Doctors at a rural hospital could collaborate with top experts at the best urban hospitals or medical schools.

High speed Internet makes any location equal to any other: Lamartine becomes the same as Los Angeles , New Bethlehem equals New York , and Callensburg can compete with Chicago .

But first the infrastructure to carry broadband Internet must be put in place. State law mandates it, and in some parts of rural Pennsylvania , it has happened. But people and businesses in other areas are still waiting.

W. Randy Rice of the Northwest Planning Commission says there has been “not enough” broadband deployment in Northwest Pennsylvania , particular in rural areas.

Numbers can be hard to come by, but Rice said the commission estimates that 20 percent of 112,000 students in K-12 schools in an eight county area in Northwest Pennsylvania have no access to broadband Internet service.

And this understates the problem for Clarion and Venango counties, Rice noted, as it includes Erie , Mercer and Lawrence counties where the population density is higher and broadband is deployed to more areas. The situation in the less populated parts of Forest and Warren counties could be worse.

“A tremendous number don’t have access to anything better than dial-up,” Rice said of area students.

The schools themselves fare much better. High speed broadband is available to schools through a consortium of Intermediate Units.

But once students go home they leave the high speed environment and often drop back to much slower DSL connections at best.

Dialing for DSL

To participate effectively in the information economy, DSL (digital subscriber line) Internet service is needed at minimum. Other, faster services would be better, but that would require even more extensive infrastructure improvements.

DSL can use existing copper telephone lines, and the major telephone companies are required to extend DSL services to all of rural Pennsylvania , and to have it done in the next four to seven years.

Locally, Windstream (formerly Alltel) must have 100 percent of its territory covered by 2012 and Verizon must be done by 2015.

How much of Clarion County is now complete and what proportion of homes and businesses are using DSL? That’s hard to say because both companies claim it is confidential information, and the reports they must make to the state don’t require such detail; they only have to say if they have met certain benchmarks.

Officials with Windstream say 87 percent of their customers can hook onto to DSL if they want it, but they won’t say how many have actually done so. This is information, they say, they don’t want their competitors to know.

Officials with Verizon won’t even say that much: even the percentage of its service area with available DSL is confidential.

But citizens can make the deployment of DSL a little faster by cutting a deal called Bona Fide Retail Request, or “Biffer” as it’s pronounced in the industry.

The biffer deal

Established by state law, the Bona Fide Retail Request program (BFRR, or as spoken, “biffer”) requires telephone companies to deploy broadband service into rural areas if customers request it.

If 50 customers, or 25 percent of the customers in a service area, whichever is less, complete and sign a request for service, the phone company must install the system within one year.

The catch: those who sign up commit to purchasing the service for at least a year.

The program is available for customers of four major telephone providers in the state: Verizon, Verizon North, Windstream and Embarq. Most of Clarion County is served by either Verizon or Windstream.

Windstream customers can obtain a request form by calling toll-free 1-866-406-3784.

Verizon customers can call toll-free 1-800-660-2215.

More information on BFRR and forms for both companies are at the Department of Community and Economic Development web site: www.newpa.com/broadband.

In some areas, community volunteers are circulating the sign-up forms to their neighbors, and municipal governments are informing citizens of the BFRR program.

The Northwest Pennsylvania Planning Commission has been working to help organize the volunteer effort.

The commission has an “action package” with forms and other materials for residents to conduct a BFRR campaign in their communities, and it has information to assist businesses seeking broadband service as well.

The commission also has information about government policies regarding broadband and ways to avoid competition between government and the private sector.

The commission has hosted meetings to discuss broadband deployment and is encouraging municipal officials, community and business leaders and current BFRR community volunteers to attend.

How broad is the band?

In the broadest definition of the term “broadband,” it means anything faster than “dial-up,” the slowest, most basic Internet service available over any phone line. The maximum speed here is “56 kbs,” or 56,000 bits per second. That may sound fast, but sending or downloading a picture, a music file or even a complex web page can take so long it is nearly unusable.

The next fastest service is DSL, (digital subscriber line) and here speeds range from 768 kbs to 12 mbs (million bits per second). This is delivered over copper telephone wires, but require extra infrastructure. DSL can travel only a mile or two from the central telephone office or a remote hub. These hubs can be seen on utility poles: a light gray or tan box with a small green light.

Broadband can be delivered by satellite to rural areas – actually to any area – and is the option of last resort, Rice says, as it is relatively expensive and has some drawbacks. Speeds aren’t bad, about the same as lower-speed DSL services, but speeds can drop significantly or even fail to work at all, in bad weather.

Weather problems and security issues make satellite a last option for business use and telecommuting, where employees work at home and communicate with work over their Internet connection.

When large amounts of data must be transferred, DSL is considered too slow to really be considered broadband. It depends on copper wires and speeds are slow compared to fiber optics.

There are several different kinds of fiber optic systems; some deliver data over fiber optics to a connection outside homes, and then feed the signal into the home over a short section of coaxial cable; this is system is used in some local areas by Comcast.

Verizon advertises another system called FiOS where the fiber optics extend all the way into the home, but it’s not yet available in Clarion County . Verizon advertising claims speeds of “up to 50 mbs.”

Verizon spokesman Lee Gierczynski said it is now available in Allegheny County .

Both Verizon’s FiOS and Comcast’s hybrid fiber/coax systems deliver speed significantly higher than DSL.

The broadest advantage

But they are hardly the broadest of broadband. Fiber optics used by institutions, business and government are much faster, and it is more than just luxury.

Rice points to health care as a field where very high speed systems could make a big difference.

A patient with chest pains could be brought into the Clarion Hospital emergency room, and if the situation is dire, could be flown by helicopter to Pittsburgh in no less than 20 minutes for diagnosis and treatment by a specialist.

That’s fast, but sending medical images such as x-rays, CAT scans or MRI’s to Pittsburgh for expert analysis would be even faster, and the patient would not face the risks of transport.

But Rice says the very fast broadband connection needed to send such images is not available at Clarion Hospital .

Often patients in non-emergency situations travel long distances for expert diagnosis and treatment, but with consultations and image transfer done over very high speed broadband, the patient could make a much shorter trip to a small rural hospital, remaining close to home and family, and receive the same kind of expert diagnosis and treatment.

Such advantages can save lives, but the advantages also extend to matters more mundane: saving energy.

High speed broadband makes it possible to meet virtually rather than driving to a branch office, or flying to the head office, or holding conferences with colleagues across the country or on the other side of the world, with full video and sound.

This allows personal communications with the travel – without burning all that gasoline of jet fuel.

It all comes down to fulfilling the Internet’s greatest promise: making the world a lot smaller.