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Verizon Promises 4G Wireless For Rural America
Hugh Pickens writes "A Pew study last year found that only 38 percent of rural American homes have access to broadband Internet, compared to 57 percent in cities and 60 percent in the suburbs. All that could be about to change with the announcement that Verizon plans to start introducing a new wireless network in the 700 MHz spectrum in 2010. 'The licenses we bought in the 700MHz auction cover the whole US,' says Tony Melone, a Verizon Wireless VP. 'And we plan to roll out LTE [high-speed mobile service] throughout the entire country, including places where we don't offer our [current] cell phone service today.' Because the [700 MHz] spectrum is in a lower frequency, it can transmit signals over longer distances and penetrate through obstacles, and because the signals travel longer distances, Verizon can deploy fewer cell towers than if it used spectrum from a higher frequency band, which means it can provide coverage at a lower cost. President Obama's administration is well aware of the high-speed Internet divide that exists today, and as part of the overall economic stimulus package passed by Congress, the government is allocating $7.2 billion for projects that bring broadband Internet access to rural towns and communities."
Let us welcome our future monopolistic overlords! so... they're gonna cap them at 5 gigs of data transfer a month for 200$ ? gotta pay for the bills of the bran new network!
I just hope it is a service with a reasonable cap or without a cap. The current 5GB limit to the wireless internet is way to small. If it has a 100GB or over cap I'd sign up today. Currently, I run about 25GB over Sprint Broadband and would expect more with a faster service. And yes it is all legal stuff...
Farm related porn will flood the interweb
One man with a gun can control 100 without one
The problem is giving subsidies to private companies without anything that tracks where that money goes. Building Internet infrastructure is a worthwhile investment. Giving Verizon billions of dollars and saying, "I hope you build something good with this," is not such a great idea.
compared to 57 percent in cities and 60 percent in the suburbs[...]
That's pretty terrible...
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It seems as though everyone's excited about "wireless broadband", but the speedtest app on my iPhone says 416ms ping while I'm on 3G.
Latency that's even half that is useless for many applications, and just frustratingly slow for just about all the rest.
Are we just heading for a new definition of the digital divide whereby some people don't have access to *useful* broadband?
-Nev