Aug. 16--Is Montana one of the high-tech "Disconnected Dozen" states in the nation, or are its residents and businesses blessed with easy access to state-of-the-art telecommunications networks? The answer varies depending on who you talk to.

A couple of weeks ago, the Washington, D.C., lobbying organization iAdvance published a report saying that Montana's lack of direct high-speed Internet connection handicaps its businesses and individuals.

The report said that without direct high-speed connections, Montanans must use lower-speed indirect connections that cannot handle some tasks like distance learning and telemedicine applications. (Distance learning and telemedicine networks are in place and operating in rural and urban areas of Montana over fiber-optic lines. The state university system also is working to develop distance learning courses over the Internet.) The report concluded that Montana ranks with Wyoming, the Dakotas, Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Maine, New Hampshire, Oklahoma and West Virginia as one of the "Disconnected Dozen" states in the union.

But officials with some companies that provide telecommunications services in Montana took exception to the conclusions of the report, arguing that Montana has more high-speed telecommunications infrastructure per capita than any other state in the nation.

"Obviously they're unaware of the infrastructure that exists in Montana," said Mike Meldahl, president of Butte-based Touch America, the telecommunications arm of The Montana Power Co.

"I know that AT&T, I know that Sprint, I know that MCI, I know that Touch America, and I know that the rural (telephone) co-ops all have fiber-optic cables," Meldahl added. "I would state unequivocally that there is higher speed per person in Montana than there is in any other state in the union."

Bill Squires, general counsel for the Montana Telecommunications Association, a cooperative comprising six telephone cooperatives and six commercial companies, agreed.

"Montana has an abundance of backbone fiber facilities all throughout the state and in the rural areas served by our members," he said.

"There's not a problem of fiber backbone capacity of high-bandwidth capacity," he added. "If there was any customer in a rural area that needed super-high bandwidth, it certainly is available."

What is available? Even the experts interviewed for this story disagreed about the meaning of "high-speed Internet backbone."

Meldahl said he would describe DS3 systems as high-speed backbones. Each DS3 is equivalent to 28 T1 (1.54-megabyte) fiber lines.

Meldahl said Montana has multiple DS3 fiber lines in the ground, capable of carrying several hundred thousand times the data of T1 lines. Touch America's DS3 systems carry signals to Seattle to connect people to the Internet.

Squires, however, interpreted the high-speed backbones mentioned in the report as direct Internet access nodes.

"Internet access in Montana is aggregated in various places, be it Billings, Missoula, whatever, and put on an interstate fiber that goes to one of these Internet nodes (out of state)," Squires said. "But simply a lack of Internet access nodes does not mean there's not an abundance of high-speed Internet capacity in Montana."

But Arnie Sherman, executive director of the World Trade Center of the University of Montana in Missoula, said the lack of a direct access node will handicap Montana businesses in the world marketplace. Almost all of the nationally recognized speakers at a recent electronic commerce seminar sponsored by the World Trade Center stressed that point, Sherman said.

He said that because Internet transmissions generated in Montana have to go to an out-of-state Internet access point, download times for customers of state businesses are slower than they are in states with direct access.

"Time is of the essence, so to speak," he said. "If you have to route technology through another state, you're going to lose time. If it takes three minutes (to download information from Montana) versus 10 seconds, it puts us at a disadvantage.

Meldahl, of Touch America, said essentially it should take about the same amount of time to download information across the country. The only time you see delays is when communications stretch across continents, he said.

Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., told The Standard that his primary concern is a lack of redundancy in the state's broadband networks.

"We don't have the redundancy that we need to attract more jobs and business opportunities in here because of a single system that could go down with no backup system," Burns said.

Political climate A number of people interviewed for this report said they believe the motivation behind the iAdvance report is to convince Congress to remove federal restrictions preventing regional telephone companies, such as US West, from building and operating data facilities that cross boundaries of Local Access and Transport Areas, or LATAs. Montana has two LATAs, one in the western half of the state and the other in the east.

"I think they have a goal of using this study and other sorts of studies or documents to support their effort to relieve themselves from long-distance restrictions under the Telecommunications Act for the purposes of deploying broadband, high-speed data networks across LATA boundaries," said Jeff Feiss, general manager of the Montana Telecommunications Association.

In fact, the iAdvance study, "The Impact of Regulation on Internet Infrastructure Deployment," states that "interLATA data regulations have slowed the growth and diffusion of the high-speed Internet backbone, specifically Internet backbone hubs ... If there were no interLATA data regulations, we would expect there to be twice as many backbone hubs in the country today."

Lee Hollingsworth, general manager of Montana's Advanced Information Network, a consortium of 10 independent telephone companies, agreed with Feiss that the facts were misconstrued in the study, though he added that there are high-tech problems in Montana.

"By the same token, reducing the LATA lines has nothing to do with it," Hollingsworth said. "If a business wanted to come to Montana, the access is here."

Late last month, Sen. Burns said he had met with the head of Qwest Communications Inc., who has pledged to do everything possible to bring broadband data networks to Montana as quickly as possible if the company's pending merger with US West Communications is approved.

Though he described the infrastructure provided by Touch America and other companies in Montana as "great," Burns said he would support the Qwest-US West merger if Qwest commits to providing more broadband access to more Montanans.

When pressed to explain exactly what Qwest had promised to bring to Montana should the merger go through, Burns said, "They're talking about everything."

But Feiss said he is skeptical that Qwest would provide any direct Internet access nodes, and said the existence of hubs and broadband networks are two different things.

"They don't assure anyone that (Internet) hubs would be created if they were given their release, and there's much reason to believe they wouldn't," he said.

Feiss also questioned whether there is truly a need for an Internet access node in the state.

"There are few of them, and the reason is they're expensive," he said. "There isn't that much traffic in Montana ... you could put all the traffic in Montana on one (node), and not even touch (its capacity)."

The iAdvance report concluded that if interLATA restrictions were lifted, Montana would have 26 Internet access hubs.

Affordability

The iAdvance report concluded that Montana's rural nature has contributed to its high-tech inefficiencies.

"The greater the distance from a town to an Internet hub, the more expensive the service, constrained the speed of the service, and limited the service offerings," the report states. "These towns can get on the slower, narrowband Internet, but cannot acquire broadband connectivity at a reasonable price, if at all."

Meldahl acknowledged there is some truth to that point.

"I'm sure there are pockets that would not have access to broadband communications," Meldahl said. "I think what they (iAdvance) might be worried about is the ranch at Two Dot, and how long before it has fiber connectivity. That always will be a challenge, but we're using some wireless solutions to solve that problem."

Others noted that some innovative efforts have brought broadband services to remote areas of the state. Dick Thronson, general manager of Nemont Telephone Cooperative Inc., Valley Telecommunications and Project Telephone headquartered in Scobey, said federal subsidies and grants have helped procure the video-conferencing network that serves rural northeastern Montana.

"We do distance learning at 61 sites," including Montana State University-Northern, MSU-Billings, MSU-Bozeman, and several tribal colleges, Thronson said. "In our area, every school that our company serves has fiber going to the school. I think we have 14 K-12s that have studios.

Thronson described the area of northeastern Montana that Nemont serves as "about as rural as it gets."

The schools and hospitals in the area have managed to obtain grants to help finance their networks.

"The schools across this area, in conjunction with MSU-Northern, have pulled in something like $3.5 million," for equipment, he said.

His companies have hired a grant-writer to pursue such funding for rural schools and hospitals, he said.