Blacksburg is the home of Blacksburg Electronic Village, a.k.a BEV, one of the most ambitious community networking projects every conceived. Originating at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, BEV provided high-speed connections to students, faculty, and townspeople in the early 1990's just as Internet service providers (ISPs) were just springing up in urban areas. While BEV helped the area get a jump on the rest of rural America, the disparities in services were felt in the area because the high-speed lines were not available to everyone. Apple helped connect the local library to the Internet about the same time, and they were able to provide mail accounts and and public access computers for citizens without equipment at home. Once other ISPs started to serve Blacksburg and the surrounding region, Virginia Tech decided that it would turn over personal accounts for thousands of individuals to local commercial ISPs. Still, the range of community services provided gave the citizens of this area a big head start over small towns where market forces would not bring in the Internet for several years.