VHaller

By Rommel Ojeda

In 2014, when John Hafford and his wife, Jessica Masse, moved their graphic and web design businesses to Millinocket, high-speed Internet access did not exist in the small rural town.

This was a problem because their company, Designlab, relies on Internet connectivity at fast speeds to succeed. Hafford recalls the nights when he would leave the computer on all night so that large files would transfer to customers by the morning.

The couple became pioneers in introducing high-speed Internet to Millinocket. Four years later, they say their business has the fastest connection in the town.

While big-name providers such as Spectrum and Verizon Fios still are not serving Millinocket, three smaller ones — Consolidated Communications, GWI, and Bee Line Cable – do.

Hafford and Masse see wider access to high-speed Internet as essential to attracting new businesses to Millinocket, which has fallen on hard times since the paper mill, the town’s biggest employer, closed in 2008. Designlab’s need for  high-speed Internet to town has been paying off, as more and more streets, including the local library, now have access.

Limited access to high-speed Internet service is a problem shared across rural areas of the country. According to a study from Pew Research Center, “rural Americans are more than twice as likely as those who live in urban or suburban settings to never use the Internet.”

Pew research analyst Andrew Perrin wrote in the study: “Substantial segments of rural America still lack the infrastructure needed for high-speed internet, and what access these areas do have tends to be slower than that of non-rural areas.”

“It is extremely expensive,” Masse says, to add new infrastructure to Millinocket for fiber optic lines.

Consolidated Communications is one of the top-10 fiber-optic Internet providers in the U.S. serving 23 states. Their monthly plans start at $30 for 7mb/sec and go all the way up to $79 for up 100mb/sec. Although these types of speeds can meet the demand of small businesses, it is important to note that certain addresses and streets might not have the availability, as they service only 90 percent of Millinocket.

Millinocket’s second largest Internet Provider is GWI, which services roughly 76 percent of the area. They provide Internet service via a DSL and Fiber Optic connections with speeds up to 45mb/sec in certain areas, with their monthly prices starting at $27. However, there are still some addresses that they do not serve or only have dial-up services.

To address the issue of Internet access to the areas not yet serviced by companies like GWI and Consolidated, Our Katahdin, a group ran by sons and daughters of former mill workers, have started a Broadband Initiative, with the goal of bringing hotspots and fiber optic service to business and residential districts and Internet to the Lakes region. The group was awarded the ConnectMe Community Planning Grant to proceed with the initiative.