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BY DANIEL C. VOCK

STATELINE.ORG

With the state's help, an increasing number of residents in rural Washington County in Down East Maine are using high-speed Internet connections to run their blueberry farms and lobster fleets, educate their children and communicate with doctors from remote areas.

But it's a large county and its 34,000 residents are spread out: At twice the size of Rhode Island, it takes four hours to cross in a car, and yet there's only one traffic light. That means it's slow going for local Internet provider, Axiom Technologies, which is working town by town to set up wireless access points, sometimes serving as few as 12 households per connection.

Axiom maxed out financially some time ago to expand on its own, even as other towns asked to join the broadband network. The state stepped in and awarded Axiom grants of $750,000 over the last three years, said CEO Susan Corbett.

"With 38 additional towns, by the end of 2009, we will have created an umbrella over all 2,500 square miles" of the county, Corbett said.

Maine gives out about $1 million about every 10 months to help its residents get high-speed Internet connections. In July, it approved nine projects costing the state almost $800,000 to get 5,000 families hooked up.

States across the country have pursued similar efforts toward creating statewide broadband policies and better access for their residents. But their scale pales in comparison to the $7.2 billion in stimulus money the federal government has committed over the next two years to improve high-speed Internet connections around the country.

Every state is supposed to get a share, and every governor will get a chance to weigh in on how the funds are spent. In this wash of new money, state officials are scurrying to identify the states' greatest needs, coaching providers applying for stimulus money and developing overarching plans for how to roll out expanded service.

Most of the stimulus money will go toward building out high-speed connections to people in hard-to-reach places. Larry Landis, an Indiana Utility Commissioner active in national broadband efforts, says states have an "obligation to address those who are currently unserved" by broadband.

"What we need is a broadband consensus which nurtures state initiatives to build out to serve the least, the last and the lost," he said.

The "least," he says, are the working poor who haven't been able to afford broadband. The "last" are those "currently on the fringes of the infrastructure to deliver on the promise of broadband." The "lost" are consumers who could buy broadband but don't.

Currently, 63 percent of adults have broadband at home, compared to just 7 percent who use dial-up connections, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, which, like Stateline.org, is funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts. Half of the U.S. adults who don't have broadband at home say they don't see the need for it, the study said. One in five respondents said they didn't get a high-speed connection because it was too costly.

But 17 percent of those surveyed said they haven't signed up for broadband because it wasn't available. That 17 percent seems to be the target of the federal effort.

Of the $7.2 billion in stimulus money for broadband, $2.5 billion is specifically designated for rural areas and will be doled out by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The other pot of money - $4.7 billion controlled by the Commerce Department - also puts an emphasis on helping places with limited or no broadband service.

The loans and grants could go a long way to including remote areas in the information-based economy. But the focus on reaching out-of-the-way homes means it will be tougher for potential providers to pitch other worthy projects, said Tony Tortorice, Washington state's chief information officer.

"There's a lot of disappointment around in cities, for instance. They had a lot of big plans for this, but the requirements... were so heavily focused basically on rural areas that they felt they were cut out of the process," Tortorice said.

In the school district where Tortorice used to work, for example, some high schools had 5,000 students who shared one high-speed line, which could transmit 10 Mbps - faster than most home connections. But high traffic on Internet cables, just like on the roads, slows things down. So with so many students logging on, users still faced long downloads.

The broadband stimulus package does include $200 million for building and expanding public computer centers at libraries, schools and community centers.

It also designates $250 million for programs that encourage people to order high-speed Internet and $350 million to fund the Broadband Data Improvement Act that includes mapping broadband access to pinpoint where unserved areas remain. The resulting maps will help states and private providers target areas for expansion. States can receive this money by chartering non-profit organizations to head the efforts.

But the clock is ticking. The deadline to apply for the first $4 billion is Aug. 14.

A national priority, left to the states

For years, states have largely taken the lead in developing broadband policy. In fact, every state but highly connected Delaware has launched efforts to promote high-speed Internet access, according to a November 2008 analysis (PDF) by the Alliance for Public Technology and the Communications Workers of America.

Among the many examples of state efforts:

• North Carolina created one of the first broadband authorities in the country, called the e-NC Authority. The agency mapped broadband availability throughout the state and developed a series of 10-year plans for deploying high-speed Internet.
• Maryland legislators spent $10 million, starting in 2006, to lay fiber-optic cables in the state's Eastern Shore and southern Maryland.
• Illinois offers 2 percent, three-year loans to schools to pay for technology upgrades.

