Broadband to the boonies

Red Herring ^

[Stew Padasso]

Broadband to the boonies

Can high-speed Net connections prevent the heartland from emptying out?

September 25, 2003

One of the most ambitious plans to jump-start American productivity comes not from a startup in Silicon Valley or a boardroom on Wall Street. Instead, it is taking root just north of a sugar beet field in Bismarck, North Dakota.

It is there that Extend America will begin its drive to provide wireless high-speed Internet access to hundreds of thousands of rural people who still tap their own wells for water and may drive 60 miles to buy groceries. “The real digital divide is no longer determined by whether you are connected to the Web, but by the speed of your connection,” says Ed Schafer, CEO and a former two-term governor of North Dakota.

If successful, the broadband-to-the-boonies movement could go a long way in creating thousands of jobs and reversing a demographic collapse in the Great Plains, the vast natural grassland that spans the central part of North America from central Texas to the Canadian border and encompasses all or most of a dozen U.S. states. The area accounts for one-fifth the land of the U.S. but only about four percent of its population. An area five times the size of California contains fewer people than the Los Angeles metropolitan region. And it is not thriving.

Nearly one in five counties in the region has consistently lost population every decade since 1950. That hollowing out appears to be accelerating – 38 percent of the counties in the Great Plains declined in population between the 1990 and 2000 U.S. Census Bureau reports. Some places have even reverted to what the Census Bureau calls "frontier territory," an area with no more than six inhabitants per square mile. Additionally, seven of the ten poorest counties in the U.S. are from the Great Plains, according to the Plains Humanities Alliance, a group dedicated to preserving the cultural heritage of the area.

Many heartland communities face the prospect of becoming ghost towns, as older inhabitants die and younger residents move away. While the coasts and south exploded with development, the Great Plains grew emptier and emptier. Fly over Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas, or Wyoming and look down. There are oceans of wildflowers and prairie grass, wind-sculpted rock, twisting rivers, even the occasional lonely farm. But few towns or cities. It is not hard to figure out why. The Great Plains hardly compares to the electric buzz of New York or the cocoa butter beaches of the West Coast. Nebraska or Iowa do not have the cool factor of Alaska, or nationally recognized recreation spots like Montana. No Hollywood actors or tech zillionaires make their vacation homes in Rapid City. You cannot think of a less appealing state in the public's imagination than North Dakota.

For years, states like North Dakota have had a terrible time keeping young, ambitious people. While in office, Mr. Schafer regularly met with peripatetic kids. Each time he would ask them the same question: What will keep you here? The answer always revolved around quality of life. “Kids are attracted to the bright lights of Broadway,” says Mr. Schafer. “Unless they get that connectivity, they are out of here.”

Mr. Schafer says he hopes Extend America not only keeps homegrown talent but creates new pioneers – drawing people from urban areas to rural communities by offering the lifestyle choices they want and the access that broadband provides. Using dozens of base stations located throughout the prairies, Extend America's team includes business heavyweights like Michael Larson, Bill Gates' personal investment advisor; the former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral William Owens; former governor Mr. Schafer; and Rich Karlgaard, publisher of Forbes. They are all native North Dakotans, but more importantly all believe that offering faster Web access to underserved rural markets can create vast new economic opportunity.

The company also has a formidable partner in Nextel, which has invested technology and exclusive use of its spectrum, as well as $500,000 in capital. Other investors include Ignition Venture Partners ($4.5 million), as well as Cascade Investment Group, the Greenspun Corporation, and Nextel. Total investment raised: $7.1 million.

The first markets to be offered high-speed digital voice and data services will be Bismarck and Mandan, North Dakota, which cover 13,000 square miles where approximately 114,000 people live or work. Later, they will extend the service to more than 1.8 million people spread through a quarter-million square miles of South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming and Nebraska. A beta test of 2,500 customers will conclude by year’s end, with a full-scale launch by mid-2004. Mr. Schafer says he hopes to get 10 percent of the area’s population hooked into the service. Right now, the market is wide open. Only Monet Mobile Networks offers broadband services to the area. George Tronsrue III, Monet's chairman and CEO, says Monet, which is a privately held company, has “several thousand” customers evenly split between residential subscribers and commercial businesses. Tronsrue adds that growth is happening “at a 45-degree angle,” and he aims for 6 to 8 percent market penetration.

Mr. Schafer admits convincing Midwesterners to spend $40 or more per month on broadband services might be a tough sell. “The folks out here don’t typically click into the latest and greatest. We pretty much get along with what gets thrown at us.” But he is adamant that high-speed wireless technology is a critically important part of keeping the heartland economically alive, and he hopes to jump-start his group's efforts with government grants and low-interest loans from places like the USDA’s Rural Utilities Service.

Will the availability of wireless create jobs? It is too early to tell. Certainly, high tech has brought vast fortunes to some sons of the prairie. Doug Burgum famously grew Great Plains Software, a maker of accounting packages for small- and medium-size businesses, from a computer retail chain of two stores in 1983 into a software firm that Microsoft bought in early 2001 for $1.1 billion in stock. Likewise, Ted Waitt founded Gateway Computers (market cap: $2.16 billion) in 1985 in an Iowa farmhouse.

The spread of high-speed Net access could create a second inland movement, where wired professionals and well-paid service workers make new lives in the Great Plains. Technology’s spread into the boonies is a hugely democratizing force. It means that opportunities to create meaningful work are limited only by the imagination. Small cities may turn out to be the rising stars of the early 2000s. Talented white-collar workers will not automatically head for Silicon Valley, Seattle or Manhattan as they did from 1981 to 2000.

