Internet service providers create trade group in Maine

PORTLAND – It’s a sign of the high-tech times: Maine’s Internet service providers are banding together to create an ISP coalition to promote their interests and lobby state government when necessary.

Fletcher Kittredge, president of Great Works Internet in Biddeford, is heading up an effort to establish a Maine ISP coalition.

Kittredge said the idea came up after Internet service providers went to Augusta last year to testify after lawmakers proposed requiring ISPs to extend high-speed access statewide by 2006.

The idea was to help those rural residents and businesses who now rely on slow dial-up connections. But the proposed mandate didn’t sit well with the state’s small Internet service providers.

“It was then,” Kittredge said, “that we realized we could be much more effective as a group.”

The effort is modeled after Internet service provider groups in other states.

These organizations reflect the fact that while the Internet is still relatively new and fragmented, the industry that provides access is maturing.

Maine has an estimated 100 Internet service providers, although there’s no official registry. Some are community-based operations with a couple of employees and only a few hundred customers.

When some people think about Internet access providers, they recognize national players such as Verizon, America Online and Time Warner Cable, which have a strong presence in Maine.

They are less likely to be familiar with Downeast Wireless, which has high-speed wireless service in Hancock County. And they probably haven’t heard of Cornerstone Communications, south of Dover-Foxcroft.

Wayne Jortner, senior counsel in the Maine Public Advocate Office, said the fact that Maine has so many small providers is good for customers and that a coalition can help shape policies that will encourage a healthy industry.