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I agree with you. I also think that, while it's good to be contrast our broadband coverage with other nations in order to keep the pressure on our own progress, I think broadband coverage is a problem that will take care of itself. The very last people to have highly usable broadband available will be those in deep rural areas.

Here's my situation, I live in Stillwater, OK, which is an unusually connected city for its size with redundant fiber loops through the town nerve centers. Alas, my house is just barely outside the usable range of DSL from the CO. I can get broadband via cable (TV) but if I lived about 1/2 mile further out, that wouldn't be an option either. Fortunately, there's another option that turns out to be a little cheaper too. This wireless option also serves the smaller, rural communities surrounding Stillwater.

For deep rural areas, satellite services like StarBand and DirecPC will do very well (except where lag is a concern).

Like I said, it's good to keep the pressure on, but broadband is still expanding and will pretty much take care of itself.

As a sidenote, it would be interesting to see a comparison of actual miles of fiber and wired broadband connections implemented in the USA to those is some "wired" country like S. Korea.

Transfer limits seems like the lazy way out. Intelligent throttling based on demand or lowered speeds (600k down instead of T1 down) will probably win out.

Actually, I think you're incorrect here.. I was a DirecPC customer for a couple of years, and for those who aren't familiar with them, they implement a Fair Access Policy (FAP) which does exactly this. Basically they spend all of this time and money implementing this sytem to keep would-be bandwidth hogs on their system, and they end up creating a group of very vocal disgruntled customers in the process (if you don't believe me spend some time in alt.satellite.direcpc). What Time Warner and Comcast are doing is essentially saying to the bandwidth hogs "we don't want you". The end result is they spend no money or time catering to them (implementing intelligent bandwidth throttling, etc), and the customers they have remaining are very happy.. For those that do stick around they make (presumably) enough extra money off of them to cover their extra bandwidth charges. Yeah, the ones they chase off are pissed for a while, but I'm sure they would rather have a few pissed former-customers than a group of highly pissed current-customers. DirecPC had a class-action lawsuit on their hands when they implemented the FAP.

I'm not saying I agree with what Time Warner and Comcast are doing (I'm currently a time warner cable modem subscriber), but I really don't see them going to any lengths trying to keep "heavy" users as customers. In a past life I was a network admin for a local ISP, and one of my tasks at the end of every month was to run report from the radius logs which compiled usage by screen name and sorted out the top 20 resource hogs. Management generally took that report and cancelled out any of those users that were over a certain threshold of time online and/or bandwidth consumed. They had the same screwy logic: ditch the top 1% of users and we gain 80% of our bandwidth/modem capacity back. Needless to say they are no longer in business.

Shayne

In rural areas, Internet connectivity options are going to be pretty limited, unless the the specific sites and dates for visits are known months in advance. Even then it could be pretty hard. I think satellite-type connectivity options might be your only choice. You might want to check out these guys: DirecPC -- http://www.direcpc.com/ Starband -- http://www.starband.com/ OnSat -- http://www.onsat.net/

I just HAVE to weigh in with my own experience here. Sorry in advance for the rambling. It's therapeutic. SWB has been jacking me around the same way for the last 6 months. I moved into my new apartment in December and ordered DSL then (we are within walking distance of the CO). The order was approved, and slated for installation on Jan 2. Around Christmas time, I get a letter saying something to the effect of oh, something is wrong and we can't install it after all. No further explanation. So I call them. At this point I first hear the term pair gain though with no further explanation, and I also didn't ask. But I do get told that it is slated to be fixed sometime in the first quarter of 2001. Later in January, the helpful SWB salesperson leaves a message saying that the problem on my line now has been fixed, and she is reinstating my order. It should be installed in February. The day of the installation the install technician realizes that I am still on pair gain, and leaves a message to that effect. At this point I am really curious about what pair gain really is, call SWB, and finally end up with a technician from Advanced Solutions, which handles their DSL installations. He informs me that though I am within the required distance from the CO, the phone company is running fiber to my apartment (pair gain), but - but - there is an RT in my neighborhood, which should give me a really good DSL connection, ONCE THE DSLAM IS INSTALLED, which is part of SWB/SWB Internet/Advanced Solutions' Project Pronto. Pronto my ass. We now constantly get flooded with advertisement from SWB, saying DSL is now available in your area, and why wait on the old dial-up connection. Well, the first time I got the ad in the mail, I again reinstated my order, only to be followed by a very rude message on our answering machine from a fellow at Advanced Solutions named Steve, who, frustrated as he was, couldn't understand why the salespeople would keep taking [our] order, when [we are] on pair gain. So why am I still bothering with the telcos in order to get DSL? Aren't there other alternatives? Well... Yes and no. I can't get AOL Time Warner's RoadRunner, as our apartment complex has Optel. I can't get Optel's cable modem service as our apartment complex doesn't subscribe to it, and has no plans to. I can't get Sprint's ION, because they don't install it in multi-dwelling units. I can't get Sprint's Broadband Direct, because there is no direct line-of-sight between our balcony (which is the only place where the apartment complex will let us put up the transceiver) and the Sprint's central antenna. I can't get DirecPC's satellite feed, because said balcony is facing north and the satellite is due South. And finally, I can't get ATT Broadband (another fixed wireless technology, that does not require line-of-sight) because their antennae, on a building 4 blocks south of us either is not turned on, or they are pointing in the wrong direction, or they are simply honoring their agreement with AOL Time Warner to not sell to customers who are in an AOL Time Warner served area (which we technically are). For now, DSL is my only option. But since there apparently is no incentive for SWB to install the DSLAm in the remote terminal, I, and everyone else in our apartment complex, are screwed.

The new two-way DirecPC system offers the same high-speed delivery of Internet content and file downloads to consumers and businesses, long the hallmarks of the DirecPC service, as well as a new satellite-based uplink from the user to the Internet. This satellite uplink bypasses the need for a dial-up connection, providing affordable "always on" high-speed transmissions from the user out to the Internet. The new system offers return channel speeds up to 128 Kbps, optionally 256 Kpbs, and delivers data at the same speeds as the current product, at rates of up to 400 Kbps. Pricing will be competitive to other available broadband services.

and the yet to be released Gilat@home Dish network combo

I was mistaken, It has been released. They call it Starband now. More info can be found here. DirecPC/TV has a similar bi-directional internet/television setup. More info on that here.

Manditory karma whore link can be found here!/a

This summer I had the bad luck of working tech support for DirecPC -- a Satellite ISP service. Their 2way sat service has been up and working for some time and they have been beta testing it for about 3 months. See DirecPC Homepage For more info.

What I can tell you is that while DirecPC has been talking about this for QUITE some time, GILAT HAS been delivering this 2 way for some time now.

If you are bored and like to hear DPC people rant try alt.satellite.direcpc.

I was able to set up IP masquerading so that other machines could get high-speed downloads, too.

Some caveats -

1. you still need some kind of regular ISP for your outgoing packets
2. I had to "commission" my DirecPC card under Windows, then take the config file this generated and move it to Linux.
3. Hughes (who operate DirecPC) are infamous for their FAP (Fair Access Policy) under which they throttle you down to regular modem speeds if they decide you've transfered too much in too little time. In the past they haven't published how much is too much, so it was difficult to know when you were about to get into trouble. A recent class action suit against them might have changed that.
4. Until recently, Helius didn't even have 2.2 kernel support, though they seem to now (2.2.5).
5. Helius has a 30 day eval you can download for free.
6. Helius' licensing policy restricted the number of connections that you could have at once (ie: more connections == more money). This only worked eratically with me, I was usually able to do more simultaneous connections through ipmasq.