BY KATIE HAFNER

SYLVESTER, GA., A Community of 5,000, is the quintessential small farming town. The main thoroughfare consists of a Hardees, a Dairy Queen and a couple of diners. "We're such a small bump in the road that driving through Sylvester is like hitting an armadillo at 60 miles an hour," drawls local businessman David Register. "You'd hardly notice."

Bump or no, Sylvester is in the vanguard of the information revolution. Since last September, the town has had in place its own community computer network, called the Worth County-Sylvester Free-Net. With some 400 regulars, the local network offers everything from USA Today to the latest news on federal farming legislation to information on the movies playing in theaters in Albany, a half-hour drive away

Throughout the nation, rural communities determined not to be sidelined in the Information Age are getting wired. About a dozen networks like the Sylvester system have gone online in the past year, and 30 more will be up by the fall. Unlike the commercial services, these networks tend to be staffed by volunteers, and are free.

The Free-Net concept is the brainchild of Tom Grundner, the 49-year old president of the Cleveland-based National Public Telecomputing Network, a nonprofit organization that promotes non-commercial online services. An educator by training, Grundner started his first community network in 1986, in response to local demand for health-care information. Called the Cleveland Free-Net, it mirrored a city's infrastructure, complete with "school house," "town hall" and "post office." Free of charge, the network was an instant hit. Since then, in addition to the rural projects, Grundner has assisted in the formation of some 39 urban Free-Nets, including several in Europe.

Grundner and others liken the effort to wire the nation's remote pockets to the rural electrification program of the 1930s. But unlike FDR's ambitious federal effort, the cyberwiring of rural America is largely grass-roots. Communities that start Free-Nets are often responding to frustration over the expense of subscribing to a commercial service, or just hoping to spark awareness of the potential of new communications technology. "People in rural areas are just beginning to understand what a modem is and what it can do," says Kent Guske, a high-school social-studies teacher turned tech specialist. Guske started the Sylvester network with $11,000 in local donations after hearing about Grundner's project.

Large commercial online services have stepped up their efforts to bring rural America up to speed. Logging on to a commercial service from a small town often requires a toll call. America Online, CompuServe and Prodigy recently began offering an 800 number, charging from $4.80 to $6 per hour for calls. But add that to the regular user fees and the costs can mount. Signing on for straight Internet service is even harder. Netcom, for example, an Internet service provider based in San Jose, Calif., decides where to operate based on population density and local computer sales.

Most rural communities, it appears, are interested in more than simply going online. "Just setting up an Internet connection out in the middle of nowhere doesn't do anything for you," says Grundner. "It has to serve as a collection point to interact, to do things." Everything from building the network to using it and maintaining it brings local citizens together. "I call it an electronic barn-raising," says Steve Cisler, a senior scientist at Apple who manages the company's Library of Tomorrow program. "People getting together for a common good."

Ken Bandelier, a 70-year-old retired biology professor in the tiny town of Dillon, Mont., was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1994. Frustrated by the dearth of local support groups, he discovered an online group through Big Sky Telegraph, the local Free-Net. At the same time, his wife, Nellie, a 65-year-old former elementary school teacher, grew fascinated with the Internet. Before long, she was spending five hours a day online. The Bandeliers are now Internet crusaders, spreading the good word like religious witnesses. Nellie writes a column for the local paper called "Nellie's Internet Notes."

JAMES D. WILSON—NEWSWEEK Grass-roots gabfest: Redwood Free-Net's Pat Hunt

Many rural Free-Nets have close ties to the local library, which usually maintains public-access machines for residents who don't own computers. In 1990 Apple Computer gave the Mendocino County (Calif.) Public Library a grant for a multimedia CD-ROM project on Native American cultural history. From that project, Pat Hunt, a 57-year-old reference librarian in the library's branch in Ukiah, a town cradled in a mountain valley, got the idea to set up a local network. News of the service traveled quickly, mostly by word of mouth. "People were logging on so fast that all my plans for publicity fell apart," says Hunt. The most popular parts of the system are e-mail and discussion groups.

The nets depend heavily on volunteers. Hunt estimates that he spends 15 unpaid hours a week on the care and feeding of the Redwood Free-Net. In the six months since the network started, Hunt has seen the system run the gamut from flamefests to gender wars. One 15-year-old provocateur calling himself Bubba X. Huhuna caused temporary anarchy with his rude comments, while some women who started an exclusive group sparked retaliation from a father-son contingent. In both cases, Hunt lost considerable amounts of sleep. "I've gone from information provider to community builder," he says.

Small towns: Few rural Free-Nets have Internet connections that give them 24-hour access. To keep costs down, most receive their Internet "feeds"„ electronic mail and Usenet newsgroups„in batches periodically throughout the day.

Grundner's Free-Nets are by no means the only rural datafication projects. Similar networks have been established independently elsewhere„among rural libraries in upstate New York, in small towns in the Rocky Mountains and in the desert towns of California.

Funding the rural nets is a growing problem. Grundner's shrink-wrapped model system, complete with a Power Macintosh and modem cables, costs about $1S,000 to set up. The Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration has supplied grants for rural computing projects, which have helped start the Free-Nets coming online this fall. But the NTIA program isn't likely to endure past next year. To sustain their networks, communities will likely be forced to begin charging users. And the users seem willing to pay, at least a few dollars a year. They're learning that at this feast, there's no such thing as a free byte.

With JENNIFER TANAKA and TORTANO BOYNTON

JUNE 26, 1995 NEWSWEEK page 45