The competition to provide high-speed Internet access to Rhode Island homes and businesses continues to heat up as another industry heavy-hitter enters the market and others make plans to do the same. HarvardNet moved into the Ocean State earlier this month with a bang. The Boston company is offering its digital subscriber line, or DSL, service to businesses in parts of 14 Rhode Island cities and towns including Providence.
DSL technology allows users to make calls and use the Internet at ultra-fast speeds at the same time over the same regular copper telephone wire. The service requires a special DSL modem on the customer’s end of the phone line and a similar piece of equipment on the other end of the line in Bell Atlantic’s central office, where telephone calls are routed to other local central offices or long distance carriers for completion.
Rhode Island's Market Has Changed. Developers, Builders, Investors and Sellers Must Change With It.
By Emilio DiSpirito IV License Partner | Engel & Völkers Oceanside Leader | The DiSpirito…
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The 1996 Telecommunications Act allows Bell Atlantic competitors such as HarvardNet to install their DSL equipment in the Baby Bell’s central offices. And that’s exactly what they’ve done.
Among the competitors that have installed DSL equipment in various Bell Atlantic central offices here are NorthPoint Communications Inc. of San Francisco; Log On America Inc. of Providence; DSL.net Inc. of New Haven, Conn.; Choice One Communications of Rochester, N.Y.; and Network Plus Inc. of Quincy, Mass.
Another national DSL provider, Rhythms NetConnections Inc. of Englewood, Colo., is expected to move into Rhode Island later this year. One of the largest DSL companies, Covad Communications Group Inc. of Santa Clara, Calif., also plans to expand into Rhode Island this year as well.
Most of the big DSL providers such as NorthPoint, Rhythms and Covad sell the service to local Internet service providers who in turn resell it to consumers. But HarvardNet uses a different business model.
Joe Bartlett, vice president of marketing, said the company sells directly to the end users, mostly small and medium-size businesses.
“The central offices are up, and our back haul to our network is in place,” he said. “We’re ready to turn up customers.”
But not every business served by a particular central office wired for DSL by HarvardNet will be able to subscribe to the service. The version of the technology used by HarvardNet can only reach about 3 miles from the central office, and within that distance it can be hampered by bad wiring or electronic devices added to the telephone lines years ago.
HarvardNet estimates roughly 85 percent of the businesses served by the central offices it has wired for DSL could qualify for the service.
That number seems optimistic to Ed Pinkham, president of Getspeed.com in Norwood, Mass. Getspeed.com is an Internet site that helps people determine if DSL is available at their home or place of business.
“The easy part is installing the central office equipment,” Pinkham said. “It’s easy to announce a nice prequalification number, but it’s very tough to actually do.”
It’s tough to do, he said, because there’s a shortage of qualified technicians and it can take them weeks to install and test a DSL line. HarvardNet’s Bartlett concedes that it may take his company 20 to 25 business days to get a customer’s DSL line up and running.
“It’s very challenging,” Pinkham said. “It works great in the lab. But in the real world, to get a DSL line out there to your house is an art at this point.”
In addition to Providence, HarvardNet has installed its DSL equipment in central offices serving Ashton, Cranston, East Greenwich, Narragansett, Newport, North Providence, Pawtucket, Riverside, Warren, Warwick, West Warwick and Woonsocket.
“This completes our planned deployment as of now,” Bartlett said, “but we’re always looking to expand our footprint. We’re certainly looking at the map to see where else we might want to be.”
HarvardNet’s basic $150-a-month DSL package for businesses is capable of sending and receiving files at a speed of 144 kilobytes per second. A two-page word processing file is about 50 kilobytes in size. The company’s fastest service costs just under $500 a month and can receive data at a rate of 1.5 megabits per second.
