The tiny population of Cuttyhunk has won its David and Goliath battle with Comcast. The giant telecommunications company this week reversed its decision to pull the plug on the islanders’ do-it-yourself high speed Internet service.
Cuttyhunkers are expected to rejoin the modern world within the next week, as soon as Comcast can wrap up a formal vendor agreement with the man who had developed the island’s innovative wireless network over the past five years, Mark Storek.
Okay, so maybe what the residents of Cuttyhunk were doing in order to get their high-speed Internet service was not strictly legal, but goodness, it was clever. It showed, they will tell you, the sort of inventiveness that made America great.
But Comcast doesn’t see it that way. To the giant telecommunications company, what the Cuttyhunkers did was theft, pure and simple. And so they have pulled the plug on the islanders, casting them back into the dark ages, online-communications-wise.
Initially Margaret Martin thought the want ad for a Cuttyhunk schoolteacher contained a typographical error. Scouring a jobs Web site for the Cape and Islands area in the spring of 2003, she saw an entry for a school with one student. She wasn’t reassured when she traveled to Rehoboth to meet Russell Latham, the district superintendent, and found that the listed address was actually a private residence. Sensing the whole thing might be an elaborate joke, she almost drove home to Long Island.
On Cuttyhunk, Sight of Godspeed Brings Joy
By JAMES KINSELLA
Gazette Senior Writer
CUTTYHUNK - Late Monday afternoon, Cuttyhunk residents were
sitting around, a popular Island pursuit, when they spied the sails of a
1600s sailing vessel nearing Penikese.
It was the Godspeed!
Residents raced down to the harbor for their boats in
unCuttyhunk-like haste.
Thea Ruckhaus, 13, stepped onto the deck of the Arabella, tucked her violin under her chin, and began to play The African Reel.
In that moment, as the notes drifted across Cuttyhunk harbor, the world of cell phones and e-mail and computers drifted away, the centuries evaporated, and the Arabella's passengers were on a sailing vessel visiting a small island, cheered by a melody.
When it comes to telephone service, Cuttyhunk may be going cutting edge.
As part of a plan to upgrade service on the island, part of the town of Gosnold, Verizon has proposed putting up a 45-foot pole on town property on Tower Hill Road.
