FCC Maps the 3G Wasteland Of the Western US

alphadogg writes "The Federal Communications Commission has released a map showing which counties across the U.S. lacked coverage from either 3G or 4G networks and found that wide swaths of the western half of the country were 3G wastelands, particularly in mountainous states such as Idaho and Nevada. This isn't particularly surprising since it's much more difficult for carriers to afford building out mobile data networks in sparsely populated mountainous regions, but it does underscore how large stretches of the United States lack access to mobile data services that people in the Northeast, South and Midwest now take for granted."

Comments

If you compare maps....

[Moryath]

from 10 years ago, the same areas look like wastelands for net access in general.

Telecommunications companies simply don't want to build out. Either the government makes them do it, or they drag their feet on it. The more they drag their feet, the more isolated the communities out there become. Some communities out there - like the FLDS compounds - actually thrive on that level of isolation.

It's not a matter of carriers not being able to "afford" building out - previous telecommunications acts requiring them to build out telephone infrastructure proved that not to be the case. They just don't "want" to.

"Free Market" at work, apparently. It doesn't fix shit.

Re:If you compare maps....

[thomasw_lrd]

It is the free market at work. Not enough people out there to justify building the infrastructure. Less people, less money.

But should we classify 3G or 4G service as a utility? That's the real question.

Re:If you compare maps....

[Anonymous Coward]

"Free Market" at work, apparently. It doesn't fix shit.

You're assuming something's broken.

The badlands and ranges and ranches and deserts and endless waves of what North-easterners call flyover country have gotten along without cell phones for centuries, and they've done just fine. Urbanites need their cell phones; ranch-hands don't. Bringing multiplayer Angry Birds to the back woods of Idaho is not profitable because it doesn't fill a need. There is no shit to fix here. Move along, lil' doggies.

Re:If you compare maps....

[dwillden]

Though 10 years ago the cell coverage for basic phone service was much better. Back in the days of analog you had to hunt a lot harder to find areas without coverage. There were still plenty of them but not nearly as many.

Also I question the validity of the map. I know some of the areas of Utah where they claim solid coverage exists, it certainly doesn't have it. Once you get out of town or off the main transit routes (I-15, I-80, I-70, I-84, and Hwys 89 and 40) coverage becomes much more intermittent to non-existent.

Re:If you compare maps....

[Reverand Dave]

I was just wondering why the FCC has to subsidize these a-holes that are using public spectrum free of charge when they are turning multi-billion dollar profits. Maybe the FCC should just say "build it by this time next year or hand over your spectrum rights to someone who will"

Re:If you compare maps....

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of these areas are very desolate and don't need service like that. When I go in the mountains of CO there are tons of areas that don't even have voice coverage, I'd much rather have them work on that then 3G.

Re:If you compare maps....

[macraig]

It is the free market at work. Not enough people out there to justify building the infrastructure. Less people, less money.

There might not be enough people to justify it for the profit motives of those companies, but those motives are by nature selfish and don't give a damn about the larger socioeconomic picture. What might those few people be able to contribute to society if they actually enjoyed the same connectedness as their urban comrades?

Like the GP said, the free market has tunnel vision and doesn't fix shit.

Re:If you compare maps....

[Anonymous Coward]

I also question the map. It shows the area where I live as completely covered, yet I can go to the older area of downtown and have no signal at all.

Re:If you compare maps....

[Richard_at_work]

The billions of dollars paid in frequency licenses by these companies insinuate that they are most certainly not using the public spectrum free of charge.

Re:If you compare maps....

[Richard_at_work]

As an example to my point, the 2008 spectrum auctions raised nearly $20Billion for the US Treasury - definitely not getting the public spectrum for free...

Re:If you compare maps....

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I definitely can't think of ANY uses for mobile communication devices on a farm or ranch...

Re:If you compare maps....

[Anonymous Coward]

"Free Market" at work, apparently. It doesn't fix shit.

What part of the "market" do you purport is "free"?

And you don't live in a "capitalist" country, either.

Re:If you compare maps....

[msheekhah]

They refer to counties... the counties have coverage... areas in the counties might not

Re:If you compare maps....

[msheekhah]

Exactly. The FCC basically owns the waves that it's letting telecom use. They don't have to let them use that spectrum.

Re:If you compare maps....

[BurfCurse]

Why do people still think that those who work in agriculture don't have the same needs and wants that everyone else in America does?

Re:If you compare maps....

[DerekLyons]

If you compare maps from 10 years ago, the same areas look like wastelands for net access in general. Telecommunications companies simply don't want to build out.

Well, duh. If you look at those maps and look at population and geographic maps - I wouldn't want to build out in many of the black areas either. Not only is the terrain forbidding, there's just not that many people there to be served.

Re:If you compare maps....

[trout007]

The benefit of a free market is that it does the best job at allocating limited resources. Right now 3G and 4G technology is expensive to implement. So it makes sense that it would be put to first use in a place where there is the fastest payback. All during the roll out of these technologies the prices become better known and cheaper. That allows the technology to spread. Think of it this way. Part of your carrier bill helps to pay for all of those towers you pass as you go about your daily life. The more people using that tower the cheaper it is to use it. Now if you live somewhere so remote that you and 5 families you know are the only ones using the tower you would either have to pay more for modern technology or wait until the tech gets cheaper. This is a perfect example of a free market working to allocate limited resources.

Re:If you compare maps....

[tomhath]

They've had radios longer than you've had cell phones

Re:If you compare maps....

[Adriax]

I can!
Instantaneous access to current market prices. Farmers who have this access have reported much better returns on their harvests.
Access to emergency services incase of an accident. Some ranches around here don't have even basic cell access.
Instant access to veterinary, horticultural, ect... resources. "Never seen this bug before, is it good or bad for my crops? If I don't squish now will I have to napalm my field later?"
Sound and image recognition programs. Not many people can tell the different between a crow's mating call and their "Holyshit it's a bear!" call.
Maps.
Repair resources. Not everyone knows their quad bolt by bolt, knowing your kawasaki has a loose clutch linkage can save a lot of walking.
Entertainment. Not all cowboys find the great outdoors so incredibly breathtaking that they never get bored, and a horse can navigate by itself better than any californian driver.

Re:If you compare maps....

[HapSlappy_2222]

People always talk about the free market, but one thing they miss is that the free market requires rational actors. Expanding the companies' infrastructures may or may not be rational, but this depends on whether the rational acting consumers demand and will pay for it if they do.

Generally, we as consumers put up with waaay too much shit, and continue to buy products anyway, allowing the companies to whatever they want.

It seems to me like having nationwide 4G coverage would be a HUGE selling point for a telco, even in sparsely populated areas (we're everywhere, even while you're sleeping in the woods!!!), but they know they don't have to until forced.

Also, as a former telco employee, classifying a service as a utility should not be done lightly. The portion of your bill that goes to taxes on utilities are fucking nuts (worse than what you see) and while it's harder to price gouge in the short run, there's a reason a land line costs $60 after taxes. Also, the intent of guidelines can be skirted pretty easily, which is why calling customer service results in a sales pitch, and why unless you specifically ask for a "1FR line" you get the package deal with long distance and call waiting blah blah.

Re:If you compare maps....

[HapSlappy_2222]

Or the west, in general. You'd think that such huge distances between townships would make the individual families living there MORE dependent on communication, not less. May not make as much money as the city-folk, but a market definitely exists. Just depends if it would make more money in the long run than building out the infrastructure (which the state governments, I'm sure, would subsidize anyway).

