Bringing broadband to the boondocks: local telecoms bridge the digital divide.

• Author: Blodget, John
• Position: Telecom

CARBONVILLE IS A SMALL COMMUNITY in rural Garbon County situated northwest of Price. Thanks to Emery Telcom the hamlet's size and location no longer prevent residents from subscribing to a fast DSL internet connection. "We re not lyetl doing it as a profitable business proposition says Gary Harrison network service manager for the independent telecommunications company.

It requires a significant investment in capital to connect the remote corners of the state to the World. Wide Web but Harrison says the company does it in the name of customer service. Rather than make customers wait until fiber optic cable, the standard DSL conduit is laid throughout. Carbon County Emery Teleom is offering wireless DSL in the interim.

The situation is similar statewide Locally owned and operated telecoms are helping to bridge the digital divide between the middle of nowhere and "somewhere."

It wasn't long ago, the late 1990s in fact, that your home could be the first--and sometimes only--on your big-city block capable of enjoying the fast Internet access that DSL allows. Perhaps you were one of the early few who could surf at the previously unheard of speed of 256Kbps. What fun it was to view streaming media and still be able to call your neighbors, who, alas, couldn't answer, because they were creeping along the web via a 28 or 56K modem that wouldn't allow simultaneous phone use. It's now 2003, and demand for quick and seamless web access has exploded. In urban areas, the digital divide has all but disappeared; high-speed web access via DSL or cable modem is widespread. ISPs such as AOL and Earthlink, who made setting up a dial-up account as easy as inserting a floppy disk or CD-ROM into your computer, are now pushing broadband. What was once a novelty has become integrated with our work and commerce. For those of us who live along the Wasatch Front and in other population centers, it's easy t o take this fast access for granted. But even rural Utah, previously left behind in the dust of its country roads, is beginning to catch up.

It took the financial power of a corporate giant like Qwest to bring the major population centers online. Conversely, it took Qwest leaving some of the smaller communities in order for those locales to connect. In the spring of 2001, the company finalized the sale of a number of rural Utah exchanges to a consortium of local independent telecom companies-Emery Telcom, UBTA-UBET Communications, Central Utah Telephone, Manti...