Internet insufficiency: Efforts being made to bring WNC up to speed

For those who are unfamiliar with Internet terms, a brief glossary is provided at the bottom of the article.

Janet Messex visits Murphy to get away from the rest of the world; her Cherokee County home has no cellular service and no Internet access. But now that the Florida resident is eyeing a permanent move to the mountains, the ideal getaway is beginning to look like full-time isolation.

“Internet access will be a necessity to keep in touch with family and friends I leave behind,” she said.

Even though Messex lives just a half mile from Highway 64, Internet companies told her there aren’t enough people interested in high-speed access to provide it.

“People who are used to having connectivity all the time miss it,” she said. “When my son comes he doesn’t stay very long, he gets bored. His cell phone doesn’t work and he can’t get on the Internet.”

The web used to be simple. Browsing basic pages of information over a phone line seemed like all anyone ever needed.

Yet just a decade later, the net has shifted to an interactive game-playing, movie-watching, video-conferencing necessity. While many urban networks have kept up with consumer demand for high-speed access, the mountains of North Carolina have lagged behind, leaving many residential customers disconnected from the increasingly complex applications offered on the web today.

LAND OF THE LOST (VALUE)

Potential mountain home buyers are beginning to notice the divide.

Internet availability is changing land value in the mountains, Joy Stein, the owner of Vista Realty in Murphy, said.

Stein said web access has become the biggest concern among recent customers.

“They don’t want to go anywhere that there’s not Internet,” she said.

Even Messex said she’s starting to eye real estate listings that advertise strong Internet connections.

Many retired folks work online, using services like eBay to make a living, Stein said.

“In this changing high-tech world today, absolutely, property away from fiber-optic lines is less valuable,” she said.

What Stein really wants is a map showing which local properties get any high-speed access, but it’s not easy to figure out.

For Stein, Internet connectivity is also a personal problem. Local Internet Service Providers told her that the only way a fiber-optic cable would connect her neighborhood was if each of her neighbors signed up for service as well.

High-speed Internet in Western Cherokee County is pretty much non-existent, she said.

“Just across the line in Georgia, Windstream is all over the place, even in remote areas,” she said. “Here we can’t even get high-speed Internet on the main highway… It’s a very untapped market.”

UNABLE TO WORK

Five months ago Information Technology Specialist Patrick Richardt had multiple ISPs competing to offer him faster speeds at better prices.

Then he moved to Hayesville.

Richardt said he was shocked to learn of the region’s Internet insufficiency when he arrived at his rental house from Atlanta.

The house had a DSL connection when he was considering it, but the landlord cut the service when Richardt moved in.

Because only a few switches are available for the whole neighborhood, the next person waiting in line was able to snatch up the only spot available, leaving Richardt dry. And, like Stein, local ISPs refuse to connect the fiber-optic line from the nearby highway to his street.

“It’s like trying to find a parking space in a full parking lot; you just can’t get online,” he said. “My only option at this point is either a 56K modem, which absolutely will not work, or satellite, which is entirely too expensive…”

Ironically, Richardt works for a high-tech network infrastructure company called K-Star Inc., but when he moved to the mountains he quickly discovered that working from home was impossible.

“I can help hundreds and thousands of clients while sitting at my computer… but now I can’t do that,” he said. “The Internet’s bascially become a way of life for some people… [I'm] getting no help from the few Internet Service Providers around the area.”

Richardt said that Verizon has refused to upgrade its mountain network to allow more bandwidth because the company has monopolized the local industry.

“There have been requests to update the line but Verizon doesn’t have to do it because there’s no other competition,” he said.

Richardt said he’s considering moving again because of the whole ordeal, even though he doesn’t want to.

“I’ve struggled a whole lot with the Internet since I got here and I’ve prety much given up on it,” he said. “I can’t stay like this for a long period of time.”

FRUSTRATION MOUNTING

“It’s becoming a volatile issue and emotional issue for folks now,” Erik Brinke, director of economic development for local ISP Blue Ridge Mountain EMC, said.

