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Where Is The Broadband?
gouldtj writes "First Monday is running an article in its current issue entitled: The many paradoxes of broadband. It discusses some of the issues and ideas behind broadband, but seems to focus on: Where is it? There is also a really nice discussion on the telecom industry in general, along with the .com boom."
It's almost as if there's a virtual Third World of 'net access within our country - those oppressed by dial-up-only access. Is it in fact a governmental responsibility to bring it to everyone?
Isn't really needed by most people. Most people only use the net for email and some shopping. Paying $40 - $50 a month so your email gets sent a lot faster isn't very cost effective. Course us geeks like it, but we're the minority.
Aych tea tea pea colon slash slash slash dot dot org slash
Over here....
But seriously, they have it in my area, I don't get it. Why? $50 a month. That's for crappy service. Good service will cost you $80. Can't afford it. Make it $20 a month and it will become popular but right now? For most people it is simply too much.
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
Honestly, the broadband sitution is not all that bad. You really can get broadband in nearly all semi-populated areas. Everyone whines that it's not everywhere, but this is a growing market...how long did it take before everyone had a telephone? And just recently, cell phone coverage (which is approaching ubiquitous at this point).
Hate to crush your fantasy, but it takes time to hook up wires, and it costs money to run them. It'll happen, and it's actually doing OK considering the massive land area we have to service in the U.S.
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Most folks I talk to are still turned off by the price. While $40/mo for broadband certainly doesn't bankrupt me, it may still not be as attractive as many of the "$15/mo 56K access" deals that compete with it.
I've had broadband for 4 years. I've paid, dutifully, each month, for broadband which I thought I needed. And last month, I killed my cable modem. Why?
Where's the content that requires it?
I got tired of downloading pr0n from newsgroups. I don't warez or play games. I don't download movies, music, or anything. Other than the occasional Linux distro download, there's really no reason for broadband. (and if you think about it, if I download 2 linux distros a year, I would save a hell of a lot of money just by buying the boxed set rather than forking out the $40/month I pay for cable) Where's the streaming movies? Where's the free music (not "pirated", but legitimate)? Where's the *value*? As far as I'm concerned, once I realized that copyright violation was still copyright violation and "wrong", I had nothing left that I would need broadband for. If I'm just hitting ebay, slashdot, and a few other news sites, then really, what's the point of broadband?
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
However, it does raise a good point: what do people want broadband for? So they can shop for stuff, read the news and download material without having to wait. Most of us that really want to can do the first two at work, and the third is not needed by everyone, and requires a certain level of technical adeptness that most people without a broadband don't have. So if they get it maybe they'll use it. And maybe they won't. Who knows? If broadband does become universal it's likely that the tech used will be different to the tech we know, ie not through the desktop PC.
What certainly is true is that the dot com boom was not a product of the failure to implement broadband quickly. It was a simple case of indiscriminate and desperate investment in a technology that couldn't generate cash quickly enough. www.petsmart.com anyone?
Well, I live in Meridian, Idaho, about 12 miles to the east. I've got DSL and I've had it for over six years. I've got friends in south Nampa (just a couple of miles west of you) who have cable (CableOne).
On the other hand, I also have friends in Boise who can't get DSL because their neighborhoods are underprovisioned (multiplexed lines) and couldn't get cable until a year or so ago because CableOne had not upgraded their infrastructure in that area from analog.
I wouldn't be convinced that CableOne doesn't think that they need more customers. I think that a more likely theory is that because of the extraordinary amount of new house construction going on in this valley that they are devoting their resources to connecting new (and expensive) developments to their digital system - from a purely economic point of view, it's cheaper and gives them a better return on their money. I'm not saying it's right (or that I'm right)...it's just a theory.
-h-
I could have "broadband", if I were interested in satellite. Or ISDN. That's it, those are my options. Heck, I can't even get digital cable...
The telecom industry's claim that broadband is available to 80% of the US population is only true if you count satellite and ISDN, neither of which I count as really being "broadband". The owner of our company has ISDN at home and I approve the bills: 128K ISDN here costs $200 per month. Satellite pushes $100 per month. Quasi-broadband isn't worth that much to me.
Am I rural? I never thought so, but then again I could be wrong. I live in the suburbs of a small city of about 45,000, less than 200 meters from the closest phone company remote switch (which is optical fiber. Had a lovely conversation with the installer there last summer.) A couple of years ago the local phone co. (Verizon) announced with much fanfare that this town was to be a showcase of broadband in our state, one of the first three communities to be pervasively wired. Never happened and every time I ask they say, maybe in six months.
Comcast came by this summer and ran new backbone cable through everyone's back yards, but never came back to run the lines to the houses (a subdivision of about 100 homes.) Two months ago they sent people around with literature, trying to get people to sign up for digital cable and broadband. They swore up and down it was available that day. Just try to actually sign up, though: not available, maybe will be by the end of the year. Or maybe not.
Call me cranky but I'm not willing to move to a large city for the convenience of broadband internet connections. At this point I'm so disgusted over casually broken promises that I don't care if they ever wire the place. Screw 'em.
Rocketboy