03/16/06 Rural America Online

Rural America is getting online. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. Getting the latest information to rural America has been one of the last frontiers for high speed internet service. Many farmers and ranchers have had to resort to and live with slower, less reliable dial-up service. High speed, broadband is only just now being made available. Brad Greenwald with Wild Blue offers high-speed Internet access via satellite to almost every corner of the U.S.! GREENWALD: Just like satellite TV, you put a mini dish on your roof or on your wall or it can be mounted in your yard and a little cable runs through to a small cable modem that fits right next your pc in your home or small office. So we're all about delivering high speed internet access to homes and small offices in small town America, rural areas. And basically anywhere, you know you can get us&if you can get satellite TV for the most part, you can get Wild Blues' data service. One of the benefits of Wild Blue's service is the ability to build a small wireless cell to cover your farm or ranch. GREENWALD: If you have a wireless router, it just plugs right in. Very easy to use and then you can have wireless internet access around your home, your farm, your ranch, whatever you have. Internet users in metropolitan areas have pretty much taken high speed, wireless internet access for granted since it's widely available. But in rural America, few have access. GREENWALD: There is 15 million homes and small offices that really don't have access to any broadband offering other than satellite broadband, so there choice is to do dial-up or a broadband offering. We sign them up, we'll come out and install it in your home or small office, farm or ranch. We think we are having a good impact on rural America. I think plenty of people have access both for productivity, you know farms, ranches, small offices and then just for families, getting them access to the world. The difference in having high speed internet versus dial-up service compares to hopping on the tractor or hitching up the mule to pull the plow. There just isn't a comparison. So for families in extreme rural areas of the U.S. having a service like Wild Blue opens up many new avenues including a presence on the world wide web since web space is provided. You can create your own web site if you want to. For more information or to sign up visit www.wildblue.com or call 866-wildblue. And that's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.