Try to imagine piloting a gigantic cruise ship through the narrows of a pond or lake.

Or, to cite a well-known passage in the Bible, a camel attempting to pass through the eye of a needle.

If you can, you may be on your way to understanding what some business leaders worry may happen in the near future with high-capacity broadband Internet access in Maine.

Cruise ships and camels aside, the Internet often is called the information superhighway because of similarities between how it distributes information and how highways regulate the flow of vehicular traffic.

For a highway, the wider, smoother and straighter it is, the faster it can handle a large amount of vehicles. On the Internet, the rate at which information flows down the line is limited by the line’s data capacity, also known as bandwidth and sometimes referred to as speed.

Regular dial-up Internet service has the smallest or slowest available bandwidth. Cable and digital subscriber lines – also known as DSL – have bandwidths multiple times larger than dial-up. Fiber optics, the most advanced telecommunications technology, has capacities far greater than cable or DSL.

Large telecommunications companies and smaller Internet service providers in Maine have improved retail Internet capacities in recent years so most residents now can get DSL or cable. In some areas, consumers can get wireless Internet access and commercial users have improved access to faster copper-wire technologies or even to fiber optics.

For some entities that deal in large volumes of data, however, such broadband access improvements in Maine might not be moving rapidly enough to suit their needs. If businesses in Maine are going to stay competitive at a national level, there needs to be greater and more affordable Internet bandwidth in the state, according to state, business and scientific leaders.

Technological growth

Chuck Donnelly, computational sciences manager for The Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, said recently this is especially true for his organization, which conducts extensive genetics research and breeds specialized strains of mice for use by laboratories around the world.

Because of the speed at which Jackson Lab’s research capabilities are expanding, Donnelly said, the lab soon will need to upgrade its already significant Internet bandwidth.

“Now is the time,” Donnelly said. “We can’t wait. If Jackson Lab can’t communicate, you start doing business somewhere else.”

Jackson Lab, founded in 1929, pays about $8,000 a month for a T3 line, a copper-based connection with upload and download speeds of 45 million bits per second. This rate can be anywhere between five and more than 100 times faster than residential DSL service, depending on the type of DSL service offered, the direction of information flow on the DSL line, and the amount of traffic on the local DSL network.

Jackson Lab has been generating data and growing at increasingly rapid rates in recent years, expanding its work force from roughly 500 employees in 1990 to nearly 1,300 today, making it the largest employer in Hancock County.

Over that same period of time, the lab’s total revenues have more than quadrupled, increasing from $34.4 million to roughly $150 million in 2004.

The results of the lab’s publicly funded research have to be made available to the global scientific community. The lab also functions as a library for genetics data produced worldwide, providing such information to scientists investigating causes of disease and other medical phenomena.

As technology has improved, the amount of genetic data being collected worldwide has increased exponentially, according to Donnelly. Five years ago, it was common practice for scientists to focus their studies on two or three genes at a time, he said, but with more powerful computers and instruments, scientists now can study 40,000 genes simultaneously.

This explosive growth in research data seems to indicate there are endless ways to compare the genetic makeup of different organisms, Donnelly said. Moreover, because this is the Information Age, he said, all this data has to be accessible on the Internet.

“It’s almost infinite,” Donnelly said. “We don’t have computers big enough to satisfy what [scientists] want to do.”

And as fast as the lab has been expanding its research, the speed by which it generates data is about to get a whole lot faster.

For roughly $1.2 million, the lab is acquiring a new laser-scanning microscope that will greatly enhance the lab’s ability to peer inside a cell, according to lab officials. This instrument, which lab officials say is the most advanced optical microscope in the world, is capable of revealing the structure of genetic material within a cell at resolutions four to seven times greater than previously possible.

According to Donnelly, by working at such detail, the microscope is capable of generating one terabyte – or roughly 9 trillion bits – of data in one day. At this rate, the microscope would generate more data in six months than the lab has generated in its entire previous 76-year history, he said.

“We can take the pictures, but we can’t put them anywhere,” Donnelly said. “We’re looking for ways to get us out of this data trafficking problem.”

Capacity

Though institutions outside of Maine with direct fiber optic Internet access can send a terabyte of data over the Internet in a matter of a few hours, it would take Jackson Lab considerably longer to transmit the same amount of information, according to Donnelly. At its current bandwidth, it likely would take Jackson Lab between two and three weeks to upload a terabyte of data onto the Internet, he said.

