While there are numerous success stories involving the use of broadband services by companies in Maine, there are just as many not-so-upbeat accounts from businesses in particular who find the absence of broadband to be more than merely an inconvenience.

“The inability to get reliable broadband services across the state of Maine is a significant problem. Without broadband, our job sites are forced to try to work off of dial-up connections. This effectively cripples our ability to streamline any technology processes we have implemented,” said Joe Kennedy, senior network engineer at Cianbro Corp. in Pittsfield.

“An effective state strategy with respect to broadband availability, especially in rural areas, would enable Cianbro to communicate better with its clients, vendors and even ourselves,” said Kennedy.

“It would also allow us to save valuable time and money that is spent on traveling across the state, or mailing documents that could have been sent via e-mail. Yes, we do use wireless solutions at certain job sites, but only as a last resort,” said Kennedy.

“We have also found satellite services to be expensive and not very reliable. I would only recommend satellite or wireless broadband where there are no other options.”

For Erda, a small handbag manufacturer with 11 employees in Cambridge, deteriorating Internet service is a serious issue, according to company owner Patti Dowse.

“We are too far from population centers to get cable or DSL, so we have managed with dial-up through TDS Telecom, the only provider in this area. We have had a Web site since the mid-90s,” she said.

“Our web activities are core to our success. Up until recently, this worked out OK, although it was certainly slower than we’d like.”

The speed, quality, and reliability of the Internet connection has deteriorated as more and more users attempt to access the Internet, straining the modest wiring that comes to Cambridge.

“It can often take up to 9 hours to successfully download a [very large] file. I write for a national magazine, and recently had to resort to saving images to disk, and going to Dexter to use a friend’s computer to upload them, having tried and failed for hours to do it from Cambridge,” said Dowse, who adds that TDS sends repairmen who try their best to help, but given the sad state of the infrastructure, it is evidently impossible to restore even the modest speeds Dowse enjoyed this time last year.

“Needless to say, we are exploring the possibility of using satellite access,” said Dowse.