Subjected to satellite
News
Wednesday, November 20, 2013 • page 11
Rural North Carolina communities lag behind developed broadband speeds against their will Michael Bodley Assistant News Editor landscaper by trade, one of Christopher Carrie’s greatest joys is blogging about his beloved camellias and crocuses, two types of flowers he tends to in the shadows of the Great Smoky Mountains outside Clyde, N.C. But Carrie’s home lies past the end of the broadband line, so the quality of his blogging hinges on a series of satellites suspended thousands of feet above his cabin in the woods. It’s a gamble that often makes blogging more difficult than it should be, Carrie said. His frustration is shared by many who call rural regions of the state home. In the wake of the Internet’s 50th birthday, the democratic principles it was founded on are being called into question, said Steve Wozniak, Apple co-founder and Fusion-io chief scientist. “I’m very worried about the rather few gatekeepers altering our Internet experience from the egalitarian ideal of equal access to everything,” Wozniak said. “For any person,
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there are only one or two choices for broadband, and regulation is appropriate in cases of monopolies or oligopolies. Otherwise, it is too easy for them to abuse their monopoly position.” With few other choices, Carrie said, he’s given up on using the Internet for much else other than loading text and small photos. Video and multimedia elements aren’t an option. “I’m not able to literally join in the conversation that people are having about these things like ‘The Daily Show’ or clips from CNN, because I can’t watch them with my Internet speed,” Carrie said. “I’m not the type of person who would say something about something I haven’t seen. It does put me at a disadvantage in terms of being connected and having conversations with other people online.” But a breakthrough for Carrie and the millions of others affected by rural broadband connectivity may be lurking just around the corner, according to leading telecommunications policy expert Susan Crawford. “We’re entering into an era that can really
reshape the conditions under which highspeed Internet access is offered in America,” Crawford said. “It’s a critical time.” Geography’s breadth
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In the mountains of western North Carolina, broadband access is often a pipe dream for people who count their blessings for half-decent radio reception, electricity that flickers at the slightest provocation and phone lines that weather winter storms only most of the time. The Mountain Area Information Network (MAIN), a nonprofit organization for the advancement of rural broadband, is striving to make that dream an affordable reality. According to Mark West, a member of MAIN’s seven-person board of directors and professor of mass communication at the University of North Carolina at Asheville, there is a relatively simple solution: Create wireless access points at the end of existing wired infrastructure. “It’s possible to provide a one-to-many
service,” he said. “You can install an antenna on a high point in a community at the end of the line and then equip each house with a small antenna. You can drive, with relatively low cost, access to a large number of households.” The Microelectronics Center of North Carolina (MCNC) this year completed a 2,600-mile fiber-based network connecting 82 of North Carolina’s 100 counties at broadband speeds around 100 megabytes per second (mbps). The network was made possible by a combination of private donations, state funding and federal grants. Christened the North Carolina Research and Education Network (NCREN), the network links K-12 school systems, private and public higher-education institutions, academic research facilities and hospitals. Like a beltway, data traveling within the network is not charged a toll, allowing students in western Cherokee County to access Duke University’s massive online research resources for free from across the state. Reaching resources hosted outside the state, what most people think of as the Web, requires another provider to couple with