The Times-Union, March 16, 2010, Tuesday

The Times-Union (Albany, NY)

March 16, 2010, Tuesday

Getting Wired for the Future

Many rural New Yorkers live in neighborhoods bypassed by the information superhighway. The Federal Commu-nications Commission wants to change that.

The regulatory agency on Monday unveiled an ambitious and aggressive 10-year plan to bring high-speed Internet access to all Americans, comparing the need to extend broadband infrastructure to the efforts that brought electricity and telephone services to the countryside decades ago.

The FCC said broadband Internet "is a foundation for economic growth, job creation, global competitiveness and a better way of life," but added that access to its powers is unequally distributed, with 100 million Americans left behind.

Indeed, you don't have to travel far from cities like Albany, Schenectady and Troy to find people who lack access to broadband, leaving them reliant on expensive satellite Internet services or dial-up access.

"Dial-up is dreadfully slow," said Dale Cornell, a vegetable farmer in an area of Hoosick Falls that lacks broadband access. "If you're looking for parts or something, you don't have time to sit and diddle with it."

Said Art Bassin, the town supervisor in Ancram, Columbia County: "People here are not real happy that they don't have faster, cheaper access." Better Internet service, he said, "would help business."

The FCC, conceding that the U.S. has fallen behind other nations in Internet availability, proposes connecting at least 100 million households to broadband with download speeds of at least 100 megabits per second in the next decade. That speed is about 20 times faster than what's available for most homes now.

The agency is not talking about rural areas alone. Much of its proposal aims at inner-city neighborhoods -- where broadband is available but costs too much for many households -- as much as it does rural areas.

"Every American," the FCC says, in the plan that will be delivered today to Congress, "should have affordable access to robust broadband service and the means and skills to subscribe if they so choose."

In the past, the FCC generally has focused its attention on broadcast industries like radio and television. That it is now promoting better Internet access shows just how important and transformative the Internet has become in a short period of time.

Few Americans had Internet access 15 years ago, and that service was achingly slow compared to the broadband available today.

Now, the FCC and other groups see high-speed Internet as crucial for full participation in modern life -- a gateway for better jobs, education and health care.

"It's a competitive issue, and it's an efficiency issue," said Peter Gregg, spokesman for the New York Farm Bureau, which is pushing for broadband extensions to rural areas.

"We need to have equal access to equal speed," said Samuel Bacharach, director of the Institute for Workplace Studies at Cornell University. "People in the country don't have equal access to work ... It's a major, major handicap for people."

Bacharach knows something about this issue: His second home in Catskill lacks high-speed Internet service, though broadband cables run just a few hundreds yards from his home.

The local cable company has told Bacharach it can extend the line -- but at a cost of several thousand dollars.

Indeed, most Internet providers have long balked at paying to extend broadband infrastructure to scattered rural customers. The cost, they say, just doesn't match the profit potential.

Jeff Unaitis, an upstate spokesman for Time Warner Cable, stressed that his company is a for-profit operation that has to answer to shareholders. It simply can't justify paying to extend broadband to every household that requests it, he said.

It's not immediately clear how much money the FCC plan would ultimately direct for broadband extensions. The amount will vary, of course, depending on the amount of support for the plan in Congress.

The FCC is proposing a controversial auction of some of the broadcast spectrum controlled by the television indus-try to free up space for the wireless industry and raise money that could expand Internet infrastructure.

The agency is also proposing, among other steps, shifting $15.5 billion over the next decade from an existing fund designed to bolster telephone and other communications services in under-served areas.

Also, the federal stimulus package already included $7.2 billion for rural broadband improvements.

"Broadband," the report says, "is the great infrastructure challenge of the early 21st century."

Chris Churchill can be reached at 454-5442 or cchurchill@timesunion.com The Associated Press contributed to this story.

Broadband plan
Among other proposals, the FCC plan says that within a decade:

Every American should have access to "robust broadband services and the means and skills to subscribe if they so choose."

At least 100 million U.S. homes would gain affordable access to download speeds of at least 100 megabits per second.

Every first responder "should have access to a nationwide, wireless ... broadband public safety network."

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