remain about how, exactly, Baldacci can reach the goal he's set, given the high cost of extending broadband service to thinly populated areas.
While plans for the cell phone portion of Connect Maine have begun to take shape ˆ a wireless task force was named in late February ˆ a task force has yet to be assigned to the broadband side. According to Lynn Kippax, Baldacci's spokesman, Connect Maine will "try to find a way for business and the government and the public to come together to increase and strengthen Maine's broadband capacity." But "there's not one plan here," says Kippax, "no 15-step investment."
Phil Lindley, spokesman and utilities analyst for the Maine Public Utilities Commission, agrees, saying, "There's lots of ways to skin this cat and we should be looking at all of them." In a Dec. 30 letter to the chairs of the Legislature's utilities and energy committee, Lindley notes that broadband deployment could be improved by "providing incentives for DSL, cable providers and wireless service, and encouraging new technologies such as BPL, broadband over power lines," for which a pilot is being proposed for the Kennebunk area. But each community's needs are different, Lindley says, and broadband deployment hinges on "what [the community] needs, what they've got, what the topography isˆ You want to be technology agnostic," he says. "It doesn't matter what the technology is, so long as it gets there."
Chris Burke, director of the Maine Internet Service Provider Association, agrees: "If you don't have Internet access you are not part of the global market," she says, "and if you're not part of the global market, you are not in the market ˆ period."
'One man's garbage is another man's dinner'
Although complaints abound about the gaps in broadband service across Maine, access has increased in recent years, according to the PUC. Where in 2002, "the market was dominated by either the local incumbent telephone company providing DSL service or cable TV companies providing cable broadband service in a few areas," Lindley's report states, "currently many areas are served by a combination of DSL, cable, fixed wireless and WiFi broadband service."
Still, there are obstacles to expanding service further. To get DSL through their phone lines, businesses need to be within approximately three miles of the central hub, and even then there are holes in the service. Satellite service is available to anyone with an unobstructed view to the southern sky, but features relatively high installation and monthly costs, and variable quality and reliability. And laying cable out to rural areas and down streets with just a few homes on them isn't cost effective for cable companies.
"To lay cable is a big financial commitment," says Cathy Hounsell, Maine spokesperson for Greenwood, Colo.-based Adelphia, one of the largest ISPs in the country. "To build a mile of cable costs us about $15,000-$30,000," she says. "There have to be enough people on the line to warrant extending it." So for rural areas of Maine where many roads lack the 25-30 homes per mile Adelphia needs to make laying cable financially viable, the return on an ISP's investment is both lower and more time-consuming.
One option for expansion to rural areas is government subsidy, according to many ISPs. "We've done everything we can without subsidies," says Hounsell. "Logically, one would assume that if there was assistance to expand the lines, that would be of interest to us."
But until then, the rural broadband conundrum creates a perfect opportunity for smaller players, says Alan Shark, managing director of the Rural Broadband Coalition in Washington, D.C. According to RBC, rural America is home to nearly a quarter of the nation's population. "It's a large number of people who are not being served because the technology providers do not have the models," Shark says. The bigger companies "are chasing after bigger dollars."
The solution to the lack of rural broadband deployment then, Shark says, comes in the form of different business models that focus on creative solutions including public and private collaborations and the use ˆ and invention ˆ of new technologies. "One man's garbage is another man's dinner," Shark says.
Fletcher Kittredge, founder and CEO of Great Works Internet in Biddeford, would agree. His firm is one of many emerging small, independent ISPs that, he says, don't need the same profit margins as the major Maine providers, Adelphia, Verizon and Time Warner. In 2002 GWI launched DSL service in six southern Maine markets and within a year expanded to 50 urban and rural communities in Maine and along the New Hampshire coast. Like many Maine companies, GWI does much of its advertising via word of mouth. Rural Maine "is where [emerging ISPs] live," Kittredge says. "They don't need to market because these people" ˆ potential customers ˆ "are their neighbors."
Now, according to Kittredge, 50% of GWI's business is in the 57% of Maine that is classified as rural. GWI works to solve rural broadband access, he says, by extending the otherwise limited three-mile DSL radius with remote terminals on top of telephone poles. Plans to expand this strategy statewide are complicated, but it could eventually provide broadband to some areas currently without access.
According to Kittredge, the governor's goal to have 90% of Maine wired for broadband by 2010 is conservative. "Five years is a lifetime in this business," he says. In that time, he says, new solutions are going to be found, and some of them will come from surprising places. "There's a lot of ingenuity in rural Maine. People are used to coming up with innovative solutions to problems."
Unplugged
One such company to take matters into its own hands is Houlton-based Pioneer Wireless. The company's name is no joke, says Tim McAfee, general manager and network engineer: "We pioneered a [broadband] delivery method that was nonexistent to the state of Maine." The company grew out of a 2001 effort by McAfee and another manager at F.A. Peabody Co., an insurance company in Houlton, to solve their Internet communication problems. With eight branch offices from Fort Kent to Lincoln and a large shared database, the company foresaw the need for its own network to keep internal communication costs down as its branch offices multiplied. "We looked at the fact that we could build our own [network] and save money on telecom charges," says McAfee, "and then we could build it big enough to service our community."
Pioneer leases space on existing television, radio or cellular towers to transmit signals over microwave radio frequencies; service is available in a 35-mile radius of each tower. Using this technology, Pioneer can deploy broadband to a rural area much faster than either DSL or cable, McAfee says. And by waiting up to 16 months to recoup its costs, Pioneer says it can offer the customer a competitive price ˆ commercial service runs $199 for installation, with a $44.95 monthly fee.
The company's service is available from Fort Kent down to Calais and out to Medway. Total revenues for 2004 came in at just over a million dollars, but in the past six months Pioneer's business has tripled, McAfee says, and he expects it to triple again in the next six months. To what does Pioneer owe its success? "Wireless companies are going places that other companies aren't going," McAfee says. It costs Pioneer $700 and some patience to gain a customer, McAfee says. But when one neighbor gets a taste for wireless, he adds, others are soon to follow.
According to McAfee, Pioneer is "way ahead of Baldacci's plan. And we did it with our own money." But not all companies will have their own money to invest the way Pioneer did, says McAfee: "They're going to need subsidies."
Although Kippax says it's too soon to know how the administration will respond to the concept of subsidies, "It's always better to find a private investor," he says.
Regardless of how Baldacci's Connect Maine plan plays out, advancements in broadband technology have given competitive economic opportunities to more people in rural Maine than ever before, says Dana Rae Warren. "I grew up in Maine, and I wouldn't be able to stay here without developments in technology," she says. "You shouldn't have to move to Boston or New York in order to contribute to the economy."
Most Recent
Most Recent
Comments