While everyone seems to agree on the goal of universal broadband, measuring progress toward achieving it and knowing which policies will get there have become a matter of some debate.

The federal government started taking a bigger role in 2004, when President Bush set a goal for universal broadband by the end of 2007. In January 2008, the Bush administration said it had met its goal because broadband was available in 99 percent of ZIP codes. A closer look shows that significant gaps remain.

In fact, a group in France that promotes good government across the world, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development(OECD), says the United States has slipped from the top country in the world for broadband access in 2000 to 15th last year.

Some critics, including the U.S. Internet Industry Association, question the ranking's validity, but President Obama cited the findings while pushing for his stimulus package.

"It is unacceptable that the United States ranks 15th in the world in broadband adoption. Here, in the country that invented the Internet, every child should have the chance to get online, and they'll get that chance when I'm president - because that's how we'll strengthen America's competitiveness in the world," he said in December.

States and local governments have always had a big stake in broadband infrastructure since the on ramps to this largely unregulated information super-highway traverse utility poles, ditches, cable systems and wireless antennas. By regulating these byways, lawmakers, utility commissioners and local zoning boards have always significantly influenced the quality of broadband in their backyards.

But now, the huge infusion of federal funds and the specific goals of the stimulus package also will play a large role in deciding how broadband is deployed.

Wiring rural America, again

The stimulus money likely will affect residents in all sorts of neighborhoods by providing computer centers in cities, better maps of broadband access in the suburbs and new wireless towers in the country.

But hopes are especially high for rural areas. The stimulus money is often described as the most important effort to build rural infrastructure since New Deal programs brought electricity to the countryside.

"In rural areas, if you don't have broadband, those areas are just going to die. You have to have broadband in order for there to be any kind of economic activity," said Debbie Goldman, telecom policy director for the labor union Communications Workers of America.

"That's how farmers market their products. That's how farmers find out what the prices of commodities are. That's how they find out what the weather is. That's how their kids... connect to global information. That's the way in which you have decent health care," she said.

Corbett, the Axiom CEO, has seen the impact firsthand.

One of her clients, the owner of a sophisticated seafood distributing company, admitted he didn't know how his company would use broadband. Before broadband, his workers recorded on paper the weights of their hauls of clams and lobster, along with the government-required license and geographic information. If the owner wanted to know the temperature of a tank, he clambered down stairways to check a clipboard.

Now, company officials can keep an eye on their facilities from around the globe. They can watch video to make sure raccoons aren't disturbing the lobster pens, where lobsters are kept before they are sold. Licensing and geographic information is automatically entered into the company's records and government forms. And, Corbett said, the company's owner recently set prices for clams in Maine from a café in Brussels.

Alisa Rath, who lives near St. Francis in the northwest corner of Kansas, knows the frustration of living with a slow Internet connection. She and her husband Noel own a fourth-generation family farm raising beef cattle, wheat, sunflowers and cane.

Three years ago, they got so fed up with the slow speeds that they plunked down the $1,200 to buy a satellite dish and agreed to pay another $60 a month.

Now they can see videos of bulls from other states that they might want to buy and can then purchase them online at live auctions. They can save money when buying expensive farm equipment by using the Internet. They can also track agricultural markets every day. None of that would be possible with a dial-up connection, Rath said.

But the broadband connection helps with day-to-day tasks, too. Even checking the weather without broadband can be difficult when the "local" TV stations are based in Topeka, an eight-hour drive away. And broadband allows Rath, who has no cell phone reception, to go online leaving her house's phone line free for emergencies and for her husband's calls home for a ride back from the fields.

Still, the solution is not perfect. Limits on downloads can slow her connection to a crawl. When, for example, Rath tried to download the popular iTunes music software recently, her computer indicated it would take 20 hours.

"If you want to come back and raise your children, we have to have services like (broadband). People can't do business. People who come from the cities or have gone to school or college, they know it's out there. Then they come back here and (they realize) they can't work remotely, they can't work out of their home," she said. "It's a common frustration."

The option Rath chose - the satellite connection - is simply too expensive for many of her neighbors, she says. Many of them don't think a fast Internet connection is worth it.

States to advise where to spend the stimulus

State officials will have two major opportunities to determine how stimulus money is spent, although they won't have the final word.

First, each state has to map which areas within their borders have broadband coverage, an ongoing effort that about half of the states have already started. State officials will then use that information to craft a plan to decide how best to expand access.

