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August 16, 2004
The need for speed | Rural Maine towns fight for a critical economic development tool: High-speed Internet access
By Sara Donnelly
For months, Linda Nelson put off renting an office in Stonington. As head of the customer service office for San Francisco-based Collaborative Standards and executive director of the Stonington Opera House, Nelson requires frequent, affordable and fast access to the Internet. But with no high-speed Internet service available in rural Stonington, Nelson struggled with the slow speeds and limited data capacity of dialup.
"We were waiting to see whether we would locate our business here until we saw whether broadband was available," said Nelson, who during her dialup months was forced to travel in person to clients across the country because she could not effectively access their networks through her office computer. When high-speed DSL, or Digital Subscriber Line, service arrived through Verizon in January, Nelson finally committed to Stonington. She moved her office into the former Stonington Elementary School, which is now being leased as office space, and set up shop. According to Nelson, it was as simple as that. Without high-speed Internet access, she planned to move. With it, she stayed.
"We [Collaborative Standards] were able to locate our business in a very remote area because we have broadband," she said. "It enables us to bring jobs to these remote rural areas." (Nelson plans to hire at least two part-time employees once the Stonington office is settled.)
The lack of widespread high-speed Internet access to rural businesses throughout the country has become the latest bogeyman to haunt rural economic development. If orders for new service are any indicator, the desire for broadband is rampant: According to a recent study by the Federal Communications Commission, the number of homes and businesses with high-speed Internet access increased by 45% during the 12 months through June.
But that doesn't mean high-speed Internet access is readily available to any Maine business that wants it; in the rural counties of Hancock and Washington, for example, economic planning groups say coverage is spotty enough to warrant separate research groups to study the digital divide. The Maine Public Utilities Commission reports that 36% of the state's municipalities have no access to high-speed service.
According to a survey conducted by the Public Utilities Commission in March, southern counties like York and Cumberland enjoy widespread broadband access through both DSL and cable. And while rural counties like Aroostook, Franklin and Somerset report fewer towns with DSL or cable access, the survey does show increased services available in all counties since it previously was conducted in January 2003; for example, 19 towns in Hancock County reported access to DSL, cable or both in March, while only eight had reported any access at all in January of last year.
Judy East, principal planner for the Washington County Council of Governments, believes rural communities are less appealing to Internet carriers than their urban counterparts because fewer subscribers are available to pay for the service. "It then becomes chicken and egg," she says. "You're not going to get the subscription unless you have the investment."
The Big Pipe
Why the hue and cry about broadband? It's mostly about speed and carrying capacity. The speed of the various broadband systems ˆ DSL, which runs through phone lines on a unique frequency; cable, which operates via the same fiber optic lines as cable TV; fixed wireless, which transmits data via a microwave platform; and satellite broadband, which uses a satellite channel to carry information to the user ˆ varies, but all are faster and able to transmit more information than dialup, which transfers data via a modem connected to a phone line.
Peter Reilly, the Maine spokesperson for Verizon, says his company aggressively deploys DSL throughout the state. DSL service, which is available to much of rural Maine only through Verizon phone lines, is activated by the company based on market characteristics like population and demonstrated need, according to Reilly. Of the 138 switching offices that Verizon owns across the state, Reilly says 108 have active DSL service; DSL is available to more than 90% of Verizon-run phone lines in Maine. Reilly says gaps in DSL will be filled over time as market factors favor activating the service. "We just can't roll out everywhere at the same time," he says. "There are investment and preparedness [concerns] and market conditions that are factoring in to our network decisions."
Still, Jill Goldthwait, director of the Office of Government Relations at the Bar Harbor-based Jackson Laboratory, says her conversations with down east business owners ˆ and her experience with the information technology limitations at Jackson Lab itself ˆ confirm her suspicion that high-speed access is not widely available in her neck of the woods. An informal group of lab employees recently began researching broadband availability in the state in an initiative dubbed Big Pipe. Goldthwait says the lab can't take the lead on improving broadband, but Big Pipe can lay some groundwork for the person or group who eventually will spearhead the effort.
According to Scott McNeil, the lab's chief information officer, since the lab gets its broadband through a contract with the University of Maine System, it doesn't need the extra bandwidth available through private carriers. But Goldthwait, a former Independent state senator, believes Big Pipe is worth pursuing because of its importance to other companies across the state. "I'm really convinced that this is sort of a sleeping giant in Maine's economic development," she says. "We've felt we're pretty well wired but we're finding that we're not. I think this is really important if we're ever going to have any kind of economic development in rural Maine."
