Page 7 - Hill Country Observer April

April 2020 www.HillCountryObserver.com 7 N E W S & I S S UE S
Work at home? Not so fast
Rural towns work
to upgrade spotty,
slow Internet links
By EVAN LAWRENCE Contributing writer
RUPERT, Vt. Bill Meyer lives at the far end of a dirt road.
His online business requires him to send and receive many pages of documents. But his Internet service, via a DSL (direct subscriber line) connection, is slow and unreliable.
The wire that links him to the online world goes through a forest. If the wind is strong or snow brings down a branch, he may lose his connection.
It’s a common situation in this small town in the Taconic Mountains along Vermont’s western border.
“This is typical of rural areas,” Meyer said.
The tiny hamlets of East Rupert and North Rupert, along Route 30 at the eastern edge of town, have comparatively high-speed cable service through Vermont Telephone Co. But the homes in that area account for less than 10 percent of the town’s population of about 700, he said.
Everyone else has DSL -- or nothing at all. The mountains block satellite signals. Thanks to a state program to bring libraries online, the town library has high-speed service. But the small library is open only a few hours a week, Meyer said.
A business in West Rupert that makes replica Early American lighting had to bring in its own fiber-optic line so it could send pictures and work orders to customers, he said.
And now, with people across Vermont, Massachusetts and New York being directed to work at home because of the Covid-19 outbreak, those in towns like Rupert are at a disadvantage.
“There are a lot of people in town who could really use broadband,” Meyer said.
But the town’s small population and rugged terrain make it an unlikely new market for the commercial companies that provide high-speed Internet connections in more populous areas.
“No Comcast or any of those big companies is going to come in and provide service,” Meyer said. “The only way we’ll ever get fiber optic here is through a consortium.”
That’s essentially what Meyer and others across a swath of southwestern Vermont are now working to create, using a legal and financial structure encouraged by recent state legislation.
Arlene Bentley and Bill Meyer stand with a laptop computer outside the Rosalind K. Kittay Public Library in Rupert, Vt. The local library is the only WiFi hotspot in the rural town, where most residents can’t get high-speed Internet service at home.
Few options
Rupert’s slow-lane Internet service is a common one in this mountainous, thinly populated state – and in parts of western Massachusetts and eastern New York.
“Every town is essentially in the same situation,” said Tim Scoggins, the Select Board chairman in Shaftsbury, three towns south of Rupert along the New York border.
“It’s generally the case around here that Comcast is the only option,” he said, referring to the local cable provider. “If you have a Comcast wire going down your road, you’re in good shape.”
Otherwise, Scoggins said, depending on one’s distance from the town center, “you have good DSL, poor DSL, or HughesNet satellite, which is barely anything at all.”
A wireless company in New York claims to cover part of Bennington County, but Scoggins said he doesn’t know anyone who uses it.
“Most Internet service providers exaggerate their coverage area,” he said.
Bennington County has a few public WiFi hot spots at schools, libraries, and state and local offices, mostly in Bennington and Manchester. In
Rupert, the only public WiFi is at the library. (See
continued on next page
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