The Digital Divide

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Despite the feuding, competition has come to some areas even well outside larger cities. But many of the service providers are cherry picking only the most lucrative business and professional customers, not smaller outfits or homes. For example, small-town ski meccas such as Aspen and Vail, while not far from blighted Leadville, enjoy fast and ready Internet access.

The problems are more than just economic. Not all the technological wizardry that permits high-speed Internet access in urban centers can work its magic in rural areas. So-called digital subscriber lines and 56K modems can't deliver higher speeds when your house is many miles from the nearest phone-switching office, and cable-TV companies often leave the more remote spots to the satellite-dish sellers.

Satellite and other types of high-speed wireless technologies would seem to offer hope for spanning great distances and reaching the thinly wired. Indeed, the cost of downloading Web pages via a rooftop satellite dish is falling. Hughes' DirecPC dish now sells for as little as $299, with monthly service starting at about $30. But this one-way technology won't serve the needs of many businesses and professionals like graphics designer Middleton.

Last month Motorola and Cisco Systems said they would jointly ante up $1 billion over four years to create wireless, high-speed Internet networks. AT&T; and others are experimenting with cellular-like services that compress data and bring high-speed Web access into homes. That could help some rural areas. But while wireless towers can easily cover vast stretches of the plains, it's a far costlier matter to erect enough towers to throw signals around the Rocky Mountains. Moreover, many of the companies that are talking up wireless have densely packed urban businesses and mobile professionals in their sights, not rural customers.

A presidential panel this month recommended that federal funding for information-technology research be increased $1.3 billion over the next five years, in part to support an increasingly wired country. But a growing number of small towns have decided to take matters into their own hands. Some are forming cooperatives to string their own wire. Others are pulling strings. In Lusk, Wyo., a cajoling and far-sighted mayor was able to get fiber-optic cable laid into his town of 1,600 and give its two schools access to a T1 line (and Lusk a starring role in Microsoft's ads on TV). Town leaders see it as a matter of survival. "We want our kids to come back here," says Twila Barnette, who manages the county Chamber of Commerce. "But we have to be able to offer them opportunities using this new technology."

Who should pay to wire America's rural areas? Take our poll on the Web at