Re:If you compare maps....

[meerling]

Don't know. I know some farmers that would make a hell of a lot more use in their job with more data and connectivity than most people do in their entire lives.
The uses are apparently more than can be summed up in a 300 page article.

And it's not just farmers that don't live in the cities. I know of a lot of towns and small cities that have connectivity that harkens back to the 1930s or 40s, except they don't have human switchboard operators or crank phones.

It's already been shown that when the government gives the corporations tax breaks or incentives, and even grants, for the purpose of expanding the infrastructure, the corporations do everything in their power to reap the benefits and turn it into cash bonuses as they possibly can without actually doing what was intended or agreed upon. Then as deadlines approach, they whine about there being enough time and not enough money in their attempts to get a new deadline and more money for a job they don't intend to do unless forced to. Not to sound like I'm wearing a tin hat or anything, but they've done it before, and they'll do it again.

Re:If you compare maps....

[Dave Emami]

It is the free market at work. Not enough people out there to justify building the infrastructure. Less people, less money.

There might not be enough people to justify it for the profit motives of those companies, but those motives are by nature selfish and don't give a damn about the larger socioeconomic picture. What might those few people be able to contribute to society if they actually enjoyed the same connectedness as their urban comrades?

And how much money might be sunk into providing higher-capacity connectivity to those people, only to find that that they don't contribute anything, tovarisch?

Like the GP said, the free market has tunnel vision and doesn't fix shit.

Rather, it doesn't make the decisions you want it to make. The people living there choose to do so, knowing the various trade-offs that come with that. They have the pluses of better air quality and less noise, and the minuses of crappy connectivity and more-expensive groceries. I'm sure pizza delivery service sucks out there, too. Going to force Dominos to open stores out in those parts of Nevada where population density drops below half a person per square mile?

Re:If you compare maps....

[PeanutButterBreath]

What might those few people be able to contribute to society if they actually enjoyed the same connectedness as their urban comrades?

What might our urban comrades contribute to society if they got off the damned internet once and a while?

Re:If you compare maps....

[suprcvic]

Corporate obligations are to their shareholders, not society. Sure we don't want them harming society, but if they're not harming society then they should have no concern for the "socioeconomic picture." If you care so much about it, invest in a company that does give a damn and quitcherbitchin. All that aside, if the people who don't have adequate access want to contribute something bad enough, they'll find a way. It's not anybodies responsibility but their own to get it done.

Re:If you compare maps....

[Deagol]

> Urbanites need their cell phones

Yeah, like they need a bad rash. Are you fucking kidding me?

I say *nobody* really needs cell phones.

Re:If you compare maps....

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing, because they'd spend it all in bars and nightclubs instead of Facebook and MMOs.

Re:If you compare maps....

[icebike]

Yeah, I definitely can't think of ANY uses for mobile communication devices on a farm or ranch...

The article doesn't say they don't have access to mobile communications.

It says they don't have 3G or 4G.
Many of these same areas have EDGE or GPRS, for Data and can make voice calls.

Much of this are is wilderness. No power. No backhaul. And nobody but campers and hunters out there.
Try a little Google Earth some time and find out just how empty these areas are.

Re:If you compare maps....

[icebike]

from 10 years ago, the same areas look like wastelands for net access in general.

Telecommunications companies simply don't want to build out.

Clue Bat:

Nobody lives in the black areas. Try a little google earth some day.

Its pretty damned hard to get a chipmunk to pay a cell bill.

Re:If you compare maps....

[morari]

You city folk have gotten along without cell phones for centuries as well... you did just fine.

Asshole.

Re:If you compare maps....

[Anonymous Coward]

It is the free market at work. Not enough people out there to justify building the infrastructure. Less people, less money.

But should we classify 3G or 4G service as a utility? That's the real question.

The same thing could have been asked in giving these areas telephone or electrical service when they were brand new.

By the governments of the day in the early 20th century saw how people's' lives could be improved—especially with electricity in farms—and granted regulated monopolies for these utilities so that these technologies could be rolled everywhere. Urbanites paid a little more to subsidize the rural folks, but the ridiculous gains in farm productivity, and the resulting abundance and cheapness of food, probably more than made up for it.

Technology has to be present and readily available to be transformative IMHO.

Re:If you compare maps....

[icebike]

The map shows 3G and 4G DATA.
Many areas that appear totally devoid of coverage still have voice coverage, and slower Edge and GPRS for data.

I drive these areas often, and the number of places the phone drops to "No Signal" is really pretty small.
The areas where you can't even make a voice call are usually canyons.

Bear in mind where this data comes from. The maps are those areas that are going to eventually be built out
with the Federal Universal Service Charge. Thats the $5 per line that appears on your bill.

Since the cell companies have no customers here, and since virtually nobody even drives thru these area,
there is no funding for building towers, backhaul, and relays. In many areas there isn't even power
withing 50 miles.

So think long and hard about just how much you want to whine about this situation, because its
coming directly out of YOUR pocket. Nobody lives there to pay the bills.

Re:If you compare maps....

[toejam13]

You're assuming something's broken.

Farmers and ranchers in remote areas have been using portable VHF radios for communications for a number of decades now. Last I checked, such radios were still available and offered superior reception and battery life when compared to UHF cellular phones.

Furthermore, the dead zones in the western US states and Canadian provinces aren't solely the fault of private telecommunications companies. The last I checked, neither government has allocated a range in the lower UHF or upper VHF bands for cellular communication. Everything is in the middle to upper UHF band (the lowest we go is 700MHz). Recall that for any given power level, range decreases as frequency increases.

This is in contrast to Nordic and eastern Europe, much of Latin America, Africa and Asia that has a range around 450MHz for GSM and CDMA cellular communication. In the US, that range is reserved for GMRS and FRS. If the federal government reallocated that range for mobile cellular communication, the costs to cover lightly populated areas would go down sharply. The free market would hotly fight for those bands as it would make rural coverage cheaper to deploy.

Re:If you compare maps....

[icebike]

Exactly. The FCC basically owns the waves that it's letting telecom use. They don't have to let them use that spectrum.

Fine. Lets take your position. Yank those licenses.

Now what?
Find someone else who has the millions to buy the spectrum, the billions to build a network. Wait 10 years while the build it.
Wait 3 years for them to go broke because NOBODY LIVES THERE!!!
Then what? What have you accomplished?

The map is for 3G and 4G.

Ya know, you can still make phone calls in most of those areas. Probably your porn comes in a little slower over EDGE,
and you can probably finish by hand faster than you will get it over GPRS, but there is still phone sex on your camping
trip in the vast majority of those ares.

Huge swaths of Nevada are all black on the map. You can still make calls. A few places the road runs thru valleys and
your phone says Emergency Calls Only. The State of Nevada has 911 towers out there.

Re:If you compare maps....

[NeutronCowboy]

Of course. Because Internet Connectivity is the same thing has having a Domino's store nearby.

You are, of course, right when you say that the market doesn't make the decision I want it to make. Duh. It makes the decisions that the companies who make up the market want to make. Which, in turn, are predicated on the needs and desires of customers in said market.

Now that we have the Captain Obvious commentary out of the way, why don't we focus on the actual problem? Namely, that Internet connectivity these days is a lot more like electricity and roads: a fundamental infrastructure whose cost is far outweighed by the network effect it promotes. At that point, the question of ROI trumps all, and arguing that the market knows best is a ridiculously short-sighted answer.

