DSL spreading into Harrison County

Sunday February 4, 2007, By Donald Richie

Road by road, mile by mile, high speed internet service is spreading into Harrison County.

Southeast Telephone just activated a remote terminal on Wiglesworth Lane, making digital subscriber line (DSL) service available at Old Lair Road and into surrounding areas. DSL allows high speed data transfer over existing telephone lines in certain areas.

“We look at it as an investment in the community,” said Eric Hadley of Aurora Information Systems. “We're serving rural Kentucky.”

That terminal runs DSL service down roughly three miles of phone lines. Hadley said service covers Colony Drive off Ky. 32/36 (Millersburg Pike); Jill Lane, Wiglesworth Lane, Lang Road and even part of Cook Road out Old Lair way.

“We're going to be testing,” Hadley said. “Now that it's turned on, we're going back...to qualify or disqualify.”

The best way to know if your house is covered, he said, is to call him and he can test the line to find out. Through Aurora, Hadley is the local Southeast representative.

“The worst thing we can tell them is ‘no,'” he said. “But it's sure worth a try because every now and then we get surprises, somebody can get it where we didn't think possible.”

The DSL service from Southeast comes in three tiers. DSL Lite has download (receiving) speeds of up to 256 kilobits per second (k) and upload (sending) speeds of up to 128k. Standard DSL runs up to 1.5 megabits per second (M) for downloads and 256k for uploads. The top tier, DSL 3.0, offers 3M downloads and 384k uploads.

In perspective, the fastest connection available in dial-up service is 56k, which varies widely from home to home.

The first tier, Hadley said, is good for casual web surfing.

“DSL Lite provides a good, economical way to go because they get a much better price on that,” he said.

Heavy users will find the 1.5M and 3M levels more to their liking.

Prices for the service are $34.95 per month for DSL Lite, $49,95 per month for standard DSL and $54.95 per month for DSL 3.0.

While those prices may seem high at first, Hadley said many people will see an immediate impact.

“A lot of folks will have a second phone line for the dial-up,” he said. “They're surprised to see once they get the DSL they can do away with that second phone line and that offsets nearly all the cost.”

DSL works on a different frequency than voice service, so the phone line stays open all the time. It's also an “always-on” service, meaning the user doesn't have to dial in to a server to go online.

Also included with the service are eight e-mailboxes and 10 megabytes of personal web space.

Customers using Southeast's DSL must also buy their voice service from the company.

“When it gets into DSL, [Southeast] has to provision that line specially for that service, so it's best to have that all on the same company,” Hadley explained.

The Old Lair service is actually Southeast's second venture into rural DSL. The company already had a remote terminal at the end of Gasser Lane, off Ky. 36 West. That signal covers Gasser Lane, Ky. 36 West (in that general vicinity), Lakeview subdivision and much of Carl Stevens Road (Ky. 1743).

“It's been on a while now,” Hadley said.

Bellsouth/AT&T has DSL covering the entire city of Cynthiana, but Hadley said Southeast can provide the service in that area as well as the new rural areas.

“Wherever Bellsouth has it, we can do it because we have an agreement,” he said. In the county, “We actually build our own facilities and tap into the line.”

This is all on top of the broadband initiative in Berry through ConnectKentucky. In that program, Southeast will provide high speed service for the city of Berry and surrounding areas.

Hadley said the legal issues surrounding that program are still being hashed out, but the hopes are the service will be turned on this spring.

“I think we're pretty well ready to go, it's just that we're waiting for the bureaucracy,” he said. “The big hurdles have been crossed, so we're real excited about getting [DSL] up there.”

As for future DSL endeavors, Hadley said supply will meet demand. The next leg of DSL will be installed in the area from which the most requests are received.

“We're trying to track here at Aurora,” he said. “What we're trying to do is take their name and number and address so we can see where the interest is.”

That information is relayed to Southeast and the next leg of upgrading will be decided from there. Hadley said he's getting a lot of requests from the southwest corner of Harrison County.

“Eventually our goal is to get it all over the county,” he said.

For more information, Hadley, via Aurora Information Systems, can be reached at 234-8353 or www.aiscomputer.com. Answers to DSL inquiries can also be found at www.setel.com.