Talk to officials in Washington, D.C., and in Harrisburg, and they'll say that a home without high-speed Internet access soon will be like one equipped with a rotary phone.

Billions of government dollars have been allocated to spread the benefits of Internet connectivity -- better jobs, better education -- with Pennsylvania securing hundreds of millions of dollars for broadband expansion in "underserved" communities where the Internet hasn't booted up.

By government standards, an "underserved" community doesn't have access to connections with download speeds of at least 6 megabits per second -- or fast enough to download a song in a few seconds or a movie in a few hours.

People in Pennsylvania are using various programs -- the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program, the Broadband Initiative Program, Enhancing the Backbone for Multi-Service Delivery, the Bona Fide Retail Request program -- to connect, or at least are trying to.

Their stories address this 21st-century form of disenfranchisement: the county racing to catch up technologically with arriving natural gas drillers; the businessman in the middle of the state who couldn't get four signatures needed for Internet access.

In the second part of this series, there's the young man in Philadelphia typing his way into the middle class and the computer scientist who's pledged to get him there. Together, they represent a shift in how we define the Web as a resource, all at a time when the Web keeps defining us.

The scenes don't fit an easy narrative.

You can live in one part of the state to escape the Web.

You can travel to another part of the state where the Web is the only chance at escape.

SULLIVAN COUNTY, Pa. -- Thirty-eight percent of Sullivan County -- two state parks, a fish commission, a game commission and forest land -- is owned by the Commonwealth. Another third is farmland, leaving about 29 percent of land at 2,400 feet for two towns, 6,000 people, one stoplight and zero bars on your cell phone.

This is a place that counts on certainties: The ice toboggan is built every year and lasts until the thaw decides otherwise; Mass this week and every week is at 9:30 a.m.; Dean Homer, the town's undertaker and accountant, is the person you call for all matters involving death and taxes.

But Pennsylvania's least populous county has a couple of questions this year:

• Whether it will still be the least populous county in the new census, for one.

• Whether that stabbing in Tioga or that contamination case in Dimock should have residents worried about the gas company trucks that have run up and down Route 220 for the past year. The trucks announce their arrival before they round the highway's curves, and the drilling rig lights that stay on all night in Bradford County are moving across Sullivan's borders like slow-moving fireflies.

Enhancing the Backbone for Multi-Service Delivery is the clunky name of a $28.8 million state project designed to bring high-speed Internet service to the northeastern part of Pennsylvania.

Under the plan, the state will use federal stimulus money to outfit existing public safety radio towers with wireless Internet capabilities, bringing 21st-century technology to equipment that once hosted updates from the Great War.

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• Sullivan County

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The area north of the I-80 highway is considered "darker" than the southern part of the state, said Luc Miron, who coordinated the project as former Gov. Ed Rendell's director of broadband initiatives. Part of that may be due to lifestyle or simply the business logistics of moving into the mountainous region.

"We're not tech-savvy like Seattle or flat like Kansas," he said.

The cash-strapped state can lease the use of existing towers to telecom companies willing to build out in Pennsylvania's most mountainous and rural regions. The revenue won't solve the state's budget crisis, but it's something.

Connecting the dots of radio towers forms a lopsided polygon of Internet connectivity.

Yet there's one small county in the region where the towers won't be updated: Sullivan County.

Nearly all of Sullivan County is fertile territory for Marcellus Shale development. The Marcellus Shale is a massive rock formation that lies thousands of feet underground and contains innumerable pockets of lucrative natural gas. The process for extracting that gas -- hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking" -- has been called out by critics as untested and polluting, but the phenomenon has made many land owners very, very rich.

So much so that industry reps told Sullivan County Commissioner Bob Getz to plan for a downturn in drilling -- in 2062.

"I'm not worried about much of anything that's going to happen in 2062," he said. Mr. Getz has been touring the state for the past year with a Power Point presentation on Sullivan County and its broadband issues, particularly the county's dark spots of 911 access.

Mr. Getz calls himself a former bean counter who "graciously turned down" the chance to be country treasurer, and he's a townsman who can make "Darn tootin', Fig Newton," sound like a decree. His burgundy Ford Explorer is akin to this region's presidential motorcade.

