RAISING ITS SITES.

High-tech businesses are highly concentrated.

State officials want to spread them around.

Firms that are engaged in the design, development and introduction of new products and innovative manufacturing processes, or both, through the systematic application of scientific and technical knowledge.

That's how the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment defines high-tech, and using three-digit standard industrial classification (SIC) codes, the state Department of Commerce's Economic Policy and Research Division identified high-tech jobs and job sites across the state last summer.

Most -- no surprise -- were in urban areas: The 11 Metropolitan Statistical Areas, covering 34 of the 100 counties, had about 80% of the high-tech jobs in 1997. A third of the state's high-tech work force was in the 13 counties of the Research Triangle Regional Partnership; nearly a fourth of the state total was concentrated in the six-county Raleigh-Durham MSA. Its 67,182 jobs exceeded the 62,314 for the entire, 12-county Carolinas Partnership, second among the economic-development regions.

The Rural Prosperity Task Force, launched last summer by Gov. Jim Hunt and Commerce Secretary Rick Carlisle, wants the state to step in to spread information technology through the hinterland with affordable, high-speed Internet service...