Participants receive access to expert assistance and opportunities for connecting with peers nationwide.
Since the nation had just entered the COVID-19 shutdown, the March 2020 gathering was held virtually via Zoom.
Many who wanted to attend couldn’t because they didnt have an internet connection.
As the Zoom call began, nearly every participant’s connection started breaking up.
An estimated 85,000 Maine residents do not have access to high-speed internet.
In 2020, more than 75 percent of voters in Maine voted to approve the referendum.
Additional proposals are on the table to fully fund the state’s broadband infrastructure needs.
Among the residents who succeeded in attending remotely was Don Snoke.
As Snoke began gathering the data, the results puzzled him.
People were getting terrible service yet Im sitting with a cable line getting over 100 megabits.
Before his retirement, Snoke had spent 20 years in the computer networking industry.
His work included helping to design and build five large internet data centers.
Snokes next step was to try ordering cable services for the homes he had confirmed were wired.
That was ana-hamoment, Snoke recalls.
The website was wrong.
The cable company was chasing potential customers away with bad data.
I was trying to worm my way into the cable company through their legal department, said Snoke.
Snoke next went to Sullivans select board with the data he had gathered.
He described how the lines worked.
The select board appointed Snoke as the head of Sullivans Broadband Committee a committee of one.
The new company couldnt figure out why they couldnt get better market penetration.
I told them, Your website is wrong!
In a short period of time, 80 percent of Sullivan’s residents gained access to high-speed internet.
Snoke has since turned his attention to the remaining 20 percent.
He spent a year asking the cable company to do engineering studies so that extend services to unserved neighborhoods.
When he finally got an answer, the cost was, he says, astronomical.
He mentioned that offhand, Snoke emphasizes.
Like, Ofcourseeverybody knows about it.
Nobody in the sales department I talked to even knew about that option.
It drove me crackers that most of my neighbors couldnt use broadband at all.
The lack of high-speed internet was a problem.
Reporting by Amy Lennard Goehner