BRMEMC gets calls every day from locals pleading for faster Internet to no avail, Brian Anderson, the corporation’s broadband director, said.

“Folks are increasingly dependent on broadband,” Brinke said. “We really need the public’s patience.”

Brinke said locals will inevitably get more and more frustrated as they try to use the Internet for increasingly intensive intentions.

“There’s no inalienable right to have broadband access,” Brinke said, adding, “It’s increasingly becoming not neccesarily a right, but a necessity.”

Anderson said that he recognizes some pockets of customers are under-served. He said one such pocket, Fires Creek, currently has an Internet enhancement project underway.

Gauging customer demand is crucial, Anderson said, adding that BRMEMC includes general response forms with electric bills and keeps track of where phone complaints are coming from. He said the company tries to get customers to pre-sign commitments if there’s enough interest.

Nevertheless, Anderson said that no matter how many people call to complain, there are some locations where engineers just say the job isn’t feasible yet. Brasstown and Tusquittee are two of those places.

Some customers have been confused by a service area map on DNet’s web site that shows Cherokee, Clay and Graham counties completely highlighted in “Fastlane” DSL coverage.

Judy Chapman, a manager at the Franklin-based ISP, said the map isn’t meant to mislead customers but rather to show that the service is available to some residents in those counties. She said the only way to be sure who is covered is for DNet to test a customer’s phone line.

“We would love to provide more in these three counties but we’re limited,” Chapman said. “DSL is not available everywhere and it’s surprising to us the people who qualify and the people who don’t… it’s not necesarily if you live in town or not.”

Brinke said customers aren’t the only ones longing for improved Internet speeds.

“A lot of our employees don’t have service and are desperate to get it too,” he said.

CAN YOU CONNECT ME NOW?

Both Anderson and Chapman remarked that Verizon has consistently been slow to respond to infrastructure issues.

“We feel like we brought broadband to WNC,” Anderson said. “We lined-up DSL even when Verizon refused to set it up on its own network.”

Chapman said she also knows the frustrations of operating on Verizon’s phone lines to provide DSL to local customers.

DNet relies on Verizon to update switches in DSL boxes to add more customers but the phone company has made no improvements whatsoever on the local infrastructure for about a year, Chapman said.

Why is the phone company suddenly so lax?

Last May Verizon agreed to sell its landline phone services in 14 states (including North Carolina) to a company called Frontier Communications Corp. in a deal valued at $8.6 billion. The move will triple the the size of Frontier. But the deal has yet to be sealed.

“During this transition phase there seems to be no improvments on the lines,” Chapman said. “It makes it difficult to find someone who knows what’s going on.”

She said that many customers attempting to change Internet speeds during the last few months had unexpectedly been cut off from service completely by the phone company.

“If people want a speed change we’re advising them not to do it right now,” she said. “If people cancel phone service but not DSL, the whole line might end up getting cancelled. As soon as it’s cancelled the service may be snatched up by the next available customer. If it gets cancelled the person who had the service yesterday may not be able to get it. It’s very difficult for us when we’re still trying to provide excellent service.”

Chapman said she believed the Frontier deal could be a three-year process, stranding eager Internet customers in limbo.

“We have no control,” she said. “Verizon’s not going to fix any of the problems because they consider it a Frontier issue.”

Chapman said that despite the troubles from corporate Verizon, DNet has maintained a strong relationship with the telecom giant’s local employees.

“They feel part of our pain too,” she said.

Verizon spokesperson Christy Reap gave a more optimistic timeline for the negotiation, however, stating that the company was on track to close the deal in the second quarter of 2010.

THE PRICE OF PROGRESS

So what would it take to get that high-speed fiber-optic line a mile down the road to reach your home?

A low estimate would be about $60,000, Chapman said, indicating that the cost would only shoot higher with terrain issues.

“It’s hardly feasible for a residential customer to try to connect to [fiber-optic],” she said.

