
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, October 29, 1995                   TAG: 9510270109
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: F2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: APOLLO, PA.                                 LENGTH: Short

BANK BRINGS INTERNET TO SMALL TOWN

The drug store still has a soda fountain, and the barber shop still has a pole. Around here, most folks still rely on the post office to send messages to faraway friends.

Still, "e-mail" and "Internet" and "World Wide Web" are creeping into the local vocabulary, partly thanks to a bank promotion.

Apollo Trust Co. is offering free access to the Internet, the global computer network, to customers around Apollo, a depressed, former steel town of 2,300 in a valley about 35 miles east of Pittsburgh. ``The people in rural communities like ours are really being left off the information superhighway,'' said bank Vice President Ray Muth. ``The kids are the ones hurt the most.''

Last winter, the 124-year-old bank became the only Internet provider in Armstrong County. Bank customers get to hook into the Internet from home free for an hour a day. Before Apollo went on-line, residents of the rural area had to sign up with commercial providers and pay a monthly fee and costly phone charges.

More than 900 people - about 550 of them among the bank's 8,000 customers - have signed up for the service. Noncustomers have to pay $30 to use the service through the end of the year. But the bank gave the library, churches and two high schools Internet access.

by CNB