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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."
Sucks, but seriously, do a little research before you move, if your business depends on it. Just reeks of irresponsibility. (Not to say not having broadband at 100% penetration doesn't suck, but I'm not gonna cry a river cause you didn't do your research ahead of time ... )
As population density drops outside of metropolitan areas, it's impossible for telecommunications companies or cable service providers to justify the tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars per mile it can cost to bring fiber to every rural community, let alone every home. It's easy to make a superficial comparison with other countries - particularly European - who have higher population densities. I'd like to see a study in which the figures for broadband access were weighted for density.
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.
Bullshit, this is 2007, not 1997.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
I live less than 20 miles from Gilsum, and about a mile from a (relatively) major regional ISP with good SDSL. I did my research before moving here. But the crisis isn't someone moving to Gilsum blindly. The crisis is that there are lots of ways that solid broadband access can give advantage to a business. Good broadband is a strong advantage for economic development. So rural areas need to find ways to develop it. It can be profitable, evidently, even for the providers. The highest DSL penetration in the country is claimed by VTel in Vermont. Meanwhile the State of Vermont is looking at ways to subsidize extending wireless access to the remotest valleys - with the Republican governor's strong support.
The crisis is that what's good for business and economic development on the whole is often not taken care of by the incumbent carriers, who have discovered ways to make more profits elsewhere without delivering particularly good or advanced services, just by squeezing customers they already have. It's not that they couldn't make real profits in rural areas, but that they'd have to do some actual work to earn them, rather than just live off the legacy of the networks they've already built.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
AT&T was founded on Theodore Vail's vision of "universal service." There were good and bad things about Ma Bell, but one good thing about it was that it united the nation with a uniform, uniformly priced, highly reliable service.
Exactly the same thing is true of the post office. It costs the postal service more to mail a letter to Alaska than to mail it across town, but the price of the stamp is 41 cents.
Universal service is only possible if the service provider is allowed to cross-subsidize the areas that are expensive to service with revenues from the areas that are cheap to service. Competition and the free market will always produce wildly varying prices and cream-skimming (in which the most profitable markets get service from multiple suppliers and the least profitable get no service at all).
If the Internet is now as fundamentally important as the telephone or the postal service, then--just as with the interstate highway system, or the system of air traffic control which enables airline service to be nationwide--there will need to be national policy to that effect. Otherwise it won't happen.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
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.
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"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
Well, yes, one always should do one's research beforehand. But that's like only seeing the tree in front of you, and missing the entire forest.
The basic problem here, and throughout the U.S., is that the so-called "last mile" lines are tightly controlled by the local monopoly, and closed off almost completely to any competition. When you don't have competition, you have no incentive to offer better service.
The only way we'll ever see either wider deployment, or 100 Mbs to the house in the next 10 years, is if the Telephone companies are divested of the Central Offices. That is, these are spun off into businesses which sell the lines to competing companies. Only then will you have motivation to upgrade the last mile with better services and speeds.
What I find amusing is that there's always someone who will say "but there won't be any interest in upgrading the rural areas". They always fail to realize that there is no interest right now, and isn't any on the horizon.
If you make this market truly competitive, then there will be interest. Now, granted the price will necessarily be higher, and that's where the main objection from people living out in the rural area comes from. But at least there will be service for a price. And that's what is needed to get the infrastructure ball rolling to deploy better solutions than just a T1 (which really looks rather pathetic these days).
It's also amusing that America is facing internation pressure on this front (while doing nothing about it). Other countries are deploying high-speed internet (100+ Mbs), while the best we've got being rolled out is a pathetic 6 Mbps.
Silicon Valley in particular is extremely lacking here.
Unless this is changed, and soon, there will be a lot of other countries which are in a better position to compete than the U.S.. The next 10 years will be interesting.
The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Peter Drucker.
I think the issue is that you are taking the term "luxury" too literally. The only things you NEED to live is food, water, and some sort of shelter.
Modern life / business / education / etc however has added many other things to the list of "basic needs".
Can you get by without transportation, electricity or phone? Sure. Can you participate in modern society without those items? Not effectively.
It's perfectly reasonable to come up with strong arguments that say that broadband Internet access will soon become a "basic need" in order for our society to effectively compete in the global market. In fact, our government (despite total incompetence) has identified this need as real.