Anderson said that while the cable itself would run approximately $20,000 per mile, the cost is double for underground cables, and trucks, equipment and employee salaries easily send the price much higher.

“Material is not really the biggest expense, it’s the labor,” said David Hubbs, CEO of BalsamWest FiberNET, a company that builds telecommunications infrastructure in Western North Carolina.

Hubbs said the cost to lay a new cable can fluctuate wildly.

“If you put it underground along a road it can be relatively easy,” he said. “If you get into an area where there’s a lot of rock it can be very expensive. In the WNC mountains we have dicovered a lot of rock.”

To avoid weather outages and pole attachment fees, 99 percent of the cable BalsamWest lays is underground, Hubbs said.

At those prices, it would take approximately $5 million to connect 81 miles of high-speed Internet to every home in Tusquittee for just 11 customers per mile… if everyone committed to buying service.

To Blue Ridge Mountain EMC, that kind of a price isn’t feasible to stay in business.

Customer density is often an indicator of Internet speed. Brinke called the issue “a tricky balancing act,” stating that population density in rural WNC (at about 12 residents per mile) is just a fraction of the 150-2,000 potential customers for every mile of fiber in a city.

“If we had more subdivisions, it would be a lot more cost effective,” he said. “Since we don’t have that luxury we struggle sometimes to build lines we really, really want to do.”

Chapman said installing a wireless tower would be an even better solution for future developments, stating that it’s more feasible to beam Internet into homes than to bury cables in the ground.

Like Verizon before it, DNet’s fastest growing market has become wireless service, which Chapman said is much more reliable than DSL.

“We’re still relying on Verizon to get lines fixed and that could takes months,” she said. In comparison, Chapman said wireless dilemmas can be repaired almost immediately and that the ISP has yet to push the limits on wireless speed.

The service is only available in Franklin for now, however, though Chapman said DNet would try to expand it to Cherokee and Clay counties if a high-speed line could be run across the mountains.

“The main hold-up is the construction cost,” she said. A fiber-optic line stretching the 34 miles between downtown Franklin and downtown Hayesville could easily run upwards of $3 million and face complicated terrain challenges.

In the meantime, Hubbs said BalsamWest has buried approximately 340 miles of fiber in WNC. He said BalsamWest is trying to work with other organizations to determine a model that is workable for residential fiber in rural communities.

Hubbs said other services (such as TV and phone) would have to be offered in addition to Internet to make the cost of the lines, permits, easements and heavy-duty engineering worthwhile.

“There is hope,” he said. “It’s an ongoing process.”

GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION

Brinke believes the solution may be in history itself.

The BRMEMC employee compared the rural North Carolina high-speed Internet problem to the challenge of providing electric power to disconnected residents before Congress introduced the Rural Electrification Act of 1936.

When the government realized how important electricity was it stepped in to create rural electric cooperatives because the population densities wouldn’t justify the cost of building power lines, he said.

“If you’re a for-profit company you’re not going to make any money [reaching rural customers],” Brinke said. “Even if you’re nonprofit, it’s still difficult.”

Cue the government.

In December Vice President Joe Biden announced a $33 million federal stimulus grant to build a 260-mile fiber-optic line that aims to connect Atlanta with North Carolina.

Brinke said the new high-speed network will bring more data at better prices and that BRMEMC has been given two years to finish the project.

“We’ve been really fortunate in our service territory to garner the kind of attention from government agencies that we have,” Brinke said. “Clay County had a downtown fiber network before most people even knew what fiber was.”

While he praised federal efforts to bring Internet to Western North Carolina, Brinke said the government still needs to become more involved in providing rural access.

“Ultimately it depends on citizens who will contact their elected officials and fight for it,” he said. “There have been some great things done. We have a lot of great things to come.”

A NEW FRONTIER

Nevertheless, providing faster speed to current DSL customers is not the most important issue, Chapman explained.

“For a lot of people in the mountains high-speed Internet is still not available at all,” she said.

