Okay, Rural America, Google Voice is yours. Recall that earlier rural lawmakers and telephone providers complained that Google was blacklisting rural phone numbers for use with Google Voice. Google said these services charged too much for access.

 At the time, Google clearly named small phone providers as ones that overcharge — and, in fact, Google blocked the number for the campaign office of U.S. Rep. Collin Peterson, the Minnesota Democrat and chair of the House Ag Committee. Google told the Federal Communications Commission Wednesday that it was now blocking calls to fewer than 100 numbers, most used for phone sex services. "We have found that calls to a relatively small number of telephone numbers generate vastly disproportionate costs," Google's FCC letter said. 

Google Voice gives people a single number. Calls to that number can be forwarded to other numbers or to voice mail. A call to the Google number, for example, could ring a home, office and cell number at the same time. Information here on this service. 

The rural telephone carrier FairPoint Communications says it will enter Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The company has been bogged down by it's 2008 purchase of Verizon's landlines in New England. The acquisition quintupled FairPoint's size to 1.8 million lines. But taking on $2.8 billion in debt in the process proved unmanageable for the company that began as a small rural operator. Meanwhile, the landline business has continued to lose customers nationally. 

FairPoint until recently had been a member of the Yonder 40 stock index, the 40 stocks picked by the Daily Yonder to represent the rural economy. Several weeks ago, when it became clear that FairPoint was headed to bankruptcy, the Yonder dropped the company from the listing. FairPoint was replaced by the GreenHaven Continuous Commodity Index Fund (GCC), a commodities fund.

The bankruptcy filing was pre-arranged. The plan will cut FairPoint's debt by $1.7 billion and return nearly full equity ownership to lenders.

Today's Internet is haunted by the same forces that have tried to restrict communications for more than 100 years. Wally Bowen describes the haunted history of the FCC.

There are 2,200 applications seeking a piece of the first $4 billion in stimulus money set aside to speed high-speed internet connections to rural communities and other neighborhoods with poor access. The applications contain $28 billion in requests, reports Joelle Tessler, and promise all kinds of development, jobs and new economic opportunities. Tessler reviews four of these applications to give a taste of the kind of projects being planned. 

For instance, the local cable company has pulled out of the Coeur d'Alene tribal reservation (which is about half the size of Rhode Island) and Verizon offers DSL to just a small part of the rez. So the tribe is asking for $12.2 million to run fiber-optic lines that would connect 3,500 homes on one side of the reservation. The tribe has a wireless network, but it's not particularly fast and it's expensive ($100 a month). The tribe says a fiber network would give its members fast access to courses and medical care.

A group in western North Carolina is asking for $2.5 million to extend its wireless network. In Graham County, the library and community college have high speed access, but Tessler reports that budget cuts have restricted the hours those computers are available. The group (Mountain Area Information Network) is hooking its wireless networks into a new fiber network. Oh, and the group would use the stimulus money to Mount Mitchell State Park, the highest point east of the Mississippi River. (Observation deck on mountain's top above.)