Finally, your argument that people choose to live there means they ought to just suck it up... even ignoring the incredible amount of Not-My-Problem attitude that this displays, it also ignores the fact that moving has significant costs attached to it: emotional costs of rebuilding your social life, monetary costs of actually moving, and even the requirement of actually finding and having a job in the new area before moving. Those are all real costs that are easy to quantify for someone who is pondering moving.

Then again, I'm pretty sure you're also one of the people who thinks that not paying for health insurance is a choice, and that people without health insurance should just suck it up and die quickly. It's really the same attitude.

Re:If you compare maps....

[onefriedrice]

Like the GP said, the free market has tunnel vision and doesn't fix shit.

Your concern is wasted on the people who actually choose to live in those places. Those who really care so much about how connected they are to the rest of the world can just as easily choose to relocate nearer to a city. The rest will continue to live happy lives as they always have. The only ones who think these people's lack of fast internet or mobile data is such a travesty are people like you who already have a fast connection and think that everyone else should want the same thing.

But don't worry. Our brilliant politicians in Washington agree with you, so they will spend millions of taxpayer dollars in order to bring 3G speeds to people that couldn't care less. Really smart. The only tunnel vision is that of those who stubbornly refuse to acknowledge that the free market is responsible for much of the good that they take for granted every day.

Re:If you compare maps....

[MBCook]

I don't know. There are parts of Kansas where the little spots cover a dozen people. There are parts of other states where the spots cover a few hundred.

The spot in north east AZ covers over 30k people. Surely there would be some ROI there.

Re:If you compare maps....

[davester666]

But watch how fast the carriers would start bribing state legislators if any of those unserved area's decided to build their own wireless system...

Re:If you compare maps....

[Anonymous Coward]

Like the GP said, the free market has tunnel vision and doesn't fix shit.

Rather, it doesn't make the decisions you want it to make.

No, the free market doesn't make any decisions and doesn't fix any problems other than allocation of resources. It doesn't even do that well, unless you're willing to let people starve to death. That's been known, and demonstrated, since the 1850s (read Polanyi), but it turns out that most humans have too much empathy to eat their stew happily while their neighbor starves. Most of us have, somewhere, the notion that we would like for the team, tribe, or country to be better, and the free market just doesn't contain that goal in any sense.

I think a lot of people forget that the whole economic theory of free markets is based on the idea of making people pay so much for every good or service that, for one penny more, they would do without. The free market demands that you never be happy when you buy anything - if you're happy, then the seller could have asked a higher price. Misery is the natural state of people in a free market.

Re:If you compare maps....

[Anonymous Coward]

...they are most certainly not using the public spectrum free of charge.

But the thing is, they're not using their licensed chunk of the public spectrum in places where they deem the profit margin too small. That, and competitors have no way to offer the service for these places because of the spectrum shortage and the astronomical barrier to entry.

It is public spectrum, which to me means everyone should have access to it -- or at least the potential for access. Also, I always saw the spectrum auction as a sort of social contract with a company: we (the people) give you (the company) this advantage in exchange for a) cash so we can finance the regulatory bodies and b) a guarantee that you will actually use this extremely limited and incredibly useful resource to its fullest extent.

The US's Internet / phone coverage is a complete joke on the global stage. We pay much more for much less. I'm of the mindset that we've let the telcos get too big again, and the regulation-hammer needs to hit them HARD.

Re:If you compare maps....

[thetoadwarrior]

Yes because you should have to choose either a healthy environment or being cut off from civilisation and excluded from every modern innovation.

Re:If you compare maps....

[thetoadwarrior]

You need a cell phone in a densely populated city with phones on every corner yet the guy that's miles away from anyone else or a phone doesn't need a cell phone? That makes complete sense.

Re:If you compare maps....

[brainzach]

There are going to be places where it isn't profitable to implement 3G no matter how much the technology improves.

The free market won't always allocate resources in a way which is most beneficial to society. It took government intervention to push electricity, phone lines and now broadband to many areas that are not profitable despite advancements in technology.

Re:If you compare maps....

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, it works fine, these are all in red states, they love the free market and hate government interference.

Re:If you compare maps....

[Anonymous Coward]

i lived in Salem Oregon for 7 months last year. The capital of the state if you don't know. I lived 3 miles from the capital building, albeit across the willamette river towards the country side, and I received *zero* cell service via a CDMA carrier. I lived in a large apartment complex and there were neighborhoods around. The *only* carrier that had a tower close by was AT&T. However...I could get pizza delivery just fine, I just couldn't call it in : p

Re:If you compare maps....

[Algae_94]

Those phones on every corner are in peoples pockets now. Payphones are rapidly disappearing in the US.

Re:If you compare maps....

[wierd_w]

Usually, rural types are extremely local-community driven, simply *because* there isn't a huge and diverse network of social services paid for by taxes.

Water, electric, and basic telephone on wires that are literally 70 years old. That and having the roads grated 12 times a year (if you are lucky!) Is what their tax money buys them. (Compare to city people who get prompt emergency services, prompt police protection/assistance, paved roads, and a bunch of other nice things.)

This community centric "we gotta help each other out!" Mentality is how they survive. Their crop catches fire? Who shows up first-- all the neighbors with sacks to BEAT it out, or the fire dept? Guess what? Its the former. Unless the fire is really, horribly, "omg! Its destroying the whole state!" Big, the county will only send a cop car to go acess the damages.

Similarly, the "no rural internet" problem could be solved fairly easily, if two things were permitted.

1) force the telecoms to offer a highspeed connection at radically reduced rates to farmers who then redistribute access to thir neighbors. (These are the ones right next to civic centers. You know, the ones that can get access to the main lines.)

2) free up, and preserve a spectrum chunk for longer-range (say, 5 miles tops) node to node mesh networks intended for public use.

Allow the farmers themselves to build out the network, and it will get where it needs to go.

The carriers have said they can't make a profit from it and so they won't do it. Obviously they would have no problem with somebody else doing it, since clearly no profit can be lost.

Or, is it really just a pac of lies, like most people know it to be?

Hmm...

Re:If you compare maps....

[izomiac]

"Free Market" at work, apparently. It doesn't fix shit.

Is it? Can someone buy some wire, string it up, pick a frequency, download some free software that speaks CDMA or GSM and run a tower? AFAIK, every single step is heavily regulated (FCC, patent system, industry groups, land use, network connectivity etc.).

I'm not saying these are bad regulations (esp. frequency allotment), but they do stifle competition by eliminating small players. In a free market it may be profitable for a one-person business to build a tower to service their local community, but in our regulated market they can't afford the artificial start-up costs nor have time for all the bureaucracy involved. Heck, they wouldn't even be able to afford to legally defend themself from their first "radio allergy" lawsuit.

Re:If you compare maps....

[Anonymous Coward]

Having lived in a west "backwater middle-of-nowhere" I can tell you first hand that national or even regional telecoms won't build there unless their hand is forced.

Electricity? Nope the locals built a dam, and when they were bankrupted by the government, it was sold to the neighbouring city's smelter, with the electricity sold back to us.
Sewers? None.
Cable? At least a decade after it was available in the largest city. 1992 or so.
Mass Transit? One bus that serves only two points is hardly transit. There aren't any cabs either. You either own a car, or you possess very strong leg muscles to ride a bike up >10% grade hills. Hell even the school buses which started out as propane, were too gutless (which is why I cringe when I hear about LNP being promoted as "green" alternatives... not out west you aren't.
Natural gas? Even later than cable. Like 1996
Dial up Networking? Wasn't offered by anyone because the telecoms wouldn't build fiber out there. When it was eventually offered it was 1997 or so... By the hydro-electric company.
Cable and DSL internet? I moved before this even became an option so sometime after 2002.