And while Chapman believes it’s too early for DNet to predict what kind of improvements, if any, Frontier might make, it turns out that the two companies share a similar mission.

“It doesn’t matter how fast the Internet is on your system; if you can’t get it out to people, it doesn’t matter,” said Frontier’s Steve Crosby. “We have to get it out to people first.”

Crosby, vice president of regulatory, legislative and public relations, said Frontier was utilizing the transition period to work with Verizon teams. Everyone from engineers to customer care managers are currently trying to understand the needs in each individual state, he said.

Improvements to Western North Carolina’s network will begin as soon as the transaction with Verizon closes, he said, noting that the benefits of an improved infrastructure would be felt within a few years.

While Frontier plans to install a few fiber-optic lines, Crosby said the primary concern is beefing up available switches and building more DSL lines on the existing infrastructure as quickly as possible.

Despite the heavy cost of improvements, Crosby said the company’s successful track record speaks for itself.

“This is the kind of company that sits well with N.C.,” he said. “This transaction is something that we sought out from Verizon. Our focus has been rural; small town, small city.”

In the rural areas where Frontier’s service is currently available, 92 percent of residents have access to high-speed Internet. In contrast, Crosby said Verizon’s properties (including WNC) currently average about 63 percent DSL penetration.

“There are ways to get further and further out in the network,” he said. “Clearly there are people who say it can’t be done and we’ve proven them wrong with our current system.”

Customers who currently use Verizon for Internet services will be switched to Frontier, Crosby said, noting that Frontier would be much faster than Verizon to make improvements.

“I think we’re a pretty darn responsive company,” he said. Crosby added that Frontier had already communicated with ISPs in all of the states its acquiring, but Chapman said no one from Frontier had visited DNet to keep the company informed.

In an article on SpeedMatters.org, Dr. Kenneth Peres said he was concerned about the Verizon-Frontier deal:

“Verizon is abandoning rural America and leaving a broad swath of destruction in its wake,” he said. “Verizon sold its telephone lines in Hawaii. The result: consumers received terrible service quality and Hawaiian Telecom went bankrupt. Verizon sold its lines in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont to tiny FairPoint. The result: terrible service quality and FairPoint is nearly bankrupt. Verizon spun off Idearc – its Yellow Pages operation. The result: bankruptcy.”

On Aug. 11, 2009, the Wall Street Journal wrote, “In all, these companies have lost upward of $13 billion in value and counting.” The story continued “…[Verizon's CEO] extracted prices that literally sucked the life out of the buyers.”

The sale of 4.8 million access lines to Frontier comes packaged with more than $3 billion of debt left over from Verizon.

“In effect, we are all subsidizing Verizon’s abandonment of rural America,” Peres wrote. “Frontier, just like FairPoint and Hawaiian Telecom, is promising everything to everyone. It promises to increase investment, improve service quality, significantly expand broadband availability and increase jobs – and to do this while taking on more than $3 billion in new debt while cutting operations by 21 percent!”

THE SATELLITE EFFECT

In the meantime, customers who don’t have access to high-speed Internet have been experimenting with satellite service from companies like HughesNet and WildBlue.

Freelance Art Director Steve Newton said he didn’t even consider not being able to get Internet service when he moved to Tusquittee from Atlanta last year, but now satellite is his only choice.

Having designed ads for the Red Cross, John Deere, Land Rover, Southwest Airlines, and the U.S. Air Force to name a few, Newton said he depends on speedy web access to work with clients.

“The satellite Internet here is just a hair better than dial-up,” he said. “I’m paying about $65 a month and I’m not happy.”

Newton said he’s called everyone there is to call to get faster Internet; he even asked a BRMEMC employee if it would help to start a petition signed by locals who share his quest for bandwidth.

“Before I could finish my sentence she said, ‘No, that’s not going to make a difference,’” he recalled.

While satellite service has been good, it’s just not good enough, Newton said.

“They’ve got you over a barrel out here,” he said. “You don’t have many options.”

