[March 07, 2010] Much of Valley off information highway Tweet Mar 07, 2010 (The Daily Item - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- Jim Mast, of rural Middleburg, educates his five children at home and owns a small construction business. Big tasks in and of themselves, they become even bigger without reliable, high-speed Internet access. And Mast is living in a broadband black hole. Mast made a request for broadband service to his phone company two years ago, and has yet to hear anything. Meanwhile, his computer is hooked up to a satellite service -- which is limited at best. "There are five of us using the Internet, so you have to watch it or you can exceed your limitations," he said. If that happens, the Internet connection speed becomes increasingly slower, making the wait to obtain information longer. "It's metered," he said, "and we do lose service in storms." What makes it worse, he pays double for this service than what he would pay for DSL (digital service link) through a telephone company, or a broadband hookup. Broad Internet black holes are common in the Central Susquehanna Valley. "If you go out of town a mile, you're in trouble," said Jim Baker, chief of the Information Technologies Group at the SEDA-Council of Governments. "It's scattered all over the place." SEDA-COG has been pushing for better broadband Internet access in the Valley since 2004, through the Pennsylvania's Bona Fide Retail Request program, which gives telephone company subscribers the legal right to petition and eventually force phone companies to provide DSL service. It has taken four years, Baker said, for his organization to help 60 communities obtain, or at least get approved for, broadband service. There are 140 other communities still working toward that end. The borders for these communities are defined by the phone companies, which means someone may have access to broadband Internet service, but their next-door neighbor may not. "It's the squeaky wheel that gets the grease," Baker said. "The people who are actively pursuing these petitions are succeeding. They are essentially filling the waiting queues at the phone companies." Phone companies are required by law to provide service to up to 20 communities at any given time. They are also required to respond to the petitions they receive from telephone customers for broadband Internet access -- generally within a year, unless more time is needed to install new equipment in order to provide this access. The most petitions phone companies can require by law, before having to act on the request, is 50, or 25 percent of the subscribers in a particular community. Which means that, even in a rural area, where there are 20 homes, only five petitions are actually needed in order to trigger a legal requirement for action by the phone company. But filing a petition isn't just a matter of signing your name. Baker said each phone company has its own petition form -- one per person. And they are very strict. "It's not difficult to do, but it's very exacting," he said. "If you don't have it exactly right, they throw it away because they don't want to serve you. It's unprofitable." Service Electric general manager Dwight Walter said his television cable company just expanded its broadband territory last fall into Herndon and Dornsife. Service Electric also provides Internet access to Beaver Springs, a rural Snyder County community. "We're trying to move out into the more sparsely populated areas," Walter said. "But it's very difficult, at least at this point, to justify the expense." "The return's not there," he said. By the end of 2015, however, phone companies be required to provide broadband Internet access to every rural area in the nation. Officials at Verizon, the largest Internet service provider in the Valley, say they are already taking steps toward reaching that requirement. Over the past year, Verizon Wireless has invested $163 million in the Philadelphia Tri-State region to increase availability, and has built new cell sites in Lewisburg, Selinsgrove and at Knoebels Amusement Resort near Elysburg. Verizon is also taking steps to increase DSL service. The service is currently provided in major Valley communities, but Harry Mitchell, with Verizon communications, said service is "not universally available through all counties." Verizon does not provide landline service in Union County, for instance. Verizon has, however, been installing more remote terminals, which connect more customers to its central offices. Mitchell said the company has exceeded the benchmarks put in place by the state Public Utility Commission. "We've made really good strides," he said. Government funding The Keystone Initiative for Network Based Education and Research has been working with the National Telecommunications and Information Agency to secure $99 million for a broadband network for rural Pennsylvania universities, including Bucknell University in Lewisburg. Related to that is a $29 million grant that is expected to fund a similar push for broadband expansion in communities north of Interstate 80. The funding is still in the preliminary stages, according to Karen Ball, spokeswoman for Keystone Initiative. "We're just now reviewing conditions of the contract," she said Thursday. "It will take a minimum of 30 months to three years to have a network built out." The service will be especially for the project partners -- schools and universities and research, health care, libraries, local government, and public sector economic development entities. The network, she said, is called a "middle-mile" network, not a last mile, meaning that it will not bring broadband directly into the homes of residents. Snyder County is out of the equation because it does not fall within the area targeted by the initiative. However, Ball told The Daily Item last month there is hope that eventually the initiative will help to get broadband access into every rural home and business. Owners of small businesses are especially hoping for this. Although most businesses tend not to be located in sparsely populated areas, many business owners are using mobile phones for Internet access, and run into trouble when they can't receive access in areas where they may be traveling. "Because areas like ours lack density, they're not high priority for commercial broadband companies that are offering tremendous amounts of bandwidth," said Charlie Ross, president and chief executive officer of the Greater Susquehanna Valley Chamber of Commerce. Though it is better than in the past, there is plenty of room for growth, he said. "They don't call it the information highway for nothing," Ross said. "Business will come to us and through our area ... companies will stay here and build here and grow here based on the asset of broadband service." "You absolutely need it," he said. To see more of The Daily Item or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.dailyitem.com/. Copyright (c) 2010, The Daily Item, Sunbury, Pa. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]