1st generation wireless? Roughly 1997. When we moved to yet-another-backwater city that was at least an hours drive from the capital, at least the option for cable and cable internet was available, but the wireless was still 1st generation in 2002. From the neighbouring country no less. Yes Country.

With these areas, usually you aren't allowed to digup the roads because it inconvienves everyone (both towns only had one central road, so if you dug it up, you cut off the town, though the previous town was actually part of a larger set of unincorperated areas that didn't have stores, the "city" was accross the bridge which did have sewers, cable and natural gas. But the same problem applies.

IF you live in a major city, you get new tech first, but only if you live in the central business district. If you live in the "commuter zone" you get it second, but usually a year or two after the downtown core. If you live in a medium sized city you might get it third, but their "commuter zone" is dead last, like small cities. Finally if you're part of the "don't even think of commuting to a larger city from here zone", you know these places, no stores, or a weekly trip to costco is at least a 30 minute drive, NEVER get anything unless the backhaul is being laid directly through their community without the central road being dug up.

So in short, don't wait for national businesses to come to small towns. If you think there is demand, start the business yourself. A lot of good this does however when you need existing backhaul (fiber, gas lines, transit, etc) to make it economical. There at least three small cities out here with their own cable companies. One of them used a pre-802.11 tech to wirelessly provide a neighboring town 50 miles away with "high speed"... if you consider high speed being 128K. They go away with it because nobody else was using the spectrum.

And that's why there's no cell service out west, forget even 2G. Trees and cows don't need cell coverage, and it's uneconomical to build a tower to serve just the one car every half hour that might come by, since building backhaul, and electricity will cost more than it will ever make.

As they say, if you choose to live in the boonies, get get to pay the boonies premium of owning a satellite phone, satellite dish tv (satellite internet still requires an uplink path) and a needing at least two cars (don't get stuck with one dead one.)

Re:If you compare maps....

[Dave Emami]

Of course. Because Internet Connectivity is the same thing has having a Domino's store nearby.

They are both luxuries, yes. Hard as it is for those of us in the tech world to grasp, there are quite a few people who can get along just fine without a network connection. For that matter, we're not talking about connectivity vs. lack of it, we're talking about broadband vs. dialup/satellite. Actually, the original article was about a lack of 3G coverage. These aren't areas where you're isolated from the world because you can't use email or instant messaging, these are areas where you can't watch YouTube on your cell phone. Call me hard-hearted if you like, but that doesn't come close to justifying intervention in the market, by my standards.

You are, of course, right when you say that the market doesn't make the decision I want it to make. Duh. It makes the decisions that the companies who make up the market want to make. Which, in turn, are predicated on the needs and desires of customers in said market.

Now that we have the Captain Obvious commentary out of the way, why don't we focus on the actual problem?

Your assertion was that the free market didn't "fix" the situation. My point was that just because you think something is a problem, doesn't mean that it is a problem that requires fixing.

Namely, that Internet connectivity these days is a lot more like electricity and roads: a fundamental infrastructure whose cost is far outweighed by the network effect it promotes. At that point, the question of ROI trumps all, and arguing that the market knows best is a ridiculously short-sighted answer.

That's your as-yet-unproven assertion. Failing to see the same things that you do does not qualify as "short-sighted" unless those things are actually there.

Finally, your argument that people choose to live there means they ought to just suck it up... even ignoring the incredible amount of Not-My-Problem attitude that this displays,

As I pointed out, everyone has costs that they have to "suck up", as well as benefits, based on where they live. Those people living someplace should bear those costs as well as reaping those benefits. There's already far too much subsidizing of some areas at the expense of others. We should be rolling such things back, not adding more.

it also ignores the fact that moving has significant costs attached to it: emotional costs of rebuilding your social life, monetary costs of actually moving, and even the requirement of actually finding and having a job in the new area before moving. Those are all real costs that are easy to quantify for someone who is pondering moving.

Putting aside the idea that people in urban areas should be subsidizing wireless broadband for people in rural (or in many cases, near-wilderness) areas in order to spare those folks the costs of moving out of such places, which i absolutely reject, I think you have a major misconception about who lives in these areas. Although I suppose it's theoretically possible, I highly doubt there is anyone living out in the middle of the Mojave, miles away from anybody else, due to being too poor to move to the city; anyone without the ability (and requisite income) to regularly visit a population center for supplies is going to die. Anyone else would save money by moving into town. In Nevada, at least (where I'm at, hence my example bias), the major source of rural employment is mining, whose average salary is almost double the overall average for the state. They don't need other people subsidizing them. Another reason people live in those regions is to get away from the city. Well, if the most important things to you are clean air, privacy, elbow room, being able to see the stars at night, and being able to fire off your guns without anyone caring, go for it. Just be prepared for poor wireless coverage, and don't ask other people to pay for it.

Re:If you compare maps....

[rastoboy29]

Good Lord, you seem to be quite naive.

When, exactly, have you seen prices on these services *ever* come down?

It hasn't happened because the market is *not* free--it is controlled by a few, large, companies--who have quite obviously conspired to keep prices high.

Or are you living in a different country than me?

Re:If you compare maps....

[wierd_w]

See my reply above.

If the carriers can't be bothered to buld/can't make a profit from building the necessary infrastructure, then permit the farmers themselves to do it.

Many farmers put up towers already for a wide variety of reasons, such as wind generators, and agricultural fuel pumps/water towers.

Allowing them to put a simple mesh extender/repeater up there so that they can help service their neighbors, with the subsidy going to the telecom upstream to not throttle the exit pipes, and the money stays where you want it to stay, and the people impacted pay for the infrastructure themselves.

Of course, that's awefully close to filthy communism..... once a functional mesh network servicing a large pool of users springs up, rest assured somebody would rush in to extract tolls on the thing.

That's how shit like that works.

Re:If you compare maps....

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on now.. most ranchers I'm friends with know this shit inside and out.

Unless there's a disease spreading faster than wildfire, there's not much reason for more coverage.

It's refreshing to spend a week with them.

Re:If you compare maps....

[Anonymous Coward]

Also if you don't own the shop manual & factory parts list for every quad/bike/car on the rancho, you're a dumbass.

Re:If you compare maps....

[tehdaemon]

That spot happens to be an indian reservation - very poor people and possibly some weird legal reasons why they can't put coverage there. It is one of the few big black spots on the map that deserves coverage though.

Take for example that small black spot just south of the wyoming border in Utah (bottom of the 'notch' in the state map) That is the High Unitas Wildernes area. Backpackers and forest rangers only. - there are few roads, and no houses or farms, let alone cell phone towers.

How about that black spot just west of the great salt lake? Salt flats Those poor poor tourists and travelers that have to wait a few hours for their high-speed wireless internet access as they gawk at the barren desert, get back in their cars and drive on. (nobody lives there)

That map actually does a pretty good job of showing the most worthless parts of the US. (Oh, and national forests! places people aren't allowed to go live.)

T

Re:If you compare maps....

[Dave Emami]

See my reply above.

Saw it after I posted, and was going to reply after dinner, but since you did me the courtesy of replying to me directly... :)

If the carriers can't be bothered to buld/can't make a profit from building the necessary infrastructure, then permit the farmers themselves to do it.

