The US Rural Broadband Crisis

Ian Lamont writes "Rural US residents don't have the same kind of access to broadband services as those who live in urban or suburban areas. According to the federal government, just 17% of rural U.S. households subscribe to broadband service. But the problem is more than a conflict between Wall Street and small-town residents wanting to surf the 'Net or play Warcraft — the lack of broadband access prevents many businesses from growing and diversifying rural economies, as it's expensive or impossible to get broadband. From the article: 'Soon after moving to Gilsum, N.H. (population 811), [Kim] Rossey learned that he couldn't get broadband to support his Web programming business, TooCoolWebs. DSL wasn't available, and the local cable service provider wasn't interested in extending the cabling for its broadband service the three-tenths of a mile required to reach Rossey's house — even if he paid the full $7,000 cost. Rossey ended up signing a two-year, $450-per-month contract for a T1 line that delivers 1.44Mbit/sec. of bandwidth. He pays 10 times more than the cable provider would have charged and receives one quarter of the bandwidth.' The author also notes that larger businesses are being crimped, from a national call center to a national retailer which claims 17% of its store locations can't get broadband."

Comments

Re:Good argument for municipal-owned networks

[MrMunkey]

I grew up in rural North Dakota. Our small town (population about 500) has the Northwest Communication Cooperative http://www.nccray.com/ They provide phone/dialup/DSL/cableTV access. The co-op seems to have worked fairly well back home. I don't know if that's not normal or not... I just grew up with it there.

So What?

[linuxwrangler]

Where I grew up (Mojave Desert) there was a Beach Access Crisis. It was far harder for us to enjoy water activities than those people in urban areas like Los Angeles and San Francisco. But the smog and traffic in LA was hideous. In California, we have better access to fresh fruit and vegetables than people in many parts of the country.

Broadband is not "unavailable", it is merely more expensive. Wherever you live, some things will be more available and others will be less available. Get over it. The fees that were (stupidly, I believe) tacked on to all phone bills to fund rural access are still there - just a big pot of cash that the telco's squabble over even though routing phone service to rural areas is no longer a real issue.

Whenever I hear talk of rural access fees, I wonder why the same people aren't championing an urban affordibility fee. Tacking a huge additional fee onto transfer and property taxes in rural areas to help fund the ability to live in San Francisco or Silicon Valley makes about as much (non)sense.