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businesses, others find lag in high-speed access frustrating It's just 300 feet from Aron Goldman's house in Shutesbury to Amherst. But it's a world away. "I'm looking at my neighbor, and he's got Comcast, and he's able to watch cable TV and have a cable connection for his computer," says Goldman, who says he's been tempted to ask whether the connection couldn't simply be stretched a little farther. Instead, Goldman and a dozen of his neighbors have worked tirelessly over the past year to bring high-speed Internet access to Shutesbury and Leverett - towns that have no cable service and no high-speed Internet access. The towns do have a high concentration of home businesses, though, and enough residents with expertise in computer and telecommunication technology that the Shutesbury-Leverett Broadband Group managed to sift through dozens of scenarios for bringing a host of enhanced phone, computer and television services to the 1,800 households. Goldman who operates a non-profit public policy service from his home, finds that despite his 56-kbps modem, he's only able to download at 11,000 kilobytes per second. "It's ridiculous - that's a trickle," he said. "I spend all day in front of the computer, on the phone. Most of my clients are in New York, Washington, Boston, and Philadelphia, and I need to be in constant touch. As soon as it seems I'm far away in some cabin in the woods, I lose a lot of credibility. I need to be able to do lots of research very quickly and download files. You don't need to be doing huge mathematical modeling equations to be slowed down by the Internet." Once the Shutesbury-Leverett effort is able to set up its proposed $3- to 5-million fiber-optic network within a projected two to four years, it could provide residents with 3-megabit Internet connections, along with cable television, unlimited long distance, voice-over-Internet phone service and multiple phone lines - all at a fraction of what it now costs their neighbors in Amherst, and at tremendous savings from what they now pay for inferior service. Home-based work needs Web Leverett has one of the highest proportions of Franklin County towns with residents working at home, according to the 2000 Census, but the proportion of home-based, high-tech businesses is seen as an important, growing segment of the region's economy - particularly in outlying towns with no employment center of their own. A report sponsored by Western Mass. Electric Co. cites census figures showing that 10.1 percent of the Franklin County work force is self-employed - the highest in western Massachusetts - with more than 70 percent of them private wage and salary workers. These workers generate millions of dollars in salaries, tax revenues and contracts with local suppliers. But they require dependable, high-speed connections at affordable rates - a pricey service that's only available in pockets of Franklin County. Like Goldman, Shutesbury resident Keith Dragon is anxiously awaiting arrival of high-speed Internet access to help his home-based business, 5 Dragon Design and Western Mass.US. "It has a huge impact," said Dragon, who as the designer and host of 20 Web sites works online five or six hours a day, uploading pages, researching and registering for domain names and downloading software. "It's been a problem, the speed at which I can get things done," said Dragon, who has been in business for about two years with a single phone line and a dial-up modem that operates at its 56-kbs rated speed. The former retail manager has to use the computer at his parents' house in Northampton when he needs to get a lot of work done. Broadband for all "For the most part, our big businesses can get broadband now - maybe not at a great price, maybe not as efficiently as they'd hope to, and maybe not with the service quality they'd hope to get," said Linda Dunlavy, who has been steering a coalition of Franklin, Hampshire and now Hampden County businesses, municipalities and educational institutions in trying to bring high-speed connections to under-served areas. "But we still have small and mid-size businesses that don't have it." Since Franklin Connect began its work five years ago, several of the poorly served areas of the county have had options improved - Greenfield, Deerfield, Shelburne Falls, Orange and Charlemont - either because the Connect has been making the area's needs more visible to providers, or because residents have banded together. Just as Shutesbury isn't helped by high-speed access in neighboring Amherst, and many parts of Hampden County don't benefit from the nexus of long-distance lines in downtown Springfield, there are parts of Greenfield where high-speed options are limited, Dunlavy said. And businesses, like Rugg Lumber Co., are hampered because its Hatfield store lacks access. The scarcity of high-speed options in Shelburne Falls is causing Steven Dinkelaker to move his call-center operation, American Lease Insurance Co. to Sunderland. "I'm tired of waiting to get a T-1 line in Shelburne Falls," said Dinkelaker, who moved his business from Boston to the top floor of McCusker's Market in August 2000 after reading that that service would be available soon. American Lease, which has 16 employees, now uses cable service for high-speed Internet access, but Dinkelaker figures that in Sunderland, a T-1 will give him access to 12 voice and 12 data lines at $300 or $400 - roughly half of what it now costs him for the two services separately. Technically, T-1 is available in Shelburne Falls "if you want to pay through the nose," said Dinkelaker, who was quoted a cost of $1,500 a month, plus $3,000 to 5,000 for installation. Wesley Rosner of Blue Fox Inc., a software developer in Shelburne Falls, said small businesses there and in neighboring towns are hungry for digital subscriber line (DSL) and other options. "The surrounding towns are hankering for more," he said. Snagging the big provider Poring over highly technical, constantly-changing proposals has translated into hundreds of volunteer hours, said Dunlavy, voicing frustration in dealing with the telecommunications industry as it faced financial meltdown last year. Even so, she said, an effort that has recently added Hampden County should be able to come up with a substantial aggregation later this year to attract telecommunication providers to offer a short-term solution. Eventually, Dunlavy hopes for a regional fiber network - similar to what is proposed for Leverett-Shutesbury, but on a much larger scale. Without the kind of tremendous borrowing authority that would be required to wire the entire region, Dunlavy hopes the expanding Connect effort can show telecommunication firms that it's worth it to invest in a package to meet the needs of all businesses. "The Connect is an attempt to bring more choice at a better price,' she said, pointing out that a "patchwork" of solutions has been slowly coming together. Building an aggregation of users over a wide enough area to attract providers has slowed down the process and complicated the range of needs to be met, but Dunlavy said that ideally, an aggregation of Pioneer Valley can be measured by the end of February and a request for proposals can be sent to service providers this spring. Meanwhile, Goldman and his neighbors in Leverett and Shutesbury are looking forward to getting across the "digital divide." After exploring the available options and feasible technologies for a year, he said, "We need to go full force." You
can reach Richie Davis at rdavis@recorder.com or (413) 772-0261 Ext.
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