Tom Whitehurst

Sunday, July 2, 2000

Conquering the digital divide

Corpus Christi isn't the Timbuktu of tech, after all. To the contrary, our access to high-speed Internet service is said to be equal to or better than cities our size and larger.
   Corpus Christi is sittin' pretty, with high-tech suitors fighting to dance with us, said Gordon Sitton, senior vice president of networks for Vectris Communications, one of the suitors.
   Basically, he said, and several of his competitors confirmed, that if you live in Corpus Christi and you call up asking for always-connected high-speed Internet service, your wait for service, and the likelihood that you're within range of the service, is equal or better than in San Antonio or Austin.
   This is an about-face from the perception and concern among business and community leaders - and, indeed, expressed in this space - that we were on the wrong side of the so-called digital divide. What unfolded instead was a speedy influx of small, upstart competitors looking for the markets that the giant companies might overlook as they staked out the metropolises.
   It's hard to keep track of the competition - indeed, Sitton says they have trouble keeping track of each other - in this age of emerging, deregulated telecommunications markets. Used to be, we could ask the Public Utility Commission who was selling what, and where.
   But now, even the PUC doesn't know because once a company registers its intent to provide service in Texas, it can go pretty much anywhere in the state. And with nearly 400 new competitors to the former teleservice monopolies going wherever they want to go, whenever they're good and ready, the PUC isn't able to be the clearinghouse it used to be on these matters.
   About the only way a provider can find out its competition, Sitton says, is to go to the Central Offices of the former monopoly, what's now called the incumbent local exchange carrier, in our case Southwestern Bell. The Central Offices, or COs, are where the service providers piggyback their own equipment that delivers the high-speed service over existing phone lines.
   Emerging market
   Vectris scours Web sites to find out who its competition might be, but in many case, Sitton says, the company hasn't been able to identify all its competitors in a market until it saw their equipment installed at the COs.
   DSL is an emerging market still in its early stages, like petroleum before Standard Oil and automobiles before Ford and General Motors. Sitton compares it to cable television in the 1970s, when the cable was still being placed, most neighborhoods were months or years from getting the service and there were only a handful of channels.
   Corpus Christi apparently has come out a winner in this emerging-market, free-enterprise free-for-all.
   "We have competition in a number of locations and Corpus Christi is one of the more competitive locations," Sitton said.
   Shorter waiting lists
   Dewey Coffman, vice president of sales and marketing for Austin-based Jump.net, agrees with that assessment.
   "If you compare Corpus Christi to towns in the Valley, or Abilene or Lubbock, in those towns there are maybe one or two choices of providers."
   The wait for installation is as short or shorter in Corpus Christi than in larger Texas cities because of the number of providers here and the smaller volume of customers, he said. And because they're larger, he said, they likely have more residents outside the service range.
   Southwestern Bell fills new orders in Corpus Christi for the high-speed service known as digital subscriber line, or DSL, just as fast as in Austin or San Antonio, a company spokesman said. He reported the wait at seven to 10 working days - though a company employee taking DSL orders over the phone said it would be more like three to five weeks. Vectris, Affordable Internet, Jump.net and Interconnect Services report the wait for service at anywhere from a week to three weeks.
   Figuring your range
   They can tell you almost instantly whether you're within range of service. Southwestern Bell was able to tell me that my house was 11,600 wire feet from its downtown CO, which means I'm within range, in about the time it would have taken to find out a phone number through directory assistance.
   An independent Web site, dslreports.com, also can give you this information. The web site is a storehouse of information about DSL service throughout the United States, including customer comments about the providers and about service quality in cities nationwide. However, it is not up to date on Corpus Christi DSL service availability, listing no known DSL providers at the Southwestern Bell downtown CO, where there are several, including Southwestern Bell.
   But who can fault the New York-based Web site when the availability of high-speed service in Corpus Christi is indeed not well known?
   A new perspective
   "Basically, we have a lot of infrastructure in place," said Tom Niskala, chief executive officer of the Chamber of Commerce. "What we don't have is a lot of awareness of what we have available in Corpus Christi. So we're working on trying to increase awareness on the consumer level and the providers outside Corpus Christi."
   Niskala met Tuesday with representatives of 15 local management information systems companies where some of these concerns were raised. A meeting like this couldn't have occurred a year or so ago because, Niskala said, nine of those companies were new arrivals to Corpus Christi.
   A lot is happening, not just with DSL, he said, noting that ClearSource Communications of Austin is laying a high-speed cable network that will bring television, phone and Internet service to residences. ClearSource has completed the construction phase in the Brighton Village neighborhood and is testing the equipment, in anticipation of inaugurating the service in the next few weeks, a company spokesman said.
   Corpus Christi was ClearSource's second market, and Vectris' first. Affordable and CompuBasix are headquartered here. Vectris is about to introduce IDSL, a type of DSL that extends the range of DSL and would bring in many high-income neighborhoods that were just out of reach. So the perception of Corpus Christi being behind the curve is really outdated.
   "One of the problems you've got is people have drawn some impressions based on a year or two ago," Niskala said, "and things are changing rapidly."
   And pleasantly, I might add.
  

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