EXPAND BROADBAND

The business group forming in the Bangor region to try to figure out what sort of broadband would best serve this area and how the service would become affordably available can be successful only if many businesses offer ideas. This is a chance for the region to work together and if not get ahead of a problem at least act before it becomes a crisis.

The problem is that rural America is not as attractive to suppliers of high-speed Internet connection as are densely populated areas, putting places such as eastern Maine at a disadvantage. High-speed doesn’t mean the dinky 200 kilobits per second rate the Federal Communications Commission says defines broadband, but something 10 times up to 1,000 times faster, capable of moving very large amounts of information quickly. That’s a speed that allows businesses the freedom to operate effectively from here.

Businesses that depend heavily on high-speed access already are having trouble moving data at a reasonable cost. James W. Sewall Co. of Old Town and The Jackson Laboratory of Bar Harbor, for instance, both say it takes too long – days – to move what should take a few minutes. The threat is that what is affecting these businesses today will affect other businesses and services such as hospitals and universities in a few years. This threat is doubled as it affects the region’s ability to attract new businesses.

Nor is it easy to find a way to persuade Internet-access companies to expand their infrastructure here. The Public Utilities Commission, for instance, doesn’t have jurisdiction over cable, so could say little about attaching conditions to the Time-Warner takeover of Adelphia. Towns that thought they could add conditions to the sale found they too had limited influence. For phone companies, the authority to order action is often at the federal level.

Maine does have options, however. It has its excellent School and Library Network that sends broadband into rural parts of the state and could be upgraded to fiber. It has in Verizon a company with a lot of capacity in its “dark fiber,” unused fiber that has been installed but for now remains unconnected.

But before the region can choose any path to improve access it must figure out what it will need six or eight years from now and for that it needs comments from businesses. Jonathan Daniels, president of Eastern Maine Development Corp. and a founder of the business group, can be reached at info@emdc.org. Send in your ideas and the broadband demands of your business.