SeniorsPlus education coordinator, Jess Riseman, left, looks on Tuesday as Mona Lothian talks about the technology in her phone and how she enjoys coming to the center to learn about technology at SeniorsPlus on Falcon Road in Lewiston. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal

GARDINER — On rainy days, the internet connection in Patricia Hart’s downtown consulting office often stopped working. Buffering, freezing, the lot.

The connection sometimes didn’t even work if it was humid outside, even though Hart’s office is smack in the middle of one of central Maine’s densest service centers.

Hart has owned a consulting firm in downtown Gardiner since 1998 and has been mayor since 2019. For almost all of her time in Gardiner — until just the last couple months — much of the city lacked access to high-speed, reliable, consistent internet.

But Fidium recently announced projects to build connections to more than 12,000 homes and businesses, including in Gardiner and neighboring towns Farmingdale, Randolph and Richmond, joining their competitor, GoNetspeed, in building up the area’s fiber network. Fidium already serves more than 200 towns and cities across Maine.

Fiber cables cost less to upgrade than other methods and provide a broadband connection — faster and more stable than the traditional cable, fixed wireless and satellite services that Gardiner residents and businesses, like Hart’s, have used for years.

That reliability, Hart said, could provide much-needed upgrades to Gardiner’s more rural areas.

“I know in South Gardiner, folks down there really struggle with internet access,” she said. “They have it, but it’s just not reliable. They get cut off. It’s just not enough bandwidth. I’ve heard over the years, the business owners who are software developers or even gamers that they’ve had trouble with the upload and download speeds. They just can’t keep up.”

Broadband access across Maine has lagged behind the rest of the country for more than a decade. In 2014, Maine was ranked the second-worst state for broadband access. In 2020, a state report showed at least one in six Maine households did not have broadband access.

Gardiner Mayor Patricia Hart Andy Molloy/Kennebec Journal file

High-speed broadband is even more difficult to come by. According to a 2024 Maine Development Foundation report, only 39% of locations in Maine have 100 megabit per second upload and download speeds — the minimum speed provided by Fidium in their Gardiner fiber expansion. This is what most internet users need for routine activities like streaming videos and shows, basic gaming, and video meetings.

The internet lag has potentially cost Maine’s economy — and its residents — millions. A 2022 study from the Center on Rural Development found rural counties with high broadband adoption rates had 213% higher business growth, 44% higher GDP growth and 18% higher per capita income growth than rural counties without widely available broadband.

But now, the quasi-governmental Maine Connectivity Authority hopes to bring the state up to speed with its Digital Equity Plan, a comprehensive effort to drastically improve the Maine’s digital inclusion. The plan was the first of its kind in the United States to receive federal approval.

The connectivity authority has already spent more than $250 million in state and federal funds to connect more than 80,000 locations across Maine in just the past three years. By 2030, MCA hopes to donate 50,000 devices and provide 50,000 Mainers with technology training.

Maggie Drummond-Bahl, the authority’s senior director of digital equity and partnerships, said implementing the plan relies on breaking down barriers that prevent Mainers from getting connected. Maine’s rural, rugged areas are physically difficult to extend internet access to, and many Mainers cannot afford to buy devices or make monthly payments for high-speed broadband.

Almost 90% of Mainers have at least one barrier to accessing the digital world, Drummond-Bahl said. Even the wireless internet at Hart’s home, not far from downtown Gardiner but still within the denser portion of the city, has been spotty at times.

“Most of the population in Maine faces some kind of barrier to being connected, and the Digital Equity Plan and all of the programs we’re putting in place are designed to remove some of those barriers so that we all have the equitable opportunity to education, workforce, health care and the essential services that we use every day,” Drummond-Bahl said.

Virtual options for residents for local government meetings became one of those essential services during the COVID-19 pandemic and have largely stuck around since. As mayor, Hart said she hoped residents in Gardiner’s more rural areas get connected so city officials can more effectively communicate with constituents.

