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The Dial-Up Dilemma Frustrates Rural Maine

October 26, 2009 - NORRIDGEWOCK -- The last mile. It's a term the telecom industry uses to define the distance from the edge of a service provider's network to a customer.

Barry Norling Weathervanes exists in that last mile. Where Beech Hill Road turns to dirt, past grazing cows and autumn-blazed woodland, Barry Norling turns copper sheets into whimsical weathervanes and sells them on the Web. At least, when his customers can reach him.

Norling lives just far enough up Beech Hill Road that his 19th century farmhouse is beyond 21st century broadband. Neighbors closer to town recently got high-speed Internet service. But for now, Norling is stuck with dial-up. And the service is so poor and unreliable that his wife, Abby, often goes to a friend's house down the road to check for customer e-mail inquiries.

"It's snail slow and cuts me off all the time," she said of their dial-up service. "It costs $20 a month and is worth a quarter of that."

Officials estimate that between 50,000 and 100,000 households lack access to some form of high-speed Internet service. That could improve, if the state gets all or some of the $42.7 million in federal stimulus money it applied for this month for broadband expansion projects. A few are aimed at that elusive last mile.

Abby Norling said she was excited to hear of the state's effort. It gives her hope.

"All the things you need to do on a computer to run a business, I can't," she said.

For Mainers who reside and work in the connected world, the Norlings' problem may seem quaint. But it's a daily frustration for residents who cope with an Internet the rest of us remember from the mid-1990s, when "www" truly stood for Worldwide Wait. It's also a deterrent for development in rural Maine, and the small businesses that drive the economy.

Many of them, like Barry Norling Weathervanes, exist in that last mile.

Leave the bustle of downtown Skowhegan and follow the Kennebec River west for a country mile, to where men are erecting a pole barn at a dairy farm. The cable television wires that feed broadband to homes and businesses in town stop before here. Turn onto Beech Hill Road, and only thin ribbons of power and telephone flank the shoulder along the two-mile ride to the Norlings' house.

It's a pathway for modern Internet, though. Not far from the corner is the neighbor and friend that Abby Norling visits to check e-mail. That house gets high-speed DSL from FairPoint Communications. That's because it's close enough – within 18,000 wired feet – to a remote terminal that carries the DSL signal.

But the signal doesn't make it to the Norling farm.

The brick cape is perched on a hill surrounded by hayfields, reached by a dirt lane. Some of Norling's creations stand in the dooryard – a copper cow munches on grass; an alligator holds a birdbath and waits for his next meal.

Barry Norling started making weathervanes and sculptures long before the Internet came into being. Only a quarter of his business today originates online. But a high-speed connection could help grow that.

Every week, Norling gets e-mail from potential customers. Inside his studio last week, he showed a sketch he drew for a custom bicycle-theme weathervane. The inquiry came electronically, but he mailed the sketch in a letter, at the post office.

"People expect instant feedback," he said. "They don't want to wait for me to mail them a picture."

It's not that Norling is chafing at the bit of technology. He's a self-described Luddite. A hard drive, to him, could be getting back home in a winter snowstorm; modem is what the tractor did to the hayfields. He leaves most of the computing to his wife.

But Norling knows how to turn on the computer. And when he fired up the aging Mac for a visitor last week, the problems become obvious.

Here's what happened: Click on the modem icon. The machine emits the nostalgic techno-beeps of yesteryear as it searches for a connection. Time passes. Messages suggest the modem is still trying. Finally, it disconnects. The screen display admits defeat: "Could not negotiate a connection with the remote PPP server."

The Norlings' get their dial-up connection from TDS Telecom, a national company that provides local phone service in rural areas. The maximum modem speed is roughly 56 kilobits per second for downloads, a fraction of the bandwidth now common for cable, DSL, satellite or wireless providers.

"I have a lot of sympathy for folks who are on dial-up," said Perry Speaker, the company's market manager in Maine, New York and Pennsylvania.

TDS is seeking federal stimulus money to help upgrade Internet connections. In the meantime, it targets locations for new DSL penetration, based on revenue projections. But Speaker said he can't guess when broadband will reach everyone.

"I get calls all the time from customers who can't get DSL products," he said.

"We're working to do that as fast as we can."

In Maine, virtually every home with a telephone now has toll-free access to dial-up Internet service, for what it's worth.

The most recent federal data estimates DSL is available to 71 percent of people where phone companies serve; it's 93 percent for cable modem service in cable TV territories. But these are just estimates, and they may be high. The state is currently doing its first comprehensive broadband mapping study. Expect some results in March.

A bigger concern is that fewer than six out of 10 households with access to broadband actually subscribe to it, according to Phillip Lindley, executive director of Maine's ConnectME Authority. Among the reasons: Not owning a computer, an inability to afford service, not recognizing the benefits of broadband.

The ConnectME Authority has distributed millions of dollars in grants to stimulate private investment in broadband. Earlier this month, Gov. John Baldacci forwarded the state's recommendations for seven high-priority projects that will compete for federal stimulus money.

One contender is a small grant to expand broadband on Chebeague Island in Casco Bay. Another is an aggressive project to run three "rings" of fiber-optic cable through large sections of northern, western and Down East Maine, a proposal known as Three Ring Binder. This is considered a "middle mile" project, creating a backbone for completing the last mile connections.

Two proposals from FairPoint, in Aroostook County and in Washington and Hancock counties, are last mile projects that could extend broadband to 19,000 new homes and businesses.

Maine will learn by December if any of these projects win. Another round of funding is expected next year, officials say.

In the meantime, a couple of factors are helping Maine close in on the last mile. Technology's improving. DSL signals reach farther from central offices and remote terminals now than just a few years ago. And companies are installing more equipment. By Lindley's estimate, everyone in Maine who wants broadband will have access to it by 2015.

"I'm hoping my job will be done in five years," he said.

Maybe Barry and Abby Norling won't have to wait that long.

A mile or so from their farm, just before Beech Hill Road becomes gravel, Jack Gibson has news -- DSL has arrived. Gibson bumped into a neighbor at the mailbox six weeks ago and learned that she had just gotten DSL from FairPoint.

"That was a surprise to us," said Gibson, a veterinarian who enjoys cable broadband at his medical clinic in Skowhegan.

The Gibson family got dial-up when they moved onto the road in 2003, but couldn't stand it. Two years later they upgraded to satellite. It was much faster, Gibson said, but expensive, and funky in bad weather. He had to brush snow off the dish after a storm.

Gibson said he loves his new DSL service. FairPoint may be near bankruptcy and a punching bag for critics, but Gibson gives the company high marks for effort. He hopes to see more progress along Beech Hill Road, and all of rural Maine.

"A lot of people in Maine have home offices and businesses," he said. "If this state is going to make an effort to attract business, broadband is something we need."

By TUX TURKEL, Staff Writer, Portland Press Herald, October 25, 2009


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