Save Access

from: NY Times

February 25, 2007
Digital Deprivation in a Land of Affluence

By WOODY HOCHSWENDER
Sharon, Conn.

MANY Americans take high-speed Internet service for granted. But in Connecticut, the state with the highest per-capita income in the country, there are still pockets of people without broadband, perhaps the keystone utility of the digital age.

For all its suburban affluence, Connecticut remains a fairly rough-hewn state — 60 percent is still agricultural or open space — and in the woodlands between cities, there are areas where broadband connections are difficult and expensive to wire.

Without a high-speed connection, life slows to a standstill. Photos and music files move through dial-up phone wires like a pig being ingested by a snake. Surfing the Net is like crawling up a huge sand dune. Telecommuters are bereft. Small, independent businesses languish.

“You’re not able to compete economically and intellectually with other areas,” said Jessica Clerk, an artist and writer who lives on a dirt road in the back country of Sharon and needs broadband to do music research.

Nearby, Brian Wilcox, an equine photographer who depends almost entirely on e-commerce for his business, spent more than five years mailing CDs of his horse show pictures to a commercial Web site as he waited and hoped for a high-speed connection.

For homeowners deep in the woods or far from a telephone company switching station, waiting to get broadband is a bit like waiting for Godot. It can take years. High-speed Internet providers are quick to point out that when you choose to live in a remote or rural area, you can expect problems with your utilities.

However, there is an existential dimension. As the digital age transforms the culture and the economy, it seems there are more people who wish to live life on their own terms. Ms. Clerk refers to such people as “a brain cottage industry” — writers, booksellers, artists, craftsmen, traders and entrepreneurs to whom the Internet can be indispensable. By leaving parts of the state unwired, she said, “we’re creating pockets of economic discrimination.”

Seth Bloom, a spokesman for AT&T Inc., the biggest telephone and D.S.L. provider in the state, acknowledges the problem. “There are areas all over the state where there are topographic anomalies and very spread-out neighborhoods,” he said, noting that Litchfield County in the northwest and Windham County to the northeast both present challenges. Nevertheless, he says, 93 percent of Connecticut residents now at least have access to D.S.L.

D.S.L. is a distance-driven product. If you live more than 18,000 feet from a switching station, for example, you may be out of luck. Beyond a mile and a quarter, bandwidth becomes attenuated, resulting in slower speeds.

To extend D.S.L.’s reach, AT&T in December introduced AT&T U-verse, a program that runs an advanced fiber-optic cable into neighborhoods, then uses the existing copper wire to connect to homes.

Cable companies have greater infrastructure obstacles than the phone company. For example, cable providers do not own the telephone poles and can be reluctant to bring a cable line across a state road without an existing pole crossing, since burying the line involves expensive excavation. They will not generally do it for a handful of homes.

“There are definitely pockets of remoteness,” said Robert Spain, the director of governmental relations at Charter Communications, a cable company active in rural Connecticut. In the southern part of the state, including towns around Danbury like Brookfield and Woodbury, and extending as far as Trumbull, Charter’s franchise communities are “fully built out,” he said, while in rural Windham County — towns like Canterbury, Chaplin, Pomfret, Willington and Woodstock — “we’re still in the process.”

Typically, cable providers sign agreements with individual towns to obtain the franchise for wiring the area. For example, several towns in northwest Connecticut are wired by Comcast. An examination of all 24 franchise agreements filed with the Connecticut Department of Public Utility Control shows that the key clause regarding “line extensions” — or the wiring of outlying “new growth” neighborhoods — always contains the phrase “as expeditiously as possible.” This has been interpreted in various ways.

“We have certain criteria from a business perspective,” Mr. Spain said. “If it doesn’t provide a reasonable return on investment, you have to look at it on a case-by-case basis.”

Paul Cianelli, president of the New England Cable and Telecommunications Association, a trade group, said that with satellite companies competing with cable for television subscribers, the industry dynamics have changed. No longer can cable companies assume that line extensions will net dual subscribers — television and Internet. This makes it costlier to offer cable to every corner of the state.

Meanwhile, absent government subsidies or a technological breakthrough, some people, like digital Flintstones, will be without broadband for years to come.