Second, once the federal government receives all of the applications from potential providers, it will ask each state to rank its local proposals. The idea is to give governors and their designees a chance to figure out how each project fits in the state's overall plans for broadband expansion.

In many cases, state officials are already busy helping applicants shape their proposals, including encouraging groups providing other services to work together on a single proposal. The federal government said it will favor ideas that partner with other stimulus-related projects, such as efforts to build a "smart" electric grid, improve highways, promote public safety and encourage technology upgrades for doctors.

Massachusetts, for example, hopes to attract stimulus funds, by showing that it's already taking a cooperative approach to broadband. The state highway agency is laying fiber optic cables along Interstate 91 near the Vermont border to allow the use of "smart road" technologies. At the same time, it's laying conduit that will be used by Internet providers to expand broadband access to western Massachusetts.

States also can apply for funds themselves. Missouri wants providers to apply first through the state's MoBroadbandNow initiative. The state will then sort out the ideas and submit an application to the federal government, said a spokesman for Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon (D).

Delaware, which regularly ranks near the top of best-connected states, is looking to use stimulus money to add 40 rural schools to its high-speed network for schools; to allow the public to use video conferencing at libraries, universities and agency offices; and to build a new state data center in Dover, said Jim Sills, the state's chief information officer and secretary of technology and information.

Georgia has set up a Web site that lets applicants for broadband money see other proposals, which can lead to better collaboration, said Georgia Technology Authority director Rick Calhoun. One of the toughest goals, Calhoun said, is to make sure projects could be started in the next year or two. Applicants often don't appreciate how much time their efforts will take, he said.

A big part of state planning depends on the drawing of maps that show where residents can get broadband.

"How do we figure out where to spend the money, if we don't really know where the need is?" asked Brent Legg, vice president of state development for Connected Nation, a non-profit group that promotes broadband expansion efforts.

Connected Nation grew out of an effort in Kentucky to create a maps of broadband access so detailed that residents can look, block by block, to see who can hook up to the Internet with a fast connection. Now the group is active in several states - including Kansas, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia.

The maps are far more detailed than data collected by the Federal Commerce Commission, which tracks broadband penetration only by ZIP code. The FCC will soon detail where broadband users are by Census tract instead of postal code, but some Census tracts are bigger than ZIP codes.

Without detailed information, it can look like more people have broadband access than actually do. In Minnesota, for example, 99.6 percent of Census blocks had access to high-speed Internet. But a closer look by Connected Nation showed that only 94 percent of Minnesota residents can subscribe.

The lack of details is especially frustrating in rural areas, where ZIP codes cover very large geographic areas, Legg said. By comparison, the state-led mapping efforts can identify small pockets of the suburbs that can't get broadband through existing phone lines or cable. Internet providers can pick the low-hanging fruit easily once they know it's there, Legg said.

Connected Nation compiles its maps by getting the information directly from Internet providers, but the maps don't show how much Internet access costs or which provider operates in a given territory.

The states used an outside party, rather than collecting the data themselves, so broadband providers would not have to make their individual coverage areas public, which they say would allow their competitors to see proprietary information. The mapping money in the federal stimulus bill depends on states using a similar arrangement.

California, however, kept its mapping effort in-house and provides more information. A task force created by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger the previous year in 2006 conducted a six-month study that documented the speed of connections available around the state. It also gathered information on the cost of Internet service.

High hopes for stimulus funding

Meanwhile, Axiom Technologies in Maine is hoping to build on its progress.

Just a few years ago, a logging truck rolled over along Route 1 and knocked down two telephone poles, which carried the only Internet and phone connection to Washington County from Bangor, some 90 miles away. The accident left residents without Internet access, but it also prevented them from using credit card machines and ATMs for days. Similar outages would happen two or three times a year.

Axiom recently fixed the problem by setting up a series of antennas to connect the area wirelessly. It's part of a bigger plan to bring the next generation of wireless technology, WiMax, to the far northeastern corner of the country. Corbett, Axiom's CEO, said the company will apply for $1.6 million in federal stimulus money to roll out the technology and, more importantly, to teach everyone from farmers and fishermen to health care workers and emergency responders how to use it.

"Imagine," Corbett said, "that Washington County, the poorest county in the state of Maine, challenged by economic barriers, poverty and geographical difficulties, leads the way in developing the most advanced, next generation telecommunication technology in New England."

Drew Clark, a telecom, media and technology freelance writer based out of Washington, D.C., and editor of BroadbandCensus.com, a free service offering information about broadband, contributed to this report.

STATELINE.ORG