Jerilyn Bowers, spokeswoman for Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory in Bar Harbor, said recently that her organization has sufficient bandwidth but also is concerned about its future Internet capacity. MDI Bio Lab specializes in the study of sharks and similar fish and, like Jackson Lab, heavily invests its time in genetics research. Though smaller than Jackson Lab, MDI Bio Lab also has grown significantly in recent years.

Steve Bryant, MDI Bio Lab’s systems administrator, said recently that the lab has an Internet connection speed of 3 million bits per second. This capacity is comparable to that of DSL and cable but, unlike DSL and cable, MDI Bio Lab’s connection has identical capacities for uploading and downloading information. This is an important feature for businesses and other entities that, besides just browsing the Internet, also use it to transmit information, Bryant said.

“If you consider things like video conferencing, you want to have equal bandwidth coming in and going out,” he said.

Because of their status as scientific research institutions, Jackson Lab and MDI Bio Lab can buy discounted Internet access through the University of Maine. Through this service, MDI Bio Lab pays $5,000 a month for its Internet access, Bryant said.

According to Bowers, advances in technology and the pace of research soon could put MDI Bio Lab in a position where it will want even more broadband capacity so it can remotely operate research equipment at another facility, she said.

“That’s very possible,” Bowers said. “They need the capacity to be able to do that.”

How soon MDI Bio Lab’s Internet needs will change is unknown, she said, but it does not want to be caught unprepared.

“We anticipate we are going to run into an issue,” she said. “It’s a little hard to predict, but you have to be ahead of the curve.”

In Pittsfield, construction giant Cianbro satisfies its Internet-access requirements by buying a “tremendous amount” of bandwidth from a Maine telecommunications company, according to Scott Morrison, Cianbro’s vice president of business development.

With offices outside of Maine and construction sites all over the East Coast, Cianbro depends upon the Internet for much of its communications, Morrison said recently. Cianbro spends roughly $150,000 a year for high-capacity Internet access so it can transmit large data files, use low-cost voice transmission services and have video conferencing, he said.

“Things like video conferencing can save us a tremendous amount of time and a tremendous amount of travel,” Morrison said.

At its field sites, however, Cianbro often can get only DSL service, which is insufficient for high-capacity applications such as video conferencing, according to Morrison.

“We certainly would like to have improved service,” he said. “We think [high-capacity broadband] is a tool necessary to do business today.”

Smaller businesses also are concerned about the rate of broadband development in Maine. Mark Awalt, co-owner of JSI Store Fixtures in Milo, said recently that his company had insufficient Internet access for years. It wasn’t until early 2004 that the 100-employee company finally was able to get DSL.

Before then, customers of the store-display manufacturing firm would e-mail designs to JSI and then call 30 minutes later to see if anyone had questions, he said. Usually no one did, because the images would still be downloading over the company’s low-speed dial-up connection.

“It was almost embarrassing before,” Awalt said. “We are dealing with the biggest supermarket chains on the East Coast.”

Robert LaBree, JSI’s computer systems administrator, said the company may have to upgrade its capacity again in a few years as the company grows and as technological advances cause data files to get bigger. If JSI were to switch to a line with a consistent two-way capacity of 1.5 million bits per second, he said, it would want to make sure the added expense would be worthwhile.

“Affordability is always the top priority,” LaBree said.

Competition

According to Gerry Dube, director of University of Maine System’s statewide computer network and a faculty member of UM’s computer sciences department in Orono, Maine’s predominantly rural setting puts it at a disadvantage for having affordable, high-capacity broadband Internet access available throughout the state. The fiber optic network needed for such access already exists in Maine, he said recently, but because of a relative lack of demand and competition, it costs more here than the equivalent access costs in major urban areas.

“It’s not that it’s not available. You can get it,” he said. “[But the] pricing is considerably higher than if we were sitting in Boston.”

Because Maine geographically is considered the “end of the line,” Dube said, it is not in a location where it could benefit from through-state wire communications. Were Maine between two major domestic metropolitan areas, as Montana is between Chicago and Seattle, it most likely would have better access to higher-capacity broadband despite its rural setting, he said.

