Internet yearning in Western Mass. hills
Two towns forge an alliance in hopes of bringing in broadband
SHUTESBURY -- As a graduate student at Princeton, Aron Goldman bought a house in this tiny town and planned an idyllic existence, working from home as a consultant while surrounded by piney forest.
But the New York native ran into one unexpected inconvenience: He left behind one of the major technological advances of the late 20th century.
In Shutesbury and Leverett, Western Massachusetts hill towns thick with telecommuters and self-employed transplants from urban areas, Goldman shares an unwanted bond with exasperated neighbors: They inhabit an island in Massachusetts where high-speed Internet service is not available, either via telephone lines or by cable.
''It's like the land that time forgot," said Glen Ayers, computer system manager at the Village Co-op food store in Leverett.
With savvy young professionals eager to take up the cause, the two towns have banded together to fight for faster service.
A broadband committee, formed by Leverett and Shutesbury officials more than two years ago, has lobbied the state's major providers of Internet service and has investigated home-grown alternatives such as a locally funded fiber network. Leaders say the results have been disappointing.
Unswayed by the residents' pleas,
There are signs of desperation. Fliers were hung on utility boxes in the towns this summer, bearing slogans like ''We Deserve DSL."
Some groups of fed-up neighbors, tired of driving to cafes in nearby Amherst to tap into wireless hubs, are teaming up to install pricey high-speed T1 phone lines, at a shared cost of roughly $500 per month.
Though they rave about the pastoral charm of the hill towns, where many moved to find a better work-life balance, some broadband activists admit they have considered relocating again, someplace where the slower pace is not quite so . . . slow.
''We have all these wonderful people moving to town, and they love it here," said Richard Brazeau, a Leverett selectman, ''but if they can't do their business, they're not going to [stay]."
Some have left already.
Steve Cook, a computing center director at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, moved from Shutesbury to Belchertown a year and a half ago to escape the irritation of having two children in high school and no high-speed connection, he said.
Five years after high-speed phone and cable Internet service, also known as broadband, began to replace the more sluggish dial-up version, its availability via phone or cable has exploded.
In Massachusetts, no complete information is available on broadband access, but the service is accessible to about three-quarters of Verizon phone customers.
Comcast, the state's leading cable TV provider, offers high-speed Internet across its service area, in 210 of the 351 cities and towns in Massachusetts. Most subscribers pay $30 to $40 per month.
But no cable company offers service in Leverett and Shutesbury, and one-third of all Western Massachusetts towns are in the same boat, according to the Franklin Regional Council Of Governments. The council, based in Greenfield, is spearheading efforts to close the broadband gap; it estimates that almost 30 towns in Berkshire, Franklin, Hampden, and Hampshire counties have no high-speed Internet option from any phone or cable company.
Meanwhile, in several dozen Boston suburbs, residents are preparing for the next big thing, super high-speed Internet access, to be made available via a new fiber-optic network that is now being installed by Verizon.
A Verizon spokesman, Jack Hoey said he understands the frustration in Shutesbury and Leverett, but because of the low population density and because they live more than three miles from the nearest switching station in Amherst, the cost of installing equipment to extend the high-speed service would not be covered by the income generated.
''There are a handful of places where it doesn't make business sense," he said. ''If we could make a go of it, we would."
Some residents of Shutesbury and Leverett have reluctantly adapted to their plight. Goldman, the consultant, lives 300 feet from the town line of Amherst, where high-speed service is available, but he drives four miles to an Amherst ice cream shop with his laptop to do research for clients, including the World Bank.
His neighbor, Sanford Lewis, a lawyer and filmmaker, goes to Amherst to transfer film clips to his own website.
Dede Wilson, a contributing editor at Bon Appetit magazine who lives across the reservoir from Goldman, heads to a friend's farm in Hadley when she needs to look at photos sent by e-mail.
Not only is their home dial-up service painfully slow, they said, it crashes often, is interrupted by incoming faxes or phone calls, and does not allow more than one person to work online at once. Several who tried satellite Internet access also complained of snow- and rain-related interruptions.
A spokeswoman for Hughes Network Systems, based in Germantown, Md., which offers its DirecWay satellite Internet service in Western Massachusetts and across the country, said that occasional weather-related glitches are unavoidable with the smaller dishes used at residences, but that they are not a major problem.
Some telecommuters have considered renting offices in Amherst. Others have given up on e-mail, settling for express mail.
''We have the training and capability to do anything they do in New York or Boston, but we don't have the technology, and that does color people's perception of us," said Wilson, who also hosts a cooking show on PBS.
At Leverett Town Hall one night this month, a meeting of the Shutesbury Leverett Broadband Committee briefly took on the flavor of a support group.
''I teach computer science at UMass; I'm the only one in the department with dial-up," said Andrew Barto of Leverett, whose son Charlie, 11, echoed his concern.
All listened hopefully as group leaders discussed a possible partnership with a local Internet company that would offer phone or wireless broadband service.
Barto plans a door-to-door campaign for a line. Otherwise, he said, ''Charlie's going to be in college by the time we get high speed. . . . We worry what will happen when he gets to high school."
Jenna Russell can be reached at jrussell@globe.com. 