Many farmers put up towers already for a wide variety of reasons, such as wind generators, and agricultural fuel pumps/water towers.

Allowing them to put a simple mesh extender/repeater up there so that they can help service their neighbors, with the subsidy going to the telecom upstream to not throttle the exit pipes, and the money stays where you want it to stay, and the people impacted pay for the infrastructure themselves.

Sounds like a very good idea to me, in particular your mentioning (in the other post) about freeing up spectrum for it. I expect there'd be a fair amount of red tape and lawyering involved, unfortunately. What's needed here is a spectrum equivalent of the Homesteading Act -- except that instead of building or farming to establish ownership of land, you'd need to provide access to establish ownership of spectrum. Give whoever currently owns it a certain period to start providing access on that spectrum in that area, and if they fail to do so, they forfeit it.

Of course, that's awefully close to filthy communism..... once a functional mesh network servicing a large pool of users springs up, rest assured somebody would rush in to extract tolls on the thing.

That's how shit like that works.

If the farmers who put up the towers want to recoup their investment, that's capitalism, and I'm all for that.

Re:If you compare maps....

[Anonymous Coward]

"force the telecoms to offer a highspeed connection at radically reduced rates"

Force them, and let those spoiled 'city folk' pay for it by increasing their rates to cover the cost? That's socialism.

People in the red states would never vote for something like that.

Oh wait...

Re:If you compare maps....

[wierd_w]

The farmers are unlikely to be the tollbooth operators. Again, farmers don't charge each other for emergency services, like fire prevention. They do it because they expect to get service in return if they need it. Its an implied community ethic.

The tollboth operators will be the equipment OEMs, and the upstream ISPs maintaining a few miles of dedicated fiber to a few "yokels", complaining about people using their equipment without any licensing, or about them saturating said pipes that they would be subsidised to keep open.

Re:If you compare maps....

[mc6809e]

Exactly. The FCC basically owns the waves that it's letting telecom use. They don't have to let them use that spectrum.

Last I heard the EM field belonged to everyone, telecoms included.

The FCC is just there to promote cooperative use of a resource owned in common.

Re:If you compare maps....

[wierd_w]

Oh yes.. the burden of maintaining a single mile of dedicated fiber. Oh, its so terrible!

If you are so concerned about it, the fed bill to enact the "forcing" can simply set limits on how much the isps charge per megabyte transerred, (we are talking wired data on their network. The mesh network is not theirs.) Institutes rules that state goverments have to follow to pay for the service (a 1$/mo bond issue would easily pass for something as highly demanded as internet access.) And which forces the telecoms to accept the peering arrangement.

The state then levies a simple bond tax on the operation of the mesh repeater per farmer. That money goes directly to reimburse the upstream isp.

Boom. No spoiled, bratty city people have to pay a fucking dime.

Re:If you compare maps....

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen (coming from a Northeasterner who has actually traveled in Flyover country). Aside from utility issues, it is damned nice to have some places in the world where people are not slaves to little blinking, beeping boxes in their pockets. I'm not sure we need that crap up here in the Northeast to be honest.

Re:If you compare maps....

[macraig]

You take the infrastructure you use to get to work every single day for granted, but the free market was NOT responsible for that. The discussion here is about comparable infrastructure. It's exactly the sort of thing that SHOULD be socialized, if I dare even use that word in your presence without causing you to pop a vein or hyperventilate.

You ought to have enough common sense to know when that tired free-market argument is a non sequitur, but you don't.

Re:If you compare maps....

[uncqual]

...if you choose to live in the boonies, get get to pay the boonies premium of owning a satellite phone, satellite dish tv (satellite internet still requires an uplink path) and a needing at least two cars (don't get stuck with one dead one.)

Housing/property in the boonies is nearly always much cheaper than equivalent accommodations in/close to a big city - so there are some offsetting savings.

Re:If you compare maps....

[Anonymous Coward]

Forcing anything on the telecoms that they are not already doing today out of their own free market motives means they are either incurring an expense they would otherwise not incur or they are missing out on income they would not otherwise get, and that means that their customers, shareholders, or employees not on the 'winning' side of such a forced big communist government thing are going to end up paying the 'fucking dimes' to make up for the balance. There is no magic money tree that makes up the difference from somewhere else.

"Boom. No spoiled, bratty city people have to pay a fucking dime."

Unless that 'mesh network' (which btw in practice never works as good as the implementers thought it would) runs right up to where that single mile of fiber with broadband dedicated internet access already exists right now, somebody has to go and pay the fucking dime to route it all the way there.

Just go ahead and run that network into an office in the nearest town where you can get a decent business class internet connection (yep, those really are the prices us city folk pay for that kind of level of network load and reliability, it's quite a bit more than the 'single household broadband' pricing you are probably thinking of). Nobody is stopping you from doing that.

Forcing the telecoms to do it doesn't mean that that network doesn't need to be built and paid for by somebody, and apparently you want big government to force the free market to do it.

Just admit it, adjust your voting accordingly, and maybe you'll get a government to give you other people's hard earned money.

Re:If you compare maps....

[hairyfeet]

Your argument might work if the telecos didn't sue the shit out of any city that tries to go DIY which we've seen time and time again. And don't forget that We, the People ALREADY PAID 200 billion for nationwide broadband and all we got in return was a low res Goatse from the telecos while they passed out the money to their CEOs for more hookers and blow.

Re:If you compare maps....

[uncqual]

It seems to me like having nationwide 4G coverage would be a HUGE selling point for a telco, even in sparsely populated areas (we're everywhere, even while you're sleeping in the woods!!!), but they know they don't have to until forced.

I don't think most people are in such areas enough that they are willing to pay much more monthly for a service they will rarely if ever use.

Personally, I wouldn't pay an extra $10/month on my mobile bill to get mobile access while sleeping in the woods (or even driving through Wyoming). If I used such services a lot, I probably would be willing to, but obviously the carrier would have to segment the market somehow - for example, $60/month for urban/suburban coverage, $160/month if you include rural coverage (or, perhaps very high pay-as-you-go "rural network roaming" charges). The question is, would those who need it be willing to pay a premium high enough to pay for building out the infrastructure in areas where one person an hour (at peak time) uses the service?

Re:If you compare maps....

[wierd_w]

You aparently are not realizing the number of farmers being serviced, nor are you comprehending that large civic centers with the necessary trunk lines are fairly uniformly dotted inside such agrarian areas.

Also, I am not suggesting that the mesh network supply a t1 speed connection for all users either. It only needs to provide better than 28.8kbps dialup. (Bcause that is all you can squeeze out of the horrifically neglected lines that were only installed because of a 1950s federal law requiring them.)

Latency would be bad. Yes. It has to hop through tree clutter between god knows how many repeaters to get to the trunk. But if it is 1) faster than 28.8kbps, and 2)costs approx 10$/mo or less, aggregated between subsribers, it will be a hit. That is how fucking badly people demand internet out there.

The problem with the forcing, is the latter option you mention. The telecoms are focusing on local maxima, and the initial costs of implementing a suitable level of service does not have a comparable RoI when viewed against a high density city.

Many major metro areas in the intended coverage zones are completely surrounded by agrarian farmers. Take for instance, oklahoma city OK, wichita KS, Topeka KS, Hutchinson KS, etc.

Said dedicated fiber trunks would at most 5 to 10 miles to the city edge, where they interface with the mesh network.

