AUGUSTA – The town of Hermon is wired.

All residents are hooked up to a low-cost community network – Hermon.net – that gives some 2,000 households access to both dial-up and high-speed Internet.

Jeff Wheeler, director of information services for the Hermon School Department, said the initiative started in the schools, and upon its success spread to the community.

State Sen. Joseph Perry, D-Bangor, now is sponsoring a bill to bring similar initiatives to communities across Maine. He wants to establish the Education and Municipal Technology Advisory Committee to aid interested towns. The bill defines “community network” as one that operates through a centrally managed network at little cost to the public.

The bill was heard in the Legislature’s Utilities and Energy Committee on Thursday.

It’s like carrying a laptop around – with access to the same programs and files everywhere there’s a computer – without the cargo, Wheeler said.

“You live with the impression that this thing is chasing you,” Wheeler joked.

Hermon, which borders Bangor, provides terminals to people without computers that are then converted to Linux user terminals. They are often recycled from the school or prison systems.

All software is centralized, Wheeler said, and all the necessities are provided – word processors, photo editing, Internet browsers, and the like.

University of Maine officials have given the project their support, and promised their “expertise and resources” to the cause.

“Ongoing collaborations, which are part of UMaine’s efforts to help promote the creative economy in Maine, hold great promise for our state’s future,” said Robert Kennedy, university president.

In his testimony, Perry said the bill would require a one-time appropriation to establish a grant program that would be administered by an advisory committee to aid in the development of networks.

Benjamin Sanborn of the Telephone Association of Maine spoke in opposition. The bill encourages partnerships with schools in communities. Schools already receive support for Internet access through federal and state programs, he said.

Also, communities already have the means to develop these networks – there is no need to use state money, Sanborn said.

“If a community wishes to develop a community network, it has the means to assess its own residents to support such a program,” Sanborn said.

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