“We have community meetings, and people are taking calls from their houses,” she said. “There’s just some people have to turn their camera off just because they don’t have enough bandwidth to have an effective connection.”

A worker installs fiber optic lines for Fidium near the First Congregational Church in Pittsfield in 2024. Rich Abrahamson/Morning Sentinel

During the pandemic, thousands of Mainers also adopted telehealth — or online health services, usually conducted over virtual video sessions — eliminating the need for some patients to travel to a now-dwindling number of medical centers. Access to telehealth also helps older Mainers age in their own homes for longer, instead of needing supplemental care in a long-term facility, Drummond-Bahl said.

But during the height of the pandemic, some providers said a lack of broadband access created a “huge disadvantage” for older rural residents who could benefit most from access to telehealth services, being far from the nearest health care center.

The MCA awarded $12 million last year to 12 “connectivity hubs” across the state, some of which plan to provide a secure place for those who don’t have reliable internet access or devices at home to have private, online conversations — like legal or telehealth appointments. MCA employs digital navigators at those sites to provide residents with technology and help them use it, as needed.

“These are folks who are working across the state helping Maine people identify what they want to use the technology for, what they want to use the internet to do, and then figuring out how to help them make that happen,” Drummond-Bahl said. “So many of our digital navigators are helping to support people in using telehealth services to access care. We think, over time, as we make telehealth easier for people to do, we will see improvement in access to care and help health outcomes across the state of Maine.”

One of the 12 chosen hubs is the Lewiston-based SeniorsPlus, a nonprofit that connects older adults with at-home care, Medicare information, nutrition services and technology classes.

With help from MCA funding, SeniorsPlus plans to open a brand-new building next spring across the parking lot from its current location at 8 Falcon Road, which will include “privacy pods” with computers available for confidential meetings.

Mona Lothian, 74, has been regularly attending technology classes for about a year and a half at SeniorsPlus. She lives in Lewiston, where internet access is relatively easy to come by; she does not have Wi-Fi at home because her cell service is strong enough for whatever she needs to accomplish.

Lothian said many of her friends struggle to use the technology at their disposal — even if they do have reliable internet access, which is far from guaranteed in areas less populous than Lewiston, like at Hart’s office in Gardiner. When people gift their older family members tablets or laptops or new phones, Lothian said the learning curve can get steep.

“They don’t know how to get from the phone call to the computer,” Lothian said. “Or they don’t know that they could play brain-teasing games on the computer. I’ve heard (friends) talk about the isolation and how the technology is very difficult. The older we get, the more difficult it is.”

Lothian, like her friends, didn’t know how to keep her phone or her apps updated, let alone use online banking services or write a grocery list on her phone, rather than the paper version she always forgot to bring to the store anyway.

“It was the basics,” Lothian said. “Yes, I knew I could push my old fashioned AOL button so I could get my old person mail. But then it was like, now how do I update that when it’s time to update that?”

Melissa Lindley, economic development director for the city of Gardiner Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal file

After reaching out to SeniorsPlus for a different service, she noticed a class about learning how to use her phone, led by the Wiscasset-based National Digital Equity Center.

Lothian said being able to ask questions to an expert in real time, for free and without judgment, changed everything. After attending a few more of classes, she finally knows her way around the digital block.

She’s able to pay her bills online instead of mailing checks and making frequent trips to the bank. She takes photos to send to her son, who lives near Boston, to keep him updated on her daily life.

And she writes her grocery list on her phone.

Tamara Whitmore, Gardiner Main Street’s executive director, said most businesses downtown rely on high-speed internet for transactions and credit card processing.

Some businesses, like the lifestyle shop Pistil and Page, have already switched over to fiber, Gardiner Economic Development Director Melissa Lindley said.

“Reliable, high-speed internet is essential to operating almost every kind of business these days,” Lindley said in an email. “Having it in Gardiner will help our existing businesses provide reliable service as well (as) be an attraction for future developments and aspiring entrepreneurs.”