Emerging, small-scale wireless Internet applications such as wi-fi and mesh networks are not viable alternatives, he said, because they have less capacity than fiber optics and lack the range to travel out of state.

“There is a real need in Maine, where we have a unique problem,” Dube said. “It makes it harder to compete.”

The concentration of universities and research institutions in major metropolitan areas has led to the establishment of a national super-broadband network called Internet 2 that only such institutions can use. Unlike private businesses, Jackson Lab and MDI Bio Lab can access this network through UMS.

Data transmitted by the labs, if it travels as far as Boston, from there can use an Internet 2 connection with a 2.5-billion-bit capacity, which is 60 times Jackson Lab’s local capacity in Bar Harbor, according to Donnelly. If the data is sent as far as New York, from there it can cruise all the way to the West Coast on a 10-billion-bit connection, which is nearly 240 times the capacity of Jackson Lab’s local hookup.

Donnelly acknowledged that Jackson Lab theoretically could pay Verizon for more capacity to Orono, but to do so would be prohibitively expensive. To purchase enough to match the capacity UM has between Orono and Portland, he said, could result in the lab paying “something on the order of $500,000 a year” for its Internet access costs.

According to Phil Lindley, spokesman for Maine Public Utilities Commission, there are varying viewpoints about whether Verizon or other local telecom companies charge fair prices for offering high-level, commercial broadband service. Verizon serves 80 percent of the telephone market in Maine, he said, while the remaining 20 percent is served by 21 smaller companies.

Some people have suggested Verizon and other telephone carriers take advantage of their local monopolies by charging excessively high access fees for super-broadband service, Lindley said. Others have suggested, on the other hand, that there are not enough large-scale Internet users in the state to justify providing the type of affordable, high-capacity, broadband access that some companies desire.

“The market for it [in Maine] is pretty small,” Lindley said. “That means the marketing and availability of it is going to be pretty challenging. It’s a fact of life of being in a rural area.”

Lindley said that, unlike voice telephone service, Internet service is not regulated by MPUC, even though it has been charged by Gov. John Baldacci to monitor broadband availability. If a business wants consistent broadband capacity significantly greater then that offered by DSL or comparable services, he said, it pretty much has to get it from its local telephone company.

“The stuff is not cheap,” he said.

Peter Reilly, Verizon’s Maine spokesman, said recently that he is not aware of any assertions that Verizon’s rates for high-capacity broadband Internet service are excessively high. He said Verizon has worked with economic development agencies in Maine to implement new technology that has provided several hundred public schools with the same broadband capacities now used by the Jackson and MDI Bio laboratories.

“Verizon has helped make that technology available statewide,” Reilly said. “It’s been a valuable tool for economic development.”

The higher-capacity broadband service offered by Verizon, he said, is “value-priced” so that it is a worthwhile expense for those businesses that want it.

“We’re committed to serving the needs of our customers,” Reilly said.

Possible initiatives

State and federal officials, however, are looking into how broadband Internet service can be improved and made more accessible.

According to Janet Yancey-Wrona, director of the Office of Innovation in Maine Department of Economic and Community Development, Gov. Baldacci recognizes how important expanded broadband Internet access is for Maine businesses. In early May, he appointed government officials and business leaders to several committees that will examine the options, she said. The goal of the committees is to make recommendations on the kind of initiatives the state can pursue or the type of incentives it can offer to Internet service providers to improve broadband availability, she said.

“There may be more of a need than we realize there is,” Yancey-Wrona said. “We’re just trying to get organized right now.”

According to a report prepared in December by MPUC, the state could take steps to require telecom companies to allow Internet-service competitors to use parts of their infrastructure. Other suggestions include simplifying the permitting process for letting telecom companies use public right-of-ways, upgrading the state-funded laptop program so that high school pupils have broadband access, and encouraging higher-capacity broadband deployment to state-sanctioned economic development zones.

California, Kentucky and Vermont are some states that are pursuing plans to help bring broadband access to their residents, according to Yancey-Wrona. Whether Maine officials decide to spearhead similar initiatives or leave it to the private sector has not yet been determined, she said.

“It seems likely there will be some role for the government to play, but I don’t know what role we will play yet,” Yancey-Wrona said. “That’s the question we have to address.”