The cost for those pipes will indeed be quite sizable, and out of the reach of the farmers. However, here is how it SHOULD be viewed:

Either they open and maintain those short trunks, well inside the urban coverage areas, *OR* they can expect another 1950s telephone access bill to pass, and they can expect to lay thousands of miles of cable instead.

There are litterally thousands of farmers in the mesh network area. Aggregated over that pool, the 250k/yr cost of a trunk line can easily come into the 10-15$/mo range, especially since you are not paying to service the mesh.

The real problem will be keeping the local state and city governments (especially city!) From trying to treat the license fees from the mesh's operation as a fungible income source.

Re:If you compare maps....

[Anonymous Coward]

My father in law actually owns a large farm in Iowa, about 2 hours outside of Des Moines. His closest neighbor, 5 miles distant, is his brother, who farms a large tract alongside his. His next closest neighbor, about 7 miles in the other direction, is his father.

They have radios when they're out in the fields. They have broadband in their homes. I've actually seen the commodity pricing terminals that farmers use, and yes, as you say, "Farmers who have this access have reported much better returns on their harvests" - he makes a fair amount more money by having up to date financial information with which to trade.

He does not need this information when he's planting a field.

As far as "access to emergency services" - cell phone or radio, doesn't matter. He has this access already, and doesn't have to pay a monthly fee for it. He talks regularly to his wife back at the house while he's out in the fields. This radio also does quite nicely handling "mesh" needs, because it's a fucking citizen's band radio with multiple channels, some of which are emergency services. He doesn't pay $100 a month for it, either.

Instant access to veterinary etc. resources - any farmer who doesn't know the common pests and problems his livestock will develop will not remain a viable farmer for long. Anything that's so unheard of that he'd need a cell phone to identify it is going to be so rare it's not worth worrying about.

"Sound and image recognition programs" - are you fucking serious? You think they're going to hear a "crow's call" while they're driving a giant combine around their field? Good lord, you've never once set foot on an actual farm, have you? The machines are noisy. And there's precious little wildlife hanging around, including bears, once that machinery starts running.

This list, after the "instant access to current market prices" is such a fatuous list of non-issues that it's comical. There is just about zero need for high speed data connections while you're actually out working on a farm. There simply is nothing that critical/unheard of/unknown/urgent that you need a 3G connection - anything urgent can be gotten over the radio easily. Anything else can damn sure wait until you finish the day's work in whatever field you're working.

Re:If you compare maps....

[Xtravar]

Look at the opposite way. I don't want to live anywhere without 3G or broadband. Few people do. It's like having a city without electricity or running water these days. It might even be more important since this is the way people share ideas and news.

You can argue that they should move, but that's easier said than done, and how are they to know what they're missing if they've lived without it? Yes, you can also argue that isolated communities should remain isolated communities, but then their ideas do not align with the rest of the nation at the very fundamental level, causing all sorts of unnecessary strife. I would prefer a nation that is more connected and in tune with itself.

Re:If you compare maps....

[Anonymous Coward]

If you look at a population density map you find large parts of the areas having less than 2 people per square mile (they are still frontier by the old definition). IN particular in a number of the counties in Tx for example after you take the population of the county seat out, you get far less that 2 folks per square mile in the country. As a leading example take Brewster County Tx, which includes Big Bend Park. Once you take the county seat Alpine out which cuts 4 square miles and 5700 people out you have 3166 people in a space of 6189 sq mi or about .5 people per square mile. No one can make money on the service. Note that its not clear that land line telephone serves much of the county either again because even a telephone coop could not make the numbers work.

Re:If you compare maps....

[Will.Woodhull]

More to the point, Can the USA afford to fracture along the digital divide?

A lot of the social and political issues that I now find are important did not exist in my world ten years ago, before we had this level of Internet connectivity, and do not exist in the world of persons who do not use the Internet on a daily basis. This is not just matters of intellectual property, identity theft, and so forth. My exposure through the Internet to a much broader range of opinions on just about every topic has caused me to recognize that every little thing is a lot more complex than it appears to be. But those who lack Internet connectivity are more likely to be comfortable with having strong opinions about all kinds of things that I now realize are not so simple.

It would be interesting to see if there are correlations between Internet connectivity and Tea Party type conservative thinking. Perhaps we are already seeing a political fracture on the digital divide.

Re:If you compare maps....

[LynnwoodRooster]

Now that we have the Captain Obvious commentary out of the way, why don't we focus on the actual problem? Namely, that Internet connectivity these days is a lot more like electricity and roads: a fundamental infrastructure whose cost is far outweighed by the network effect it promotes.

I think you need to bring in Captain Comprehension to help you - the report is about 3G and 4G access, not Internet connectivity. Most of those people at the end of those roads (and I used to live in Eastern King County, out by Skykomish) have DSL available. "High Speed" wireless? No - but Internet.

Re:If you compare maps....

[wierd_w]

You would be surprised to find that many of the areas that the telecoms claim to service with dsl, are not in fact, actually servicable by dsl.

Take for instace: a quaint little town just outside wichita. "Peck Ks".

Recently pushed into prominence by being about 10 miles from a newly built casino. (Northstar.) This town doesn't even have a gas station. It has crappy 1950s federally mandated telephone and powerlines that are unreliable. Residents have to use on-air televison, or satelite.

Internet is either horrible dialup at 28.8 speeds on a good day, with continual disconnects from the shitty lines, or, 50$/mo (w/o bundling) satelite, with data caps, or 2g verizon coverage.

I know, because my mother lives there.

Oh, ATT claims that dsl is available... until you actually call
and ask.

It is that way over most of the state, in fact.

Re:If you compare maps....

[trout007]

I had a Motorola cell phone in 1995 and it was about a hundred bucks and about $25 per month for maybe a few hundred minutes a month. I now had a phone faster than my PC back then. The phone was $99 and the monthly fee for my wife and myself is less than $100 including data.

Before this we had free prepaid phones which were still better than the old phones. That plan was $100 for 1000 minutes which is way cheaper than my plan 15 years ago even without counting inflation.

Re:If you compare maps....

[Anonymous Coward]

Correcting the op is fine, but the perspective that the carriers receive something without cost is preserved. Why is someone in d.c. deciding who gets to use a swath of 700mhz spectrum in Nevada in the first place? This federal intervention is particularly problematic when the carrier doesn't even use that "swath" for years and simply squats on it similar to what happens all the time in the domain registrar business.

Re:If you compare maps....

[NeutronCowboy]

And the post I was replying to had moved into much broader generalities than just 3G wireless. Not to mention that Internet connectivity in general is ass in general in the US, and part of the reason are arguments like the one I replied to "the market will provide." At that point, it's really not much different from the belief in homeopathy.

Again, at what point do you decide that some people aren't worth participating in the general Internet economy? Considering that the founding fathers wrote into the constitution the need for the postal service, I'm endlessly amused by argument that today's equivalent of the postal service should be left strictly to what passes for market forces in that area.

Re:If you compare maps....

[Adriax]

Most of the ranches and farms around here are smaller ones, completely family run and usually with both adults working a second full time job. All of them are 10+ miles outside cable and dsl coverage, so 3g service is the only hope for any real internet access ($20 dialup over mechanical switched phonelines that are older than me, second phone line is another $60/month). And the terrain is so hilly even the ones just outside town can't get the wireless internet offered for $100/month by the local ISP.

