Andes, N.Y.
IT'S common to curse when talking about the phone company, rarer to find a way to strike back. But one man who deemed the services of a local phone company to be lacking did just that - and gave a Catskill village a 21st-century edge.
Mr. Gerdes bought a historic property in Andes, N.Y.
Gossip flew when Andreas Gerdes arrived here, about an hour west of Kingston, N.Y., in spring 2005, centering on his imported personal assistant, his ragtop Porsche and his pair of Range Rovers with vanity plates, ANDES88 and ANDES888. (He says 8 is a lucky number.) The town, which has had an influx of art galleries and privileged property owners, remains unflashy. Mr. Gerdes, 40, who travels between the United States and Malta, where he runs iWorld Group, an incubator for mobile and information technology start-ups, wasn't quite blending in.
Watching him stroll toward Hogan's General Store, people could not have doubted that he would make waves. But they didn't anticipate what kind. Within six months, he turned much of the village into a rural Wi-Fi zone. Today, up and down Main Street, anyone with a well-equipped laptop can browse the Internet free.
"It had certain claustrophobic features," Mr. Gerdes said of the town when he arrived. He acknowledged that a lack of high tech - there is no cellphone service, for example - lends the place rustic charm, and that the area isn't a communications abyss: cable lines allow Internet access, satellite dishes pull "Entourage" into hilltop homes and students pack mobile phones (though they must drive miles in search of a signal). But Mr. Gerdes is accustomed to answering calls and beaming e-mail anytime, anywhere. Even in Andes, he said, he wanted to "operate."
When he bought the Bruce Mansion, a grand seven-bedroom house on Main Street, a high-tech home office wasn't in the deal. Built in 1854 by Duncan Ballantine, who owned a bank and a general store, the house was later named after M. Linn Bruce, who lived there in the early 1900's. Mr. Gerdes got the house and grounds of over 13 acres for $550,000.
He moved in with visions of restoring the fading lady and the means to do so. In the two decades since founding the first mobile phone company in his native Germany (he sold it four years later), Mr. Gerdes has prospered: he owns a villa in Malta, a castle in Germany, a loft in Miami and a studio apartment in Manhattan.
After renaming the house Ballantine Manor for its original owner, he began a flurry of period improvements, ordering a re-creation of the original center-staircase banister, putting a 1876 Steinway baby grand in a front parlor (and a Frigidaire-size safe in a hallway) and hiring an architect to rebuild a carriage house and a barn that once stood on the property. He also plans to update the mansion's infrastructure, with three media areas equipped with 50-inch plasma televisions.
It was the gadget-obsessed Mr. Gerdes's dissatisfaction with his less than au courant land line that led him into battle with the Margaretville Telephone Company. This small outfit, situated in an adjacent town, has a lock on the area because larger companies can't be bothered with towns so small. It provides not only phone but cable TV and Internet service for monthly fees starting at $15.
It's a friendly company where a human answers the phone, but not exactly a tech laboratory. "The Margaretville Telephone Company does not run a sophisticated telephony network," Mr. Gerdes said over dinner at the Andes Hotel.
On weekends, when the population rises sharply, incoming calls are regularly met with "all circuits are busy" recordings, he said. And then there is the company's refusal to provide him a custom phone number: he wanted a series of lucky 8's to echo his license plates, but the closest he could get was a number with two 8's - not in succession.
Karen Munroe, a phone company representative, said, "If it's an incoming call, that problem needs to be reported to the caller's carrier." She confirmed that Mr. Gerdes did not get his desired digits, partly because her company does not sell vanity numbers.
Soon Mr. Gerdes bore down on a new project: kitting out the town. His tool would be Wi-Fi (short for wireless fidelity), a radio technology application that lets laptop users with Wi-Fi cards tap into the Internet cordlessly.
Mr. Gerdes knew that Andesans already had exposure to Wi-Fi: Rosalie Glauser, the owner of the Slow Down Food Company here, has been offering it to customers since 2004. After he plugged a Linksys router and antenna into his Internet-equipped cable jack - provided by the phone company for $54 a month - he had an epiphany.
Soon after, he got a letter from the local library asking for a donation. "I like to give contributions that have an effect," he said. He had another router and antenna (about $100) delivered to the library, suggesting that they be plugged into its broadband connection, thus allowing visitors to piggyback free on its Internet service.
"It sounded kinky," said Gloria Carlson, 62, a retired New York City schoolteacher who is the director of the library.
But she came around. Sitting at her desk one day in the latest (in her words) "wiffy hot spot," she faced two computers provided for public use: one a dinosaur that makes a Google search a time-consuming chore, the other donated in the late 90's by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and plugged into a high-speed connection. Mr. Gerdes's gift means no more waiting for the "fast" machine because Wi-Fi reaches throughout the library and across its lawn.
After hooking up the library, Mr. Gerdes got busy. He gave routers to some businesses along Main Street, and all agreed to share their access. Andes Hotel guests can Web-surf on the porch. Wi-Fi signals swirl at the Cantina and at Cassie's Kitchen, and at the Slow Down Food Company "everybody's taking advantage of it," said Ms. Glauser, who counted five laptops on her tables one Saturday afternoon.
"It's just as easy to come into town and do a few things on the Internet," said Charlie Gross, who owns a house on the town's outskirts and visits village hot spots in lieu of paying for service.
It's resourceful sorts like Mr. Gross who could affect the phone company's bottom line. "We are aware of it," said Peter Curran, the manager of broadband services. He acknowledged that business owners do nothing illegal by sharing their Internet signals with those on the premises but said that if Internet traffic exceeds contractual limits, charges will be imposed. (Even with the lowest-level plan offered, 100 people could use the signal simultaneously as long as they weren't playing games or downloading video, according to the US Internet Industry Association.)
Mr. Gerdes, meanwhile, is introducing everyone he meets to Skype, which allows its members to place and receive calls via computer. The software is free, as are most calls, presenting another advance that can cut phone companies out of the loop.
"It's a simple way to spend your money on things which you enjoy in life," he said.
