Rural Towns Push for Broadband

About 800 people live in Goshen.

And no one in town can get cable tv, or order DSL Service from the phone company.

The town simply hasn't been wired for digital service.

That frustrates Mellissa Page, Goshen's Town Clerk, who has to transmit paperwork to the state.
when you sit down and you deal with the regular dial up internet it takes forever. i get online and i have to pull off deeds. and they take a long time to load, when you deal with pulling them off a dial up connection and we had to put in a second phone line because it took so long.

Goshen is not alone in lacking broadband service.

Other towns across New Hampshire also suffer from the lack of high speed internet.

They include; Newport, Lyme, Orford, and even parts of Hanover.

The bill working its way through the House aims to fix this by granting communities authority to borrow money to lay their own fiber optic cables.

Currently, towns can't borrow for this purpose without permission from the state.

Republican Representative Roy Maxfield of Merrimack is the prime sponsor of the bill.
...its an enabling piece of legislation. it allows any community to say we're not served in this area of town, or we're underserved in this area of town. and it provides them with a means of bonding to provide the infrastructure, and those people that participate in that region of town would be the ones to repay the bond, it wouldn't be taxing the whole town for example.

The bill's supporters estimate the total cost of wiring every town that needs it might be as much as 20 million dollars, depending on how many communities decide to build.

That cost has proven too high for the state's two biggest commercial internet providers, Comcast and Verizon.

They have said they can't earn a sufficient return from rural areas in New Hampshire to justify extending their networks there.

Besides, both companies say they've been steadily increasing their coverage of the state.

Erle Pierce is with Verizon.
there is not a zipcode in the state that does not have broadband. now, that doesn't mean that every house in that zipcode has access to broadband. but there are no zipcodes in the state of nh, so that's one way to measure it.

But that way of measuring it aggravates Julia Griffin.

She's Hanover's town manager, and is one of the driving forces behind the municipal broadband measure.

Griffin says communities should be able to borrow funds to get fiber optic cable strung to every part of town.

She says once the cables are there, communities could invite any company to run the service, and let them keep track of who wants it.
but verizon quite frankly, and the cable companies worry about us doing that, because they worry we're going to get out ahead of their business plan for rollout of service and that by installing the fiber optic cable, we invite other competitors into the arena and they don't want the competition.

Griffin estimates it would cost between 5 and 6 million dollars to wire the unserved parts of Hanover.

The area of town most in need of broadband is near Moose Mountain, a residential area on the east side of town.

Erle Pierce of Verizon says he thinks new technology is the answer to places like Moose Mountain.

And he says that could come without government aid.
the residents, i don't know how many there are, the 500 residents out in moose mountain ..want broadband access, there may be someone who comes in and says, you know what, i can put a tower on that hill and serve everyone with wireless broadband in this area of town. so then you don't have to do the bond, you don't have to do the infrastructure. but the hardest part of that equation, david is to get the community to sit down together to decide what they want.

Back in Goshen, three developers are working on a high end condominium project.

And they hope high speed internet connections come to town before their project is finished.

They've recently gotten permission from town officials to go forward with 27 units on the side of Mount Sunapee.

Realtor Pam Perkins owns the New London Agency, and is one of the three developers.

She says she and her partners plan to sell each unit for about 800,000 dollars, and her potential buyers rely on internet connections.
i think its expected now ..especially people coming from cities who are so used to, uh, its expected. and surprising when its not availiable.

The measure is scheduled for debate in the House tomorrow. (later today).