Flipping the switch
In Hancock County, Mike Bush of the Eastern Maine Development Corporation is working with the county-wide economic development initiative Planning for Prosperity to survey area businesses in coming months about their Internet needs. In anticipation of the survey results, EMDC is considering alternatives for underserved municipalities, including state subsidies to build new Internet infrastructure and leasing options for existing telecommunications signal towers.
In Washington County, Judy East is just beginning her office's inquiries into Internet access for area businesses. Last month, the county received a $10,000 Community Planning Grant from the federal government to study Internet access in Eastport, Calais and Machias. East refers to the existing broadband availability in these areas as "a patchwork quilt of telecommunications access."
"We want to find out what the services are, how they're being used by individuals and businesses, the level of satisfaction with these services and how it affects location decisions," said East, who also plans to interview the two major Internet providers in the area, Verizon and Adelphia, about how municipalities can encourage broadband access.
Richard Avery might have some advice for anyone wondering how to bring broadband to the backwoods. Avery, Stonington's town manager, was so convinced that broadband would save his area's economy that he spent the past two years lobbying Verizon to activate its DSL lines in his town.
Every other month, Avery called the Verizon headquarters to check on Stonington's position on the DSL wait list. In case his lobbying effort didn't work, Avery and other town selectman planned to do the job themselves. They looked into applying for a grant from the Federal Rural Broadband Access Program to build a wireless system, which would have cost subscribers $50 a month plus a startup fee of a few hundred dollars.
Avery and the town council were moving ahead with what he calls their "viable alternative" when Verizon suddenly flipped the switch to provide DSL access to the town last January. Dan Breton, a spokesperson for Verizon, says Avery's attention to the issue didn't hurt his case but was not the reason DSL was activated. "It's nice to know that a town is interested," says Breton, who fielded many of Avery's phone calls, "but when it comes time to activate a product like DSL it comes down to, is there a good foundation? Are there enough qualified subscribers so that we can make a market out of [the area]?"
Since DSL became available, Avery says he has fielded several calls from businesses interested in renting office space in the area, including Linda Nelson. With DSL, Avery is hoping to fill the rest of the vacant offices in the town's former elementary school and bring 15 to 20 new jobs to his quiet seaside town. This, he says, is something dialup could never offer him.
"It's an opportunity to diversify our job base here from seasonal visitor business and seasonal fishing to additional work that's year-round," says Avery. "[Broadband] was necessary for any new businesses tied to a larger world."
"We were waiting to see whether we would locate our business here until we saw whether broadband was available," said Nelson, who during her dialup months was forced to travel in person to clients across the country because she could not effectively access their networks through her office computer. When high-speed DSL, or Digital Subscriber Line, service arrived through Verizon in January, Nelson finally committed to Stonington. She moved her office into the former Stonington Elementary School, which is now being leased as office space, and set up shop. According to Nelson, it was as simple as that. Without high-speed Internet access, she planned to move. With it, she stayed.
"We [Collaborative Standards] were able to locate our business in a very remote area because we have broadband," she said. "It enables us to bring jobs to these remote rural areas." (Nelson plans to hire at least two part-time employees once the Stonington office is settled.)
The lack of widespread high-speed Internet access to rural businesses throughout the country has become the latest bogeyman to haunt rural economic development. If orders for new service are any indicator, the desire for broadband is rampant: According to a recent study by the Federal Communications Commission, the number of homes and businesses with high-speed Internet access increased by 45% during the 12 months through June.
But that doesn't mean high-speed Internet access is readily available to any Maine business that wants it; in the rural counties of Hancock and Washington, for example, economic planning groups say coverage is spotty enough to warrant separate research groups to study the digital divide. The Maine Public Utilities Commission reports that 36% of the state's municipalities have no access to high-speed service.
According to a survey conducted by the Public Utilities Commission in March, southern counties like York and Cumberland enjoy widespread broadband access through both DSL and cable. And while rural counties like Aroostook, Franklin and Somerset report fewer towns with DSL or cable access, the survey does show increased services available in all counties since it previously was conducted in January 2003; for example, 19 towns in Hancock County reported access to DSL, cable or both in March, while only eight had reported any access at all in January of last year.
Judy East, principal planner for the Washington County Council of Governments, believes rural communities are less appealing to Internet carriers than their urban counterparts because fewer subscribers are available to pay for the service. "It then becomes chicken and egg," she says. "You're not going to get the subscription unless you have the investment."