For nearly two centuries, one of the cornerstone American dreams was to settle the heartland. In the 1840s Horace Greeley, the founder of The New York Tribune, encouraged his readers to "turn your face to the Great West and there build up your home and fortune." One of the most famous images of the day was an 1861 painting by Emmanuel Leutze that showed excited Eastern emigrants, some in mid-whoop and others poised like heroic Greek statues, surveying the noble distant land from a hilltop. Its title: Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way. The high-tech pioneers of the 21st century, unlike their agrarian predecessors, might be able to reconcile the myth of the heartland with the American dream.

[Leroy S. Mort]

Only Monet Mobile Networks offers broadband services to the area.

Surely they can get DirecWay satellite service

In Rural America, The Electric and Telephone Cooperatives and the Independent Members of NRTC

Who Are They?

The National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative (NRTC) supports more than 1,000 rural utilities in delivering telecommunications and information technology solutions to their communities. These NRTC members serve more than 20 million customers in areas of the country that have been un-served or under-served by traditional utilities and other businesses.

Building on a foundation of community service, we work -- as a cooperative -- to ensure that all Americans share equally in the benefits of the digital age.

DIRECWAY allows NRTC's members to provide their customers always-on, two-way, high-speed satellite Internet service without dial-up delays and with increased access to streaming video and other exciting Internet features. NRTC was founded in 1986 by the nation's rural utilities who recognized a need to keep their communities connected in an increasingly digital world.

What Do You Need?

• The NRTC Broadband Service can be received through the DIRECWAY DW4000 two-way satellite system.
• You can also get access to DIRECTV^® programming through the DIRECWAY dish with an optional conversion kit. (DIRECTV^® service and receivers sold separately)

[D-fendr]

1) do they support macs
2) are they jumpy/slow like other satellite setups?

[Leroy S. Mort]

1) do they support macs

Nope. Just mainstream MSWin operating systems.

2) are they jumpy/slow like other satellite setups?

Well, I only have the experience of one friend to go on. She's quite happy with the service. Speeds are in the mid DSL range but nowhere near cable speeds, of course.

[Marie Antoinette]

The setup fees are WAY too high for most of your average rural folks to even consider satellite broadband. We just keep waiting for something affordable to make it's way out here.

We're having a hard time getting DSL out here in North Missouri because the interest in paying $40/month isn't there (current service is $20/unlimited dialup). If they'd try high speed JUST ONCE I'm sure they'd be hooked.

[D-fendr]

Thanks, I appreciate your reply.

I also found out can't use VPNs.

I was hoping satellite would be my answer out here in the country, years ago.

Oh, well.

[Leroy S. Mort]

Check out HIGH PERFORMANCE VPN OVER SATELLITE

[Leroy S. Mort]

Also Using DirecWay for VPN

[Leroy S. Mort]

Also a gateway that can be used with Mac, Linux, etc.

[NY.SS-Bar9]

Sure, it is the lack of broadband that has all the jobs going to Mexico and China.

Give the flyover states broadband and everything will be just peachy.


Idiots.

[HAL9000]

I wouldn't recommend DirecWay. The download limitation rules and network response time aren't too good.

NRTC will be offering WildBlue broadband satellite in 2004. It uses better technology and will support all operating systems.

Terrestrial Wi-Fi is probably the best solution for rural areas. It works great here.

[HAL9000]

I wouldn't recommend DirecWay. The download limitation rules and network response time aren't too good.

NRTC will be offering WildBlue broadband satellite in 2004. It uses better technology and will support all operating systems.

Terrestrial Wi-Fi is probably the best solution for rural areas. It works great here.

[Ronaldus Magnus]

As someone in a rural area with a 7.3 mile wireless broadband connection (on which I am replying), I think that this approach will be the best solution for rural areas. I previously had ISDN but had trouble maintaining a connection. I had considered both two-way and one-way geostationary satellite but declined due the high startup cost, upload limitations, and terrible latency. The only service I would consider upgrading to would be the low earth orbit Teledesic system, if they ever get it fired up.

[Publius6961]

BUMP

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Interesting that the heartland has emptied so. Creates a "rotten borough" situation, so far as the Senate is concerned--doesn't take many voters to win a Senate seat in Iowa as against California. You'd think that the same campaign $$ would go into any competitive race irrespective of the size of the state. And that the most ambitious of large-state congressmen would consider moving to a "rotten borough" state and attempt to parley their reputation into a Senate seat. Especially from a relatively nearby state with similar demographics to the congressman's home district . . .

[m1911]

Check it out. This is what we're trying to do, right?

[Faith-Hope]

I live in a remote area and have ordered the AOL DSL Broadband and cannot wait to get my modem. Our phone company will have me set up by the 3rd of Oct. It is expensive but gee the service has to be worth what we will pay. I know the city folks have been enjoying this service for a while and now we can also be uptown.

[yarddog]

I live somewhat in the middle of nowhere in the Florida Panhandle. It is nearly 24 miles to the dial-up connection.

The local co-op offers broadband but when I found out it is $90 per month, I didn't even check any further.

[Graybeard58]

"If they'd try high speed JUST ONCE I'm sure they'd be hooked"

...If I ever had to go back to dial up....well, I just wouldn't. That would be the end of it for me.

[Ronaldus Magnus]

I live in a remote area and have ordered the AOL DSL Broadband

I made several inquiries about DSL but was told that I would have to be within two and a half miles of a phone company central router inorder to get it. How remote of an area do you live in?