Rural America not ready for broadband? Hogwash, say ISPs

A question from the Benton Foundation's broadband stimulus discussion last week: "One of the studies that we see most frequently is one from Pew which contends that there isn't very much demand [for broadband] in rural areas, [which] is why it hasn't been built out." What did the panelists think of that? "It clearly is a myth," declared Gary Evans of Hiawatha Broadband Communications, a rural ISP based in Minnesota. "We are not a low priced provider in any community that we serve, but we are a broadband provider." In one rural region, Evans noted, 60 percent of the population signed up with the company "before we put a shovel in the ground." "Now, I would suggest to you that if there's no demand out there, that simply would not be the case," he insisted. Lots of rural ISP boosters are getting pretty touchy about the "broadband to nowhere" line—that people in the countryside are too spread out, illiterate, old, or just too plain out of it to demand high-speed access. Baloney, these panelists declared. "Rural America is both hungry for broadband and anxious to use it," Evans insisted. "It's nonsense," added Tim Nulty of ECFiber, a Vermont ISP. "I don't know where they get it." "When we started our project," Nulty continued, "the towns in question each had to have a referendum to join the project. Twenty-two towns [in total]. The worst vote we got was 78% percent in favor. Eight towns were unanimous."