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WENTWORTH — Bonya Tredway would love the comfort and flexibility of working from her Stoneville home like most of the employees in her department at Morehead Memorial Hospital.

There’s just one problem.

“The job I have now as a medical coder, you have to have high-speed Internet in order to do that,” said Tredway, who uses dial-up service at her home.

Advances in Internet technology that are being implemented in urban areas are not within the grasp of residents in rural Rockingham County — at least not yet.

The Rockingham County Business & Technology Center is accepting proposals for an engineering study that will explore expanding broadband access. The center supports those looking to start or grow a business.

Mark Wells, executive director of the Business & Technology Center, said he hopes the study will reveal the best solutions for providing access to sectors of the county that lack it.

Wells said those areas with the largest gaps in coverage include the northwestern portion of the county, the Bethany community and the N.C. 704 corridor between Wentworth and Madison.

That inaccessibility, Wells said, is inhibiting budding entrepreneurs who want to market themselves online.

“Broadband is the next utility,” he said. “Just like we’ve got to have water, sewer, electricity — broadband is more important than cable TV.”

Some employers, like Morehead Memorial Hospital, see broadband access as important in terms of how it makes some hiring decisions.

Sandy Haentschke, a medical transcription supervisor, said her department no longer hires transcriptionists who don’t have high-speed Internet. Using those who do and who work from home lets doctors have access to transcriptionists 24 hours a day, she said.

“They can call us any time,” she said. “If they need a report right away, we hop on the computer and transcribe it for them.”

Rodney Hardy has worked in the computer industry for years and wants to start his own business repairing them. Any software Hardy installed on a computer would require getting updates online, a task he said wouldn’t be worth his time using dial-up.

Having high-speed service would also be beneficial to his young children, who do online research for school projects. “That is tedious, at best, with dial-up,” Hardy said.

Hardy wants Time Warner Cable’s RoadRunner service and recently submitted a petition with the names of more than 150 people who live within a 5-mile radius of his home along N.C. 704. He said company representatives told him there are not enough people to merit extending a cable line to his neighborhood.

Wells said companies like Time Warner consider population density coupled with other demographic factors in deciding where to offer service.

Sprint and Time Warner announced this week they will soon offer 4G wireless networks, but Rockingham residents aren’t likely to see any of that technology, Wells said.

Wells said the Rockingham County Board of Commissioners will be asked to fund the study once an engineer is selected to conduct it. The county is hoping to receive federal stimulus money to implement any recommendations from the study, Wells said.

Contact Jonnelle Davis at 627-4881, Ext. 126, or jonnelle.davis@news-record.com