Hulu, who? Wiki, what? By KATIE KOLT HALL, Staff Writer

Tech-saavy teens, many of whom have skills and knowledge of technology admired by their parents, wouldn’t believe waiting minutes for a picture to load on the computer.

They can probably download their favorite singer’s album from iTunes — with accompanying music videos and digital booklet — in the same time it used to take to load an e-mail. And while a feature film from Netflix or a show from Hulu may take several minutes to fully load, that’s OK because they are already well engrossed in the streaming video.

They can complete their school assignments with access to thousands of books, newspapers, journals and academic presentations — and maybe even Wikipedia. And online classes open the world of education to those with hurdles to attending the familiar classroom environment.

In the next room, their parents may be remotely connected to the office, talking on Skype to clients hundreds of miles away or connecting with friends and family on Facebook. They can check the status of their bank accounts, buy and sell just about anything, get personalized medical advice from their doctor and countless other tasks once dreamed impossible to be instantaneous.

Most Americans have come to expect constant access at speeds that 10, 15 years ago would have been a pipe dream.

Like the generational stories of youths spent walking miles to school uphill both ways in the snow with no shoes, the days of hearing the familiar squawk of the modem dialing and seeing half-loaded photos growing inch-by-inch are a fleeting memory. It’s like imagining a dinosaur, or a typewriter.

Or not.

For some who live in rural America, high-speed Internet access remains elusive.

Local Internet access

The majority of Koochiching County residents have access to high-speed Internet service.

According to the “Minnesota Ultra High-Speed Broadband Report,” 89 percent of the county’s residents have access to broadband connections, with speeds for download averaging 4.2 megabits per second, and upload speeds averaging 0.2 mbps. Koochiching County ranked 53 of 87 Minnesota counties in the report.

According to information from the Federal Communications Commission “National Broadband Plan,” which can be reviewed at www.broadband.gov, 72 percent of homes in Koochiching County have broadband speeds of greater than 4 mbps download, which will soon be required by the state for all homes and businesses.

Local attorney Bruce Biggins is one example of area residents who are unable to get high-speed Internet access at their rural homes.

Biggins has two properties, one in Littlefork and one in Loman, and is unable to get broadband access at either location. And yet, it seems just out of reach.

He said he is about seven miles away from getting service from Frontier Communication at his Littlefork home. At one time, he even had an appointment for installation after receiving information that it was available in his area. The notice turned out to be a false alarm.

Biggins said that he has recruited his Littlefork neighbors along Highway 65 to also contact Frontier Communications to assert their support — and several have followed through.

“We’re so close in so many ways,” Biggins said, frustrated. “But nobody’s jumped up and down and made enough noise.”

Kirk Lehman, general manager for the northern Minnesota division of Frontier Communications, said that although there are “little pockets on the edge of our service area” where customers cannot receive high-speed Internet service, the company has 87 percent penetration in the northern Minnesota region.

“We’re trying to identify folks that need it (high speed Internet access) and get it to them as quickly as possible,” Lehman said. “We’re doing everything we can to get that delivered.”

Frontier has about 41,000 residential customers in the northern Minnesota region, and has added 3,100 customers in the past year. “A big part of that was through expansion,” Lehman explained, and the rest was through customers who added service that was previously available in their area. He said the company expects the same type of expansion this year.

Frontier services many areas in Koochiching County, including International Falls, Littlefork, Big Falls, Kabetogama and Ranier, but Lehman adds that the company’s footprint often goes outside city limits. Lehman called expanding its service area one of the company’s “No. 1 objectives.”

Biggins also has problems getting high-speed service at his Loman residence.

In Loman, Paul Bunyan Telephone installed fiber optic lines running near Biggins’ property towards the Indus School, but he and his neighbors are still unable to connect to the service.

Brian Bissonette, marketing supervisor for Paul Bunyan, explained that the contract to bring fiber optic connections to the Indus School made financial sense for the communications service provider. Making connections to residences would require additional equipment and fiber lines. Fiber, he said, is expensive to add additional lines to individual residences. “It really depends on the area ... to justify the expense of fiber to hook them up.”

At times, he said, they run lines through an area the company does not serve in order to connect parts of their network and interact with other networks. Paul Bunyan provides telephone, television and Internet services in parts of Beltrami, Itasca, Koochiching, Hubbard and Cass counties. Services in Koochiching County are mainly in the southern region, including Northome, Mizpah and Gemmell. He noted they do not have plans to expand further into Koochiching County in the near future.