And yeah, the sound recognition one was for humor. Th figured the "Holyshit it's a bear!" call part would tip people off. Crows couldn't give a shit about a bear beyond possible leftovers.

Though it is nice to see people on the opposite end than the urbanites who've never been to an area that wasn't 90% contrete and asphalt. Even if you are just as incapable of seeing a situation any different from your own.

Re:If you compare maps....

[khallow]

Even if you are just as incapable of seeing a situation any different from your own.

Even if he's quite capable of seeing a situation different from his own, the point remains. Your dig was completely irrelevant.

Re:If you compare maps....

[rtfa-troll]

Some of what you say is true and country folks can't expect the same services as in the city. That's why people moved to the cities in the first place. However:

Nobody is stopping you from doing that.

Oh yes they are. The first fundamental blockage is that the teleco companies own the most interesting parts of the radio spectrum and buy it up everywhere. Secondly, whenever a town starts to build a network of their own they come in and try to get legislation blocking it.

This blocking of competition also generalises to private initiatives in many places; when someone starts to build a competing network they will come in exactly there, and nowhere else, and make sure they kill off the competition.

Finally, the telecos got ownership of a whole bunch of infrastructure that was state built almost everywhere. The value of that is obvious, but most important is the blocking power; there's no way to rebuild the whole thing all at once and the person who has it already is always able to block competition wherever they choose.

This just is an area where the companies ensure that pure free market fails and so there needs to be intervention.

Re:If you compare maps....

[Daniel Dvorkin]

And how much money might be sunk into providing higher-capacity connectivity to those people, only to find that that they don't contribute anything, tovarisch?

Red Godwin.

Re:If you compare maps....

[maxwells_deamon]

There are places out here in the west where population density is so low you can hit seek on your car radio and it will go all the way around the dial and not find anything. Many places out here have no people for miles. That said...

If people have phone service and children they should have reasonable reliable "high speed" internet available for a reasonable price. No I am not talking about T1 lines either but enough to watch a low res youtube video and access Wikipedia.

If you are in 7th grade or later and don't have the web you should expect to drop a letter grade in school. (some will still get straight a's anyway but that is possible even without electricty at home just not likely)

 

Re:If you compare maps....

[Anonymous Coward]

Communists are not "insightful". You must be one of the new age commies that doesn't understand where food comes from, hint: it's not the grocery store! At least the old commies knew where food came from, you on the other hand....pfff. Go eat your tofu commie!

Re:If you compare maps....

[pclminion]

I don't want to live anywhere without 3G or broadband. Few people do. It's like having a city without electricity or running water these days.

Being someone who lives near some of these "wastelands" I can assure you there's nothing there and anything qualifying as a "city" is going to have both 3G and broadband. You're worried that the lack of 3G access in the middle of a cattle rancher's mountainous 100,000 acre property is causing "unnecessary strife" and some kind of disconnect within the United States? You're smoking something.

Re:If you compare maps....

[Anonymous Coward]

Population density has advantages. That's why it happens.

Why should my phone bill be higher because someone wants to live way outside of civilization? Let them get a satelite phone and pay the premium for it. That's not penalizing them, it's them accepting responsibility for their decisions.

Re:If you compare maps....

[tehdaemon]

I live here in the western US too - you are not exaggerating the population density.

If you live in a place without any internet access, chances are that you have to drive farther to get to the school than you do to find internet access. And if you live there, it is because you chose to live away from society and wanted to be away from more than just the internet.

If you actually have a farm, ranch or other good reason to be there, then according to the map, the internet is already there for you. The only other reason to be out there is some kind of job, forest ranger or mining covers most of the job possibilities, and the company you work for would almost certainly have brought internet access to their location. (they need it too, and can afford it)

That said - too many of the black spots on that map follow straight borders and the like. Radio coverage does not do that, the map is not very accurate.

I am old enough that my first real internet access came when I got to college. I don't buy the 'drop a letter grade' bit. The internet is great (unparallelled?) for those who want to learn. For most people - learning resources on the internet are like cake decorating supplies for /.ers. We will probably find a use for some of it, but it probably wouldn't result in many decorated cakes. (and those would have xkcd comics on them, not flowers and bows...)

T

Re:If you compare maps....

[infosinger]

I am on the internet several hours a day between work and home and a voracious reader of sources from all ends of the ideological spectrum and my conservatism, if anything, is re-enforced.

Re:If you compare maps....

[Will.Woodhull]

Cool. And how well do you relate with persons who do not use the Internet at all?

I'm guessing that in your strong, information-based, conservatism you probably have more views in common with an Obama fan like me than you do with persons who live the same way their grandparents were living back in the 1950s, who haven't a clue what xkcd is, or how Twitter was an integral part of the Arab Spring, etc. Those parts of the country that do not have anything better than dial-up modems are being increasingly disenfranchised as the American Way Of Life goes digital. Seems to me that a true conservative would be very concerned about that kind of disenfranchisement. Being as how it is a culture breaker, and all.

Re:If you compare maps....

[AF_Cheddar_Head]

yeah like how the free market brought electriciry to the hinterlands in the 30's. Oh wait it ddn't.

Re:If you compare maps....

[Anonymous Coward]

Usually, rural types are extremely local-community driven, simply *because* there isn't a huge and diverse network of social services paid for by taxes. /quote.

What a laugh! I almost fell out of my seat. Rural areas are so subsidized to the max. Almost all of the roads and infrastructure in rural area is totally subsidized by tax dollars from more populous areas. A larger percentage of rural people receive government assistance of some sort or another than the general population.

Every major, and even minor, infrastructure project in rural areas is bought and paid for with tax dollars that do no originate from the local economy.

Re:If you compare maps....

[LynnwoodRooster]

Again, at what point do you decide that some people aren't worth participating in the general Internet economy? Considering that the founding fathers wrote into the constitution the need for the postal service, I'm endlessly amused by argument that today's equivalent of the postal service should be left strictly to what passes for market forces in that area.

Are we deciding, or are the people who VOLUNTARILY CHOOSE to live in a location with reduced wireless Internet access choosing to not be part of the general Internet economy? I know a programmer at Microsoft who specifically chooses to live near the top of Stevens Pass in WA - because he DOESN'T have Internet or cell phone access - when he goes home, he leaves his job behind him. That's his choice.

As far as the postal service, it was guaranteed delivery to LOCAL post offices - not to your house. For the first 100+ years, that's how the majority got their mail - riding into town every other week to pick up supplies and the mail. How is that different than what is happening here?

Re:If you compare maps....

[wierd_w]

(Cough)

[I grew up in an agrarian environment]

Firstly: while the road grader is paid by the state taxroll, he very rarely, if ever, shows up. More often than not, the farmers themselves put a blade on their tractors and grade the road themselves. The state does supply fesh gravel every 10 years or so, but the roadbeds would have become unservicable years before then were it not for self-performed maintenance. Last I checked, city people weren't expected to repair potholes with fresh asphalt, or to steamroll it flat themselves.

Farm subsidies:

There is debate here. On one hand, if the property taxes on agrcultural properties and assets were not so high, these subsidies would probably not be needed at all. On the other, many people who are on the more wealthy side could dodge paying their fair tax burden by buying agricultural property and equipment and just sitting on it for the tax breaks.