The Big Pipe
Why the hue and cry about broadband? It's mostly about speed and carrying capacity. The speed of the various broadband systems ˆ DSL, which runs through phone lines on a unique frequency; cable, which operates via the same fiber optic lines as cable TV; fixed wireless, which transmits data via a microwave platform; and satellite broadband, which uses a satellite channel to carry information to the user ˆ varies, but all are faster and able to transmit more information than dialup, which transfers data via a modem connected to a phone line.
Peter Reilly, the Maine spokesperson for Verizon, says his company aggressively deploys DSL throughout the state. DSL service, which is available to much of rural Maine only through Verizon phone lines, is activated by the company based on market characteristics like population and demonstrated need, according to Reilly. Of the 138 switching offices that Verizon owns across the state, Reilly says 108 have active DSL service; DSL is available to more than 90% of Verizon-run phone lines in Maine. Reilly says gaps in DSL will be filled over time as market factors favor activating the service. "We just can't roll out everywhere at the same time," he says. "There are investment and preparedness [concerns] and market conditions that are factoring in to our network decisions."
Still, Jill Goldthwait, director of the Office of Government Relations at the Bar Harbor-based Jackson Laboratory, says her conversations with down east business owners ˆ and her experience with the information technology limitations at Jackson Lab itself ˆ confirm her suspicion that high-speed access is not widely available in her neck of the woods. An informal group of lab employees recently began researching broadband availability in the state in an initiative dubbed Big Pipe. Goldthwait says the lab can't take the lead on improving broadband, but Big Pipe can lay some groundwork for the person or group who eventually will spearhead the effort.
According to Scott McNeil, the lab's chief information officer, since the lab gets its broadband through a contract with the University of Maine System, it doesn't need the extra bandwidth available through private carriers. But Goldthwait, a former Independent state senator, believes Big Pipe is worth pursuing because of its importance to other companies across the state. "I'm really convinced that this is sort of a sleeping giant in Maine's economic development," she says. "We've felt we're pretty well wired but we're finding that we're not. I think this is really important if we're ever going to have any kind of economic development in rural Maine."
Flipping the switch
In Hancock County, Mike Bush of the Eastern Maine Development Corporation is working with the county-wide economic development initiative Planning for Prosperity to survey area businesses in coming months about their Internet needs. In anticipation of the survey results, EMDC is considering alternatives for underserved municipalities, including state subsidies to build new Internet infrastructure and leasing options for existing telecommunications signal towers.
In Washington County, Judy East is just beginning her office's inquiries into Internet access for area businesses. Last month, the county received a $10,000 Community Planning Grant from the federal government to study Internet access in Eastport, Calais and Machias. East refers to the existing broadband availability in these areas as "a patchwork quilt of telecommunications access."
"We want to find out what the services are, how they're being used by individuals and businesses, the level of satisfaction with these services and how it affects location decisions," said East, who also plans to interview the two major Internet providers in the area, Verizon and Adelphia, about how municipalities can encourage broadband access.
Richard Avery might have some advice for anyone wondering how to bring broadband to the backwoods. Avery, Stonington's town manager, was so convinced that broadband would save his area's economy that he spent the past two years lobbying Verizon to activate its DSL lines in his town.
Every other month, Avery called the Verizon headquarters to check on Stonington's position on the DSL wait list. In case his lobbying effort didn't work, Avery and other town selectman planned to do the job themselves. They looked into applying for a grant from the Federal Rural Broadband Access Program to build a wireless system, which would have cost subscribers $50 a month plus a startup fee of a few hundred dollars.
Avery and the town council were moving ahead with what he calls their "viable alternative" when Verizon suddenly flipped the switch to provide DSL access to the town last January. Dan Breton, a spokesperson for Verizon, says Avery's attention to the issue didn't hurt his case but was not the reason DSL was activated. "It's nice to know that a town is interested," says Breton, who fielded many of Avery's phone calls, "but when it comes time to activate a product like DSL it comes down to, is there a good foundation? Are there enough qualified subscribers so that we can make a market out of [the area]?"
Since DSL became available, Avery says he has fielded several calls from businesses interested in renting office space in the area, including Linda Nelson. With DSL, Avery is hoping to fill the rest of the vacant offices in the town's former elementary school and bring 15 to 20 new jobs to his quiet seaside town. This, he says, is something dialup could never offer him.
"It's an opportunity to diversify our job base here from seasonal visitor business and seasonal fishing to additional work that's year-round," says Avery. "[Broadband] was necessary for any new businesses tied to a larger world."
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