Social Media, Connectivity & Communications

"This mindset that we’ve got to give a Pennsylvania company $64 million to run Montana companies out of business is ridiculous."

"Up to this point, lack of broadband and lack of cellular coverage in our rural areas have been a real detriment to economic development, to teaching, to a lot of things, and we wanted to close that gap," Evslin said. "We lag the nation because we’re more rural than most states, and rural areas lag the urban areas."

Last week, when Google and Verizon proposed a so-called network neutrality plan for the Internet, their idea was about as popular as a service outage.

Legislation is in the works to put pressure on consumer electronics companies that revolutionized an earlier generation of technology for the vision- and hearing-impaired.

After years of waiting, it appears that Montana customers will finally be able to get their hands on an Apple iPhone.

"As broadband technologies have been adopted in the majority of American homes, a debate has arisen about the role of government in stepping in to ensure availability to high-speed Internet to access for all Americans," said Aaron Smith, a senior research specialist at the Pew Centers’ Internet & American Life Project and author of the report.

If the Google-Verizon proposal goes through, it would "kill Internet freedom," says Justin Ruben, director of the advocacy group MoveOn.org.

With a deadline looming to approve the awards, the report stated, they lack "detailed data on the availability of broadband service throughout the country, making it difficult to determine whether a proposed service area is unserved or underserved, as defined in the program funding notices."

"All (the grant) is doing is providing federal funding to a new competitor in the valley, and the rest of us have to compete without that money," said Scott Johnson, president of Bozeman-based Global Net, a wireless Internet company.

Another $90 million in federal stimulus funding to expand high-speed Internet is coming Montana’s way, for projects on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation and rural Gallatin County, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced today.