“It’s not that we’re not interested in expanding further,” Bissonette said. “Our priority is on our current customer base, getting them all the services we can provide.”

He also said he is aware of Minnesota’s broadband speed plan, and the company is working to meet those goals for their existing customers, some of which already receive connections that meet the state benchmarks.

Biggins noted that he has researched other options, such as satellite Internet access and mobile broadband, and found they were more costly and have caps on the amount of data that can be used per month. Once the cap is reached, connection speed slowdowns or additional costs may be added, depending on the type of service and provider. Other area communication service providers are even further physically from bringing Biggins’ homes service.

Biggins runs his Internet connections via dial-up. He said the speeds vary depending on the quality of the phone lines delivering the data. In Loman, he said, the newer lines there deliver speeds around 50.2 kilobits per second. In Littlefork, the maximum speeds he’s found are half of that, and dropping as slow as 16.2 kbps. Standard dialup speeds reach up to 56 kbps.

The state has proposed a new plan that mandate speeds up to 10 and 20 megabits per second for downloads. A megabit is 1,000 times greater than a kilobit, meaning proposed speeds are 1,000 times greater than the speed reached via Biggins’ Littlefork connection.

The state and federal government are both working to promote getting more Americans up to speed.

“There’s tons of stuff out there that in other parts of the country people are taking advantage of and getting high-speed Internet,” Biggins said, speaking of federal funds allotted for broadband projects. “There are tons of incentives for rural high-speed Internet. Of course none has been applied for locally.”

“Other than e-mail, you have the advantage,” he said of city residents who are able to subscribe to a wider range of broadband options. “Ninety percent of what the Internet is used for is not available in rural parts of the county,” he added, mentioning high-bandwidth sites such as streaming Netflix movies, listening to Pandora radio and watching shows on Hulu.

But for the lawyer, the problem goes beyond entertainment and affects the way he is able to do business and affects property values.

One adverse affect that Biggins has noted is that while his Littlefork home was on the market, he had willing buyers that dropped their offers when they were told the property could not receive broadband.

“Much of what I do, I’m not able to do at the house,” he said. Federal court documents that need to be filed online suck the resources of the dialup connection and often lead to disconnects. “In order to practice, I have to be somewhere that has high-speed access.”

Koochiching County Commissioner Mike Hanson, who represents many of the county’s most rural regions, said that new job growth in the region “has to come through technology.” He said that high-speed access has the potential to help both residents and economic development efforts.

And while the area has made tremendous improvements over the past 10 years in broadband access, Hanson said, there is “big room for improvement.”

Paul Nevanen, Koochiching Economic Development Authority director, said that the KEDA Board worked with a consultant in 2001 to identify some of the weaknesses in broadband access in the county.

He said since that report was created, other providers have come on the scene and he has not heard much discussion in the community on the lack of service in the county.

For both home-based and traditional office environments, Nevanen called a robust telecommunications network a “key component of business retention and attraction. One of the fundamental requirements (for businesses) is having reliable, high speed (access.) It’s absolutely vital.”

The state and national plan

The Minnesota Legislature and Gov. Tim Pawlenty in April approved a bill that requires the state to bring high-speed Internet access to all Minnesota businesses and residences.

The bill requires that by 2015, all state residents and businesses have access to high-speed broadband that provides minimum download speeds of 10 to 20 megabits per second and minimum upload speeds of five to 10 megabits per second.

This goal also relates to Minnesota’s ranking among other states when it comes to broadband Internet access.

The bill requires that Minnesota should be among the top five states of the United States for broadband speed universally accessible to residents and businesses; the top five states for broadband access; and the top 15 when compared to countries globally for broadband penetration.

The federal government has made broadband access a key point in its 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

According to the Recovery Act website, www.recovery.gov, $7.2 billion in Recovery Act funds is aimed at making high-speed Internet service available to millions of Americans who either cannot afford it or do not have access to it.

The Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration is using $4.7 billion in funds to document and map existing broadband; increase broadband use in underserved areas; provide broadband training and support to schools, libraries, healthcare providers, and other organizations; and improve broadband access to police and fire departments.

The Agriculture Department’s Rural Utility Service, which received the remaining $2.5 billion, developed programs to fund grants and loans for broadband in rural and remote areas.

NTIA has awarded about $1.2 billion for 127 projects across the country. RUS has announced $1.1 billion for 68 projects in extremely remote areas — some not even connected by roads — affecting more than 500,000 people in 31 states, one territory and 17 tribal lands, according to the Recovery Act website.