The same could have been said about indoor plumbing around the turn of the century.
Posted on 01/24/2009 5:26:07 AM PST by advance_copy
Under an Obama administration, some form of broadband stimulus package is coming—and $6 billion is already being kicked around as a starting point. But if you build it, will they come? Pew's Internet & American Life Project reminds us that a hardcore contingent of holdouts won't, no matter how cheap or how fast the connection is.
One important component of any broadband stimulus would be availability, with many pundits hoping for a scheme similar to the universal service scheme that wired even rural America for phone service decades ago. In summing up its recent research on broadband, Pew's Associate Director for Research, John Horrigan, notes that this remains a real concern when it comes to broadband; one quarter of rural dial-up users, for instance, say that they can't upgrade to broadband because options aren't available.
But when we look at the overall reasons why Americans don't have broadband, availability isn't the biggest barrier. Neither is price. Those two, combined, only account for one-third of Americans without broadband. Two-thirds simply don't want it.
(Excerpt) Read more at arstechnica.com ...
It's big government's role to deliver things that most people don't want. And charge a fee for it. And charge taxes on top of the fees.
ping
Bingo!
This is a way for .Gov to say “Hey we paid for it so we rightly should be able to tax is use.”
I want it and my neighbors want it. We have been paying for the infrastructure via Gore’s telephone tax for many years, so the “free market” principles have already been circumvented and the bill for this has already been paid.
And then try to censor it "for your own good".
The same could have been said about indoor plumbing around the turn of the century.
That’s right, Zero. Keep the Sheeple addicted to crack-highspeed internet, so they spend all day every day on discussion boards complaining instead of actually going out and protesting the government...
Oh wait.
hey that hurt
: )
I expect there were some people who did want electricity in their homes when they REA lines went by. Most did though, my father-in-law and his brother support themselves during the Depression by following the REA crews and selling electrical supplies to rural homeowners off the back of a truck.
After the Obamaconomy kicks in, 2/3 of Americans won’t have computers left to use it.
What looks good today will look bad in 6 - 8 years.
“Two-thirds of Americans without broadband don’t want it”
*****************************
it’s for bigbromofo to say what we want!
Most of the people without it, or that think they don’t want it, are in rural areas.
The peole in rural areas also tend to live in more rural areas.
For ZERO to be pushing for rural areas to get broadban ( which will expose them to non-msm news and information) should tell everyone that he isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed!
LOL..Duh!
The people in rural areas also tend to be more conservative. Not quite ZERO’s base.
Instead of turn of century, think of 1950 (30%) or even 1960 when 20% of homes still did not have indoor plumbing.
“Two-thirds of Americans without broadband don’t want it”
Ummm..., I can assure the 2/3 that say they don’t want it, that they do... LOL...
Having used broadband and using the Internet and also, Free Republic, no less, it makes a very big difference with broadband. They just don’t know they want it... :-)
Besides, when they find they can bypass the MSM and go around the world, if necessary to find news that is not even printed here, and when the paper is no longer delivered at their door (if it is even done so now, for that group), when they can do all the other things that we all do on the Internet — they’re not only gonna want it, they’ll need it...
I remember those cold walks to the outhouse in the early 50s. My bath was a galvanized tub in the kitchen heated by water boiled on top of the coal stove.
I am sitting here in a small town (pop 197) in the middle of nowhere, Idaho, enjoying my recently upgraded to 6.0 Mb., at no additional cost, DSL. I am connected to the outside world, 100 miles away by fiber optic.
I want to thank everybody for their contribution to my good fortune via the “Universal Connectivity” fee on their telephone bills.
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