Posted on 01/24/2016 3:27:36 AM PST by upchuck
Broadband in rural areas. A subject near and dear to my heart.
> Broadband in rural areas. A subject near and dear to my heart.
Me, too.
We get 1.5 Mb DSL, enough to watch youtube with stuttering.
Better than dialup by a factor of ten, but still very slow for 2016.
The parasites want thier vig and that is it!
And the amount of data is limiting if you’re not a billionaire.
Ok so 39% of rural residents don’t have access to WIRED broadband.
Wireless broadband can be pretty fast.
And how many people fit into their definition of rural?
We live in rural (by most standards) north Georgia and have LTE, uverse and Xfinity service options. While we don’t live in the deep poplar woods, very few Georgians do. They could do HughesNet if they needed to.
This stinks of the gummint raising a lot of tax money to serve a small need.
I agree with all of you. I’m in rural Tennessee and Hughes.net satellite is the only thing we can get. It’s awful but better than dial-up. I would love to have more choices for something that is reliable. Hughes has daily download limits and if you go over they shut you off or you can purchase more data. You have a free period from 2am to 7am but that means getting up in the middle of the night for large updates.
They are a decade behind the curve in focusing on wired broadband. The economic landlords of broadband today are the cell phone data providers.
How did we get so there is phone service in rural areas? Did the government force the phone industry to lay lines to rural areas?
We live 3 miles from DSL capability. Dish is the only option, and data is very expensive. Netflix, for instance, will never be an option for us if we want to be able to eat or drive a car.
Service is patchy. For instance, I cannot download Windows 10 because the internet is never connected long enough in one shot for it to download without disconnecting. I think I’ve tried 7 or 8 times.
Sometimes the weather makes trouble, which has created some problems for my daughter who needs internet for homework.
High speed Internet is a Human Right now.
Hold onto your wallets, the taxman is coming.
And our phone service isn’t great either. Often the landline just says, “Your call did not go through. Try again”. And we live in a valley so cellphone calls drop a lot. If we had to dial 911 for an emergency it would be iffy as to whether the call would ever get there.
Is that a human right, to be able to access 911? I don’t know; maybe somebody can tell me.
Just as well :)
FCC likes being kingmaker with its auctions and ability to jerk companies around. Thankfully they never use their power to advance the political agenda of the President who appoints them. /s
“A Colorado-based digital phone and broadband Internet provider is expanding its service near two Nebraska towns — and receiving federal funds to do so — despite a state regulator’s concerns that it can’t guarantee callers will have 911 access when disaster strikes.
Rise Broadband, the new consumer brand operated by Colorado-based JAB Broadband and its subsidiaries, already serves customers in 15 states, including parts of Nebraska.
Rise announced Tuesday that it is receiving $16.9 million in federal funding to expand its rural broadband and digital voice services in parts of five states, including rural Columbus and St. Libory in Nebraska..........”
There’s a one word solution for those not getting the local services they desire:
Move!
If you had crappy neighbors, would that justify taxing me to rent you a UHaul truck? Would it justify the gubermint regulating truck rentals?
Remember 20 years ago when the feds decided they needed to control cable TV rates? ATM fees?
Look up the story of rural electrification. That will give you a hint of the battles, back room deals, and corruption that this broadband fight will have.
When I got internet cable in late 2002, it was 1 Mbps.
Within a short time, they upped the speed to 4 Mbps.
A few years later, it was upped to 12 Mbps for the ‘preferred’ tier. They also added a couple of faster and slower tiers.
Next increase a few years later was to 18 Mbps for ‘preferred’. At this level, one had to upgrade the modem to benefit from the speed. The older DOCSIS 2 was too slow. I upgraded to the DOCSIS 3.0.
Then the speed increased to 20 Mpbs.
About 18 months ago now, they increased again to 50 Mpbs for the ‘preferred’ tier.
Of course, about 3-6 months prior to each speed increase, they also upped the tier price $3 to $5 dollars.
In 2003, the ‘preferred’ tier was about $37/month. Next month (new price increase), it will be about $70/month.
The problem for my small town (14k pop) is the only competitors are slow/expensive DSL (about 10 Mbps max) or 3g Mobile or satellite.
Cable, for the price vs service is still the best value.
My download/upload increased from 250 Gb/month to 350 Gb/month. I can stream 3 sports events and a Netflix/Amazon Prime movie without any buffering. All that barely moves the content meter. I occasionally reach 80 to 100 Gb downloads/uploads per month.
Yep. That's about the size of it. It is socialist politics.
In most cases, we don’t need the fedgov involved. What is needed is state and local governments which tell the cable and phone providers, “You want a franchise here? Then you have to connect -everyone- in our jurisdiction who wants your broadband. No exceptions.:
Power grabs are what politicians and bureaucrats do.
Thanks, corrupt county commission!
So we are stuck with DSL at 5mbps which is at least cheap ($20 month) and has no caps.
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