By Jessica Arriens
Keene Sentinel Staff
Monday, November 10, 2008
One snowy New Hampshire day a few years ago, Marc D. Spinale became officially fed up with his Internet. He was planning to telecommute from his Hancock home due to the weather, but the storm knocked out his Internet. “And that really was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” he said.
The satellite Internet he had at home was slow and unreliable. So Spinale took matters into his own hands. In May 2007, he founded ConVal Technology, which offers wireless broadband Internet to users in the Hancock area. “I had the means and the know-how to do something about (my Internet),” Spinale said.
But there are thousands of other Monadnock Region residents who lack those things. This represents one of the greater challenges facing the region, and the entire state, today: how to provide widespread, affordable high-speed Internet access. As a whole, New Hampshire ranks above average on high-speed accessibility, when compared to other states, according to Michael A. Vlacich, director of the division of economic development at New Hampshire’s Business Resource Center.
But in the Monadnock Region, more than half of the population — mostly everywhere outside Keene — has little or no broadband access, said Mary Ann Kristiansen, executive director of the Hannah Grimes Center, a business development agency based in Keene. The need for speed in the Monadnock Region Broadband is a generic term for high-speed Internet. Internet access through DSL and cable are both considered broadband. Dial-up, which connects to the Internet through phone lines, is not.
In 2006, Kristiansen helped the Hannah Grimes Center create the Pinnacle Mountain Broadband Committee, a group of local residents and business leaders who, like Spinale, needed broadband. The committee is helping to support local efforts to boost broadband coverage, and has met with FairPoint Communications to learn about its merger with Verizon. As part of the merger, FairPoint promised to expand DSL access in the state.
The local group’s goal is to bring broadband access to 95 percent of rural areas in the region, Kristiansen said, but the need for any expansion is urgent.
She cites a 2007 report by the Kauffman Foundation — a Missouri-based foundation devoted to promoting entrepreneurship — which shows that states without widespread broadband access have a diminished economic advantage. Home sales can also decrease, and businesses will move, if a region does not have sufficient broadband, said Brian R. Foucher, owner of WiValley, a local Internet company.
Like Spinale, Foucher started WiValley after being frustrated with his own Internet speed. WiValley serves homes in 16 towns in the Monadnock Region, generally to the north and east of Keene. ConVal and WiValley use wireless technology to provide Internet access. Instead of running cables to individual homes, which then have to connect with a local DSL or cable office, the connection is made between a transmitter — set on high locations like a tower or hill — and a fixed receiver in a home or business.
The speed is the big difference between wireless and other types of broadband, Foucher said.
The geography poses challenges to broadband
With wireless technology, challenges are often about finding a line of sight — a clear path from the office or transmitter beaming out the Internet signal to the home or business receiving it. “Line of sight is the best, most reliable way to offer service,” Spinale said.
But with the Monadnock Region’s rolling terrain, a clear line of sight is not always possible. When WiValley or ConVal work to cover a region, they survey the geography and population density to find the most effective places for wireless transmitters.
Part of this process is building relationships with property owners, to allow the companies to place transmitters on their land — which Foucher said is another challenge in trying to expand broadband access. Some people have preconceived notions of the transmitters as huge cell towers on their property, Foucher said. The reed-thin towers WiValley sometimes uses are barely above tree height, he said.
WiValley’s plan to expand to Fitzwilliam has met with resistance from one resident who says the proposed tower — which abuts his property — will affect his property value. There is also some confusion about whether the tower can be built outside Fitzwilliam’s wireless communication overlay district, an area of town designated by a municipal ordinance for towers, including cell-phone and radio transmission towers.
The proposal is set to go before Fitzwilliam’s planning board later this month.
ConVal and WiValley also face a challenge that would be a blessing to many other businesses: high demand. Every time his company is in the news, Foucher said, visits to WiValley’s Web site skyrocket, and people call demanding service. Customers may be at the ready, Foucher said, but the infrastructure to support increased demand doesn’t currently exist.
Spinale agreed, adding that the demand can sometimes be overwhelming for a small business like ConVal. After a recentmerger with another wireless broadband company in New Ipswich, Spinale said he serves around 200 customers.
The state gets involved in bringing access to areas
When FairPoint Communications bought all of Verizon’s New Hampshire land lines in March, the company promised to expand DSL within 12 months of the merger. The N.H. Public Utilities Commission, which negotiated the sale, placed a timeline on FairPoint’s DSL expansion: by September 2009, availability must reach 75 percent.
The delay in FairPoint’s expansion of service means an increase in demand on smaller businesses like ConVal and WiValley. “There is a feeling from people that they’ve been forgotten,” Spinale said.
Jill H. Wurm, FairPoint’s corporate communications manager, said the company is committed to the September 2009 deadline. The company is building a core network, she said, which will allow DSL expansion to be spread out into the broader community.
FairPoint currently has DSL service in the greater Keene area, Wurm said, including Spofford, Marlborough and Winchester, though there are still pockets in those towns without service. Fairpoint’s commitment will help to establish a base for broadband progress in the state, said Vlacich, of the state’s Business Resource Center.
But it’s not the only solution.
“A one-size-fits-all approach does not work” when it comes to expanding broadband in New Hampshire, Vlacich said. So in addition to the statewide progress of FairPoint, regional approaches — like WiValley and ConVal — are needed, he said.
Kristiansen agreed, adding that FairPoint has been “phenomenal” in working with the Pinnacle Mountain Broadband Committee to expand broadband. “But they know they can’t serve the whole area,” she said.
The state has complimented this local private progress with funding — including more than $100,000 in broadband grants given out through the Business Resource Center. WiValley was one grant recipient. The grants leveraged more than $1 million in private and public sector financing, Vlacich said, and this dual approach will help bridge the state’s infrastructure gap.
The future of broadband in the Monadnock Region
Just 10 years ago, when Vlacich began his work in the division of economic development, the Internet was considered a nicety rather than a necessity. Broadband today is integral to everyday life, he said, the equivalent of roads, bridges and water — an essential piece of infrastructure.
On the state level, Vlacich said agencies are working to set a path toward this goal. They are looking at state resources, such as towers, to expand broadband access, and developing a wireless broadband network in Coos County with the help of the federal government.
Locally, ConVal and WiValley were joined by Great Auk Wireless — a Vermont wireless broadband company that expanded coverage into areas east and north of Keene in fall 2006. Keene residents can also access high-speed Internet through Sovernet Communications, based out of Bellows Falls. In August, Sovernet acquired all DSL and dial-up Internet customers of Keene-based WebRyders, Inc.
ConVal recently merged with another wireless broadband company out of New Ipswich, NHwisp. The merger allows his company to do more than a small business would, Spinale said.
And Foucher recently began WiValley as his full-time job, working to expand his company’s coverage area.
Kristiansen said the Pinnacle Mountain Broadband Committee will continue to support any efforts that expand broadband. They are also working to raise awareness of the process of broadband expansion. Building infrastructure requires investment and construction, she said, which means time and money.
She knows the demand in the region is great, Kristiansen said. And her one message to those waiting customers?
“It is coming.”