Many of the files Newton sends back and forth to clients over the Internet are too big to send at home, so he often drives 15 minutes into Hayesville to work from the network at the local library.

Yet as the Internet evolves into a more bandwidth-intensive beast, Newton often has to drive into town just to download an update for iTunes, watch a video online, or download large files.

Chapman said that while download speeds are usually fine for satellite users, upload speed, uptime and latency are the service’s biggest drags, especially during bad weather.

Newton and Chapman both agree that the terrible connection is a small cost for paradise.

“We live in a beautiful area but the disadvantage is the Internet,” Chapman said.

“Tusquittee is drop dead gorgeous, so that’s just part of the trade-off,” Newton noted. “I don’t want it to be that way but I’m accepting it.”

CHANGES IN THE SKY

Judy Blake, director of media relations for HughesNet, acknowledged that despite higher pricing, “if it’s the only thing in town” satellite can be a savior to some.

HughesNet pricing starts at $60 a month for speeds of 1mb/s. For comparison, DNet offers a comparable speed for $25 per month.

Blake said she wasn’t quite sure why satellite pricing is so high, but said it’s probably the expense of the technology involved.

“The prices come down the more subscribers you have,” she added. “The DSL companies have millions. Satellite is a fairly new thing for consumers.”

Chapman said she doesn’t foresee satellite Internet growing as much as other Internet technologies. One reason is that satellite is a poor medium for online gaming, which she said has become a big industry among DNet users in the region.

Blake said changes are afoot, however, noting that a new satellite named “Jupiter” is scheduled for launch in the first quarter of 2012.

Satellite service is making “quantum leaps,” Blake said. She stated that HughesNet’s current satellite offers ten times the speed and capacity of its predecessor. Jupiter, she added, will be a 100-fold improvement over the current hardware in orbit. The technological boosts will only continue, she said.

Customers should be appreciating Jupiter’s improvements soon after the satellite is launched, Blake said, noting that either higher speeds will be offered for the same price or current speeds will be offered at a lower price.

MORE BARS

For those who don’t want to face the HughesNet hassles, 3G cellular network cards provide another Internet alternative for laptops, although, like satellite, speeds are slower and cost is higher than traditional service. Unlike satellite, however, location matters, and in the mountains signal can prove to be pretty elusive.

“If your home cell service doesn’t offer five bars, you’re not going to get a full data connection out of it,” Richardt said.

Yet 90 year-old Harold “Dana” Austin can’t get a signal on his phone or high-speed Internet to his Murphy home. In fact, after losing electricity three times this past week, Internet is becoming the least of his worries.

His daughter, Lee Epstein, lives four miles further down the road and gets DSL service. She said she considered ordering HughesNet for her father but was put off by the high cost.

“He’s getting to the point that he’s considering giving up on it,” she said. “Partly because it takes so long for anything to come up.”

While Brinke said BRMEMC is committed to improving the quality of broadband in the region, he couldn’t give a timeframe for unconnected communities.

Customers who can’t get any high-speed coverage should continue pushing a community grassroots campaign forward, Brinke said.

“Talk to your neighbors; talk to your elected officials. That will certainly create some ripples on our pond,” he said. “If you give us time we’ll get there…it’s just a very slow, very expensive endeavor that we feel should be cost-justified as we go along.”

GLOSSARY:

Bandwidth: The transmission speed of data over the Internet. The higher the better.

ISP: Internet Service Provider, a company that connects users to the web.

Switches: The available slots on a local neighborhood box for DSL subscribers.

Low-speed Internet:

56K Modem or Dial-Up: The most sluggish form of Internet service. The slowest DSL connection is about ten times as fast.

High-speed Internet:

DSL: Direct Service Line. Internet speeds range from about 1-7 megabytes per second, although most people get around 2 mb/s. Speed upgrades could take a week to effect.

Fiber-optic: Comparatively limitless speed. Some local customers order speeds of 15mb/s to 100 mb/s from BRMEMC. Fiber can also provide TV and phone service. Speed changes take minutes.