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Search Terms: telecommunications act of 1996

Document 43 of 784.

October 30, 2000 Monday

SECTION: NATIONAL; Pg. 3

LENGTH: 932 words

HEADLINE: Small towns lacking high-speed Internet;
Rural areas facing growing digital divide

BYLINE: By John McQuaid; Staff writer

BODY:
LEESVILLE -- Greg Williams, a computer expert for the TRW Corp., helps manage an office that provides technical support for Fort Polk's increasingly high-tech military exercises. When he wanted a high-speed Internet connection for a satellite office in downtown Leesville, he found he couldn't get it.

Local companies weren't offering the fastest, newest technologies -- either the cable modem or the telephone-based digital subscriber line, or DSL. So he had to settle for a slower and more expensive phone connection called an ISDN line, or integrated services digital network. In contrast to the quick broadband Internet hookups people get in places such as New Orleans, installing ISDN can be a hassle. "ISDN lines are considered a highly specialized service," Williams said. "The phone company has one technician. Once he gets the order, it may be three weeks before we get it."

In small towns and rural areas across the country, Williams' predicament is increasingly common. High-speed Internet connections will be the national standard in a few years. But people in rural areas are already experiencing a "digital divide," unable to get the high-tech access and services available to others. They are last on everybody's list for a hookup, and it's unclear when, if ever, this latest leap in the information revolution will reach them.

Most companies have concentrated their broadband push in cities and surrounding suburbs, including New Orleans and most Louisiana cities. But geography and some basic economic facts of life have left rural areas largely out of the mix. Like the high-tech gaps found among poor people and some minority groups, the growing urban-rural divide on broadband poses a new challenge for companies and the government.

Rural areas are sparsely populated, so it's more expensive to cover the distances involved and install a new telecommunications service. Even when customers are near fiber-optic lines, companies might not provide the necessary facilities and equipment to hook them up. Even if the equipment is installed, it's significantly less profitable.

"Rural markets are a hassle. Everything's too far apart and there's not much money," said Joel Thierstein, a professor of telecommunications at Baylor University in Waco, Texas.

The digital divide issue is one of the key arguments Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-Chackbay, is using to drum up support for a bill that would give the regional Bell telephone companies some relief from restrictions in the Telecommunications Act of 1996. They want out of rules that restrain their monopoly power, rules that are supposed to give their competition a temporary window of opportunity to enter the marketplace.

Tauzin and Bell company lobbyists have lined up a majority of House members in support of the bill, in part by arguing that the Bells, whose telephone networks reach into more rural areas than any competitor, are the only ones likely to provide broadband in those areas in the near future and perhaps ever.

Their competitors admit that the Bells have a superior reach. But they say the real rationale for the bill is not to help people in rural areas but to help the Bell companies in their rush to tap into the higher-end markets, where they have lagged.

The Bell companies' argument is straightforward. The Tauzin bill, they say, would indirectly help them deliver broadband to rural areas. They make no promises and admit that rural areas are a low priority. But without the Bell companies, they say, large swaths of the country might end up with nothing.

"The companies that are allowed to do it show no interest in doing it," BellSouth spokesman Bill McCloskey said. "We really are, in many areas of the country, the telephone provider of last resort. We'd love to be able to expand into those areas. But you can't do it on the backs of urban and suburban customers."

On one level, the proposal is a straightforward trade-off. The companies are now barred from the long-distance business in 48 states. The Tauzin bill would let them into long-distance for calls that transmit data -- for Internet, computer, and fax signals. That would let them plow some money into rural broadband, McCloskey said.

Technically, the Bells could offer broadband connections in rural areas they serve now. But the companies say local calling boundaries -- called local access and transport area, or LATA, lines -- create obstacles.

In most states, including Louisiana, calls over a LATA line must be handled by a long-distance carrier. If a rural Louisiana parish or school district straddles one of the boundaries, people who live on either side sometimes must make long-distance calls to nearby towns. Under those restrictions, the Bells say, if your Internet provider is on the other side of a LATA line or if you want to link computers on either side of a line, then you will need to pay two phone companies to complete the connection.

These arguments have convinced many members of Congress and most of the Louisiana Public Service Commission, which has twice voted to let BellSouth into the long-distance market in the state.

But an array of Bell opponents, including smaller startup companies, cable and long-distance firms, as well as consumer groups and the Federal Communications Commission, say the promises of broadband for rural areas are a political smoke screen. Although the promises have been politically convincing, opponents say, on practical terms people in rural areas will be last to get service whether the Bell companies have some restrictions lifted or not.

GRAPHIC: STAFF PHOTO BY G. ANDREW BOYD Rep Billy Tauzin, R-Chackbay, right, talks with his aide, Ken Johnson, on the steps of the Capitol before a vote last week.

LOAD-DATE: October 30, 2000

Document 43 of 784.


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