East county emerges from digital Dark Ages | OregonLive.com

Until a month ago, Sue Fagan asked friends not to email her pictures. Even without photos, checking her inbox was a 20-minute chore.

If she wanted to look at a webpage, she made the bed or washed dishes while it loaded.

Fagan had dial-up Internet.

Remember that? The age of AOL, when login was announced with a static sound followed by ding-dong, ding-dong?

For residents in rural Multnomah County -- and other remote areas across the country -- that's still reality. They're out of range of cable or DSL (digital data transmitted over telephone network wires) Internet and too far from towers for mobile Internet. So they've stayed on dial-up or used satellite services that were barely faster. As Web technology improved beyond dial-up capacity, their Internet was rendered nearly unusable.

Only 3 percent of households in the West with Internet still have dial-up, according to the 2010 U.S. census. Most, 46 percent, have cable Internet, followed by 38 percent with DSL and 10 percent with mobile.

Now recent improvements in satellite broadband are bringing outliers like the Fagans up to speed.

Last month, after 15 years with AT&T dial-up, Frontier Communications installed high-speed satellite broadband at Fagan's home -- one of the first customers to take advantage of the new service, said Ross Waggoner, Frontier's general manager for the Gresham area.

Fagan lives on the Multnomah County side of Southeast Lusted Road, about a mile from the Clackamas County border. She moved from Troutdale to that home in 1974. When she first arrived, she had a four-party phone line because regular lines didn't go out that far. Now she has a regular land line and satellite television, but she still must stand in the middle of the road to get cellphone service.

"We have a 3-mile stretch with people who only have dial-up," said Fagan, a retired nurse practitioner for Multnomah County who used to save Internet activity for her lunch break. "I kept a file of things I would look up online at work."

Frontier has been offering high-speed satellite broadband for a month, said Christy Reap, communications manager.

"There's been a longtime industry limitation on distance from central office that would prohibit people from getting DSL," Reap said.

About 50 of Fagan's neighbors have dial-up or satellite broadband, mostly the old service. Along with Frontier, providers like HughesNet, Exede and Skycasters have offered satellite broadband Internet at varying speeds.

Neighbors with the old satellite services found they were expensive and unreliable, Fagan said. They'd lose service in bad weather, leaving them with dial-up speeds at satellite prices.

This July, a HughesNet-owned satellite launched, providing broadband "many times faster than regular satellites for rural areas," Waggoner said. Its data transfer speeds are comparable to fiber optics.

Frontier and HughesNet provide broadband from the new satellite.

"Our mission has always been to provide broadband to rural America so they're not left behind, so there's no digital divide," Reap said.

Being connected grows more important as government agencies increasingly provide information online instead of by phone or paper. In Multnomah County, services like registering to vote, paying taxes, checking out library books and searching for rates, directories and other basic information are all online, said Mike Pullen, county communications officer.

When Fagan could access regular Internet at work, she managed with slow or sometimes inaccessible Internet at home.

"Then I retired in June," she said. "It was just too frustrating."

As a nurse practitioner, she's required to complete continuing education credits. Before she had regular Internet, she had to commute into Gresham or Portland to take online courses.

Waggoner said he's working to upgrade Internet for firemen, doctors and small business owners who live remotely but need to communicate quickly. The company hopes to expand satellite broadband to about 500 new customers in Oregon and Southwest Washington.

Fagan is still getting used to high-speed Internet; she forgets that she doesn't need to do chores between clicks.

"We have a PC, but now we can get a laptop or a tablet," she said. "Oh my, the options are open."

- Sara Hottman

Source: http://www.oregonlive.com/gresham/index.ssf/2012/12/east_county_emerges_from_digit.html

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