Rural Internet Access Options

Around Ithaca: RURAL INTERNET OPTIONS SLOWLY INCREASE:

Jim Nagel, a small business owner on Canaan Road in the Town of Caroline, believed he could only get slow, unreliable dial-up Internet when interviewed for a Jan. 14 Journal story on the lack of high speed services in rural pockets of Tompkins County.

But soon after, he learned his phone provider Frontier could help him. Now, the difference in negotiating the Internet is like “night and day.”

“I tried the same tool catalogue I tried to access before,” he said, and what once took 20 minutes — often with his computer crashing — took only two. Now he's interested in getting a Web site established for the Nagel and Wolff furniture business he runs with his wife, Elizabeth Nagel.

. . . and Auburn: WI-FI COULD OPEN NEW FRONTIERS:

Wi-Fi? Why not?

The group behind a seven-point plan for revitalizing the region would like to bring wireless Internet access to the city and beyond. It's a goal included in Call to Action: Blueprint for Our Region's Future that could be used to retain and recruit young people and business.

“You're dealing with a generation of folks that crave connectivity, that need this in their lives,” said Tim Fox, a member of the Blueprint panel and former chairman of the Ignite young professional group.

The applications are social and economic. It can be used to lure businesses or to close the so-called digital divide between rich and poor, urban and rural.

“The idea is everyone should have access,” Fox said.