Most communities have at least one resident visionary who recognizes the potential of evolving technologies.
In the early 1990s, Columbus was graced with two such individuals as the Internet was moving out of the universities, military and government agencies, and making its debut into the popular culture.
Linda Aerni and Paul Schumacher, principal owners of Community Internet Systems Inc., more commonly known as Megavision.com, were the two whose vision and determination brought the Internet to Columbus.
Schumacher said the earliest incarnation of Megavision displayed a communication device in 1978 at the Nebraska State Fair. The device was the most basic of computers assembled in a brief case which displayed text on a monitor some distance away.
Linda Aerni made her entrance into the online world personally in 1992.
“I was still having to call long distance to get online and the Internet was in its most basic form,” Aerni said.
Soon after her first exposure to the Internet, she was able to convince her supervisors at Nebraska Public Power District that the Internet and a working intranet would be the wave of the future. NPPD took her advice and by 1993 the statewide public utility had online services available. Its intranet was put in place during that same period.
“When we got it all up and working the question my supervisors had for me was ‘So, now what do we do with it?’” Aerni said. “Of course, now, we can’t imagine working without it.”
Aerni said Community Internet Systems in its current form was started in 1994 with just 10 people working long hours. The company was incorporated in 1995.
“In the beginning it was very interesting and our biggest challenge was trying to explain what the Internet was and how it worked,” Aerni said. “It’s been a fun ride. The one constant aspect of this business is that it’s always changing.”
She said the presence of Megavision in Columbus has helped to spawn several support businesses by local entrepreneurs, such as Web development companies, technicians and computer repair businesses.
“It’s exciting to me to see other entrepreneurs start out small and grow their various support businesses,” she said. “We’ve had quite a few who started with us and are now out on their own providing services in the areas where Megavision operates.”
Schumacher said in the early 1990s a technology group in town was trying to promote the idea of getting Point of Presence or “POP” equipment into town so that connection to the Internet would no longer require a long distance call.
“It was about this time that community leaders began discussing a county lottery system and finally we were able to get the first POP site established in Columbus at the public library in 1995,” Schumacher said.
Aerni explained that dial-up connection was the only way to access the Internet at that time. She said with the new POP equipment in place customers could dial one point to access the World Wide Web and that at that time Megavision.com was racking up phone bills to the tune of about $70,000 per month.
“The amazing thing about this is that we were able to do it without any government grants or subsidies of any kind,” Aerni said. “Someday soon we hope to begin taking two week vacations again,” she said with a laugh.
When the next technological advances came, operations for the small Internet provider became more complicated.
Schumacher said it was at this point, that things got political for small Internet providers.
As DSL technology gained a foothold expanding the business required negotiations with the various phone companies because the equipment used to make things work had to be located in the various phone offices.
“Dial-up services flourished before the development of DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) which allows for high speed transmission of data over existing telephone lines,” Schumacher said. “Once DSL came our company had to become a phone company in order to keep up with the technology. This new model was more often than not very cost prohibitive for small towns.”
The Telecommunications Act of 1996 was the first major change to be enacted in the communications industry since 1934.
The 1996 law provided major changes in laws affecting cable TV, telecommunications, and the Internet. The main goal of the law was to stimulate competition in telecommunication services.
The law regulates how local telephone carriers can compete, how and under what circumstances local exchange carriers can provide long-distance services and the deregulation of cable TV rates.
The Universal Service Fund was established in 1997 to meet the requirements set forth by the Telecommunications Act and accounts for the 6.95 percent surcharge listed on everyone’s phone bill.
“The Telecommunications Act was an effort by the federal government to open up opportunities for the smaller operators during the “Dot.com” era and made it possible for entrepreneurs to operate with some success,” Schumacher said. “Since then, lobbyists for the major phone companies have been working to install various subsidies and regulations that would in effect severely limit entrepreneurs in this industry.”
Aerni agreed that not all the changes in the communications industry have been beneficial for the small to medium Internet providers.
“The bottom line here is that we could never do today, what we did back then,” Aerni said.
Both Aerni and Schumacher are actively working on integrating the newest technological advance which is evolving through the new wireless technologies; but they said for those customers who only want to e-mail their friends and view simple Web sites - Dial-up can still be an inexpensive way to connect to the Internet.
Schumacher believes the most challenging changes on the horizon will be encountered in the political arena rather than evolving technologies.
“People are so dependent on this technology now that most would not know what to do without it,” Schumacher said. “But the most important focus now must be in the politics of it. If Nebraskans were to grasp the importance of this we could utilize the public power company’s infrastructure and truly create an information highway for rural Nebraska that would be incomparable to anywhere else in the country.”
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