He drives it on the county roads newly paved by the incoming gas companies -- and he can tell you every thousand feet or so if you have cell phone service.

"If you were out on a cell phone in a large portion of this county and you dialed 911, it would never go through," he said.

Highland Realty in Sullivan has started including "high-speed Internet" in every listing that (actually) has it.

"Renters will say, 'Tell them there's high-speed Internet,' and I think, 'I bet you don't even know what that is!' " said Laura Cimino, the firm's broker. "And then they'll say, 'Tell them I get cell phone service, too!' "

There's demand these days. Even the six rooms at the Endless Mountains Motel ("Bates Motel," to natives) are filled up, and there's a barbecue outside the corner suite where one driller has made a home.

Workers renting in Sullivan County often work two weeks on, two weeks off, and many drillers fly in experienced hands from states like Texas or Oklahoma rather than pay to train locals. Often, high-speed Internet is a must, said Ms. Cimino, since they want to Skype or email with their families. But most homes aren't outfitted for high-speed Internet, she said, echoing the findings of recent national reports.

Only 60 percent of households in rural America use broadband Internet service, according to a February report by the Department of Commerce.

As state forest land opens up for drilling, the gas companies are going to be dealing with low-connectivity areas for years to come.

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While state legislators are looking to Texas and Oklahoma boom towns to see how they handled a natural gas craze, Sullivan County is looking up the road.

"Have you tried driving to Williamsport lately? It takes twice as long with the trucks," is a repeating refrain around town.

There are headaches that come with the boom, sure. At the roadhouse here, they've started adding 18 percent tips to all bills. The waitresses were sick of getting just a couple bucks on a table of four.

But there are more job listings in the Saturday and Sunday bulletins, and farmers are scoring leases that value homestead dirt at $6,000 an acre. Not bad for a place where one voting precinct got indoor plumbing two years ago.

"Anybody who's unemployed up here, it's because they don't want to work," said Mr. Getz. "We're struggling to contain prosperity here!"

Older folks can't help but hear echoes of the coal boom that dried up long ago and left Sullivan communities like Mildred, Lopus and Bernice devastated.

Mr. Getz trades hands on the steering wheel and points as he drives through the empty streets. "That was a bus stop, that was a gas station, a store here, theater here. These were all stores, there was a bar here, a bar there -- a store there. A store here," he says.

Later: "There used to be a hospital over there."

All of the trees now wear pink ribbons to signify that there's been seismic testing for underground gas. The roads are newly paved, too.

In January, a 20-year-old roustabout working in Sullivan County was struck in the head by a mud hose with such force that brain matter oozed from his eyes. His colleague, the one who called 911 dispatcher Joseph Carpenter for help, had been in Sullivan County for two days.

A medical helicopter arrived on the scene before the emergency medical technicians did -- the drive off Route 220 took 14 minutes -- but the worker died in a hospital about an hour's drive away.

"It's shell shock -- all of the onslaught," said Sean Thibodeault, director of the Sullivan County Department of Emergency Services. Trouble for the 911 dispatch used to come in the form of a small fire or lost hunter, but small communities across the state are seeing new emergencies tied to the new industry.

Just last month, a blowout in neighboring Bradford County caused brine water and fracking fluids to flow into nearby streams.

Usually, a 911 dispatcher can determine the caller's location automatically through GPS systems or land line directories.

But the off-road locales of the new drilling sites can force workers to use signal boosters on a phone to retrieve any signal at all. One problem with that: Signal boosters wipe out a phone's ability to send out its location coordinates.

Mr. Getz is coming to the rescue, getting bids to build a 2.5-mile fiber connection from the courthouse to the 911 center; along with the gas transportation infrastructure, it'll be the second pipeline that begins construction in Sullivan County this year. It's expected to cost county taxpayers about $25,000 and hasn't received any federal help.

With the fiber in place, the 911 center will be able to view the courthouse database of well site coordinates.

Houses are shown as little blue squares. The 911 dispatcher's map will use little pink dots to symbolize a well site. Deed researchers have worn out the carpet in the prothonotary room at the courthouse. In 2010 alone, permits were signed for 197 more pink dots.