6 comments

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  Tom

  1 year ago

  Those numbers aren't very compelling to me. Clearly phone penetration is much better than cable (incidentally, why might this be? could it be... big government meddling?). The number of homes that can get cable but not a phone line is almost certainly vanishingly small, making the cable number meaningless.
  
  And 80% doesn't strike me as a particularly great number for penetration -- are we really ready to leave 1 in 5 citizens out of the broadband revolution that's now, what, a decade old? When you consider that those first four quintiles were doubtless from denser areas, allowing for investments to pay off in large numbers of connected customers, it's clear that we still have a lot of work ahead of us.
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  Rik

  1 year ago

  Tom, your post says it all. I've been after my local wireless ISP to mesh me in for over 4 years. He wants me to round up another 19 subscribers to make it worth his while. His primary tower is invisible to me. Qwest representatives actually laugh when I ask about DSL. I live up a gulch, in an electronic black hole -- no radio, TV or cell coverage. MCI cable goes by our feed road about 7 miles away. My only connection out is an analog phone line dialup that often gets up to 26kbps. Statistics aren't the way to describe the problem; 100% of folks who ate green beans prior to 1918 are dead. Satellite hookups average $1800 to $2000 for the first year. Nobody in the area is even looking at BPL or other technologies. The most frequent reason given is insufficient subscribers per mile.
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  Ryan Radia

  1 year ago

  Rik, I see where you're coming from. Fortunately, I've never been completely without broadband choices, but I do know how miserable it is to be stuck with subpar service.
  
  Yet I must ask, why do you live in an "electronic black hole" if you care about high speed internet? The vast majority of people aren't in the same boat as you. Obviously that's not comforting given your situation, but you could to any of the places where 79% of Americans live and have at least some residential broadband availability. Presumably, in deciding where to live, you considered a variety of factors, including broadband availability. (I know it can be tough to figure out for sure whether you can get DSL without actually scheduling an install. It grinds my gears.)
  
  Maybe evolving wireless technologies will be able to give you a signal someday. As more spectrum is auctioned off, frequencies with better propagation characteristics might be utilized for broadband internet. And satellite should be an option as well; I don't think your numbers are right about the cost. WildBlue is just $249 startup and $50 to $90 a month depending on speed. Not cheap, but 512kpbs for $850 in the first year isn't that bad for a rural area.
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  homesteading

  6 months ago

  your location can actually have pros and cons. urban sites become the priority of internet services since they have more subscribers (with businesses and schools) while of course rural area rates are higher because of the frequency and probably number of subscribers not to mention maintenance that could be really costly.
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  swiftfall

  5 months ago

  I am low income and in my are wired DSL is approximately 50% less than the wireless offered. Also the wireless available is prone to problems, even in areas of high signal strength. I would like to have high speed, but I am still forced to share dial-up access to gain access to the internet.
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  nprfreak

  5 months ago

  Living just 4 miles outside a small city of 35,000 (and 80 miles from Washington DC) is enough in my area to eliminate all but Hughes Satellite (hardly broadband but better than dial) to my house. In fact, the noise on the phone lines is so bad that dial-up is barely functional. (That despite that little fee that each of us pay each month to provide phone lines to rural households.) Cable? HA!
  
  Just speaking from my own experience, I think the author is disconnected from reality.
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