Farmers, while owning large chunks of expensive property and equipment, are not all that wealthy when all the expenses add up. They aren't multimillionaire tycoons. Large sums of money pass through their hands, yes, but the vast majority of it goes toward fuel, fertilizer, seed, and equipment costs. Not a whole lot stays in the farmer's hands after a good harvest. (Exceptions being cattle with some of the more dubious ranching practices in effect, such as those used by factory ranchers.) The federal government has a vested interest in making sure its citizens have enough food to eat. That is why they subsidize the actual crops themselves. A bad year or two without that assistance, coupled with high property and equipment taxes, and you end up with farmers going bankrupt, and being unable to farm anymore. I've seen it first hand.

Now then.. tell me, what do you think the taxes they pay on property and equipment go for? Roads in the rural areas they live in, or maintenance of major paved highways? (Which are supposed to be paid for by the fuel tax anyway.)

Tell me again how unfair the farm subsidies are. I dare you. Think about it next time you buy a loaf of bread, or a pound of hamburger.

I was not kidding around with hyperbole on the fire prevention statement. I've put out plenty of fires with a burlap sack. Especially around the 4th, when city people wanting to escape city fire ordinances on "the good stuff" drive out into the county and fire them off on the side of the road, or illegally at the lake. Most of the time there is a big push to get the wheat in before the 4th for this very reason, but the weather is not always cooperative.

Really, it's been my experience that city people are selfish, spoiled, trashy people. They drive out into the county with old appliances and furniture and dump it in overflow ditches, on secluded roadsides, and treerows, just to avoid paying the trashman afew bills to haul it off and dispose of it properly. What, do they think stainless steel simply decomposes in a few weeks or something? Or is more "I don't care about those farmers, I don't want to pay 200$ to dispose of it!" Instead? In addition to that, and starting fires on the 4th, you have city kids and their dumbshit parents getting them RTVs that they can't ride in the city. So, they plan a weekend outing to go ride them all over a freshly plowed (and probably seeded) field. They destroy literally hundreds of thousands of dollars in investments for 5 hours of fun, and think nothing of it. And then you have the ever-present feral animal problem, where that "cute little pitbull puppy" grows up and isn't so cute with their 3 year old child anymore. Do they take it to the humane society? Oh fuck no. They think they are being more kind to the animal by dropping it out in the boonies and driving off and leaving it, where it slowly starves, goes stark raving mad, and ends up killing livestock and being shot for it.

Here's a heads up: cleaning up after your asses costs farmers and their families money and time. Then you bastards turn around and tell us all how greedy we are when we

Re:If you compare maps....

[wierd_w]

So, because people inherit a family farm (news flash, nobody but millionares can afford to straight up buy farmland these days. Farmers are farming land an ancestor homesteaded over a hundred years ago.), and choose to keep that property and grow food, they are willfullu choosing to live in the dark ages?

That's what you are basically saying.

Re:If you compare maps....

[SumterLiving]

Please explain the benefits of a farmer having "instant access to current market prices" while out in the fields? As you said, they have perfectly capable radios connected to the homefront with an internet connection. Would an 6-12 hour delay knowing the price of wheat just spiked really make a difference considering the farmer is on combine already supposedly harvesting? The 6-12 hour delay I'm talking about is while said farmer is throwing down in the fields getting the hard work done. Just curious as to how "instantaneous" information would make much of a difference.

Where's the map?

[Anonymous Coward]

The article did not appear to have said map, nor a link to it.

Re:Where's the map?

[owenferguson]

The map is there, inline half way through the article, but it's stuck in a banner-ad sized box like 3/4" thick and across the whole page.

Re:Where's the map?

[icebike]

http://a.tiles.mapbox.com/v1/fcc.mobility-fund-phase-1-potentially-eligible-areas-oct-2011-data/mm/legend,zoompan,tooltips,zoomwheel,zoombox,attribution,bwdetect,share.html#6.00/38.617/-109.328

Direct Map Link

[Twintop]

Link to the map, rather than using the tiny iframe in the article.

http://a.tiles.mapbox.com/v1/fcc.mobility-fund-phase-1-potentially-eligible-areas-oct-2011-data/mm/legend,zoompan,tooltips,zoomwheel,zoombox,attribution,bwdetect,share.html#0/0/0

Re:Direct Map Link

[antdude]

Ugly colors too. :(

Re:Direct Map Link

[DigiShaman]

Thanks. The resolution still sucks though.

If I sound bitter about it, it's because I am. Some places east and south-east have shitty cell reception where the refineries are at. Quite a few inspectors will use aircards near the area. VPN links constantly go down and you never know when Verizon will fuck up passing of GRE traffic. Dropped calls is quite common. Maybe there's just too much metal in the area obstructing the signal. Having a cell booster (repeater) in the area would be nice if at all possible.

Re:Direct Map Link

[RoboRay]

THANK you.

I was wondering why TFA had linked a map of central Africa...

Re:Direct Map Link

[bill_mcgonigle]

Thanks. The resolution still sucks though.

The resolution is fine. There's a very detailed little black sliver of my town that shows as a 'wasteland'.

Which it is, but so is lots of the rest of the town, and it's not black at all on this map.

Decent resolution, useless accuracy.

...and nothing of value was lost

[girlintraining]

...western half of the country were 3G wastelands, particularly in mountainous states such as Idaho and Nevada.

Yes, the economic loss to the nation's economy has been estimated to be in the tens of dollars as people who live in more hospitable areas refuse to subsidize infrastructure for those who lack the brains to move out of unfarmable land with no source of water for hundreds of miles.

Re:...and nothing of value was lost

[Reverand Dave]

Since this to obvious flamebait I'll keep my response short. The Western portion of the united states supplies more agricultural goods to the market than the rest of the country. Are you trying to say that Kansas is more habitable than Oregon?

Re:...and nothing of value was lost

[bragr]

You have obviously never been to Utah of Nevada. They are waste lands, quite literally.

Re:...and nothing of value was lost

[Reverand Dave]

Most of us in the west don't count Utah among our ranks. It's not like Iowa or Ohio or Wisconsin are so great though.

As a general rule, the easier it is to draw a state the harder it is to live there. -- Demetri Martin.

Re:...and nothing of value was lost

[Anonymous Coward]

If you look at the map, it's the mountainous regions that don't have 3G, for good reason. Agricultural regions are well covered.

Re:...and nothing of value was lost

[amiga3D]

I've been to New York City. That's the worst wasteland I've ever seen. But then I've never been to LA.

Re:...and nothing of value was lost

[garyebickford]

I remember thinking (with some glee), flying over the area east of Lake Powell, that you could dump the entire population of New York City out there, and ... nobody would ever hear from them again! :D

Some folks, including me, like being 60 miles from the nearest quick-mart. I live in New England now (for a little while more), but it's nice not having all this human commotion around. Out in the desert, after a few days you start to realize how little humanity means in the grand scheme of things.

One interesting item - those rocks out in the desert, where it hasn't rained in months or years - carve into them an eighth of an inch (2 mm) and you will find living organisms. I forget if they are bacteria or algae but I think algae is right.

As my neighbors used to say back in 1999, "So, what will the cattle farmers do when Y2K hits? Probably go out and feed the cows, like the day before."

Re:...and nothing of value was lost

[Anonymous Coward]

Having traveled through many of those areas in Wisconsin and upper Michigan -- a lot of those dark areas don't have landline access, either (after 100 years of Ma Bell monopoly and active governmental buildout). Much of that land is basically uninhabited, except for hunting season.

Re:...and nothing of value was lost

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're discounting any possible value of land other than farming? You do know that there are a wide variety of natural resources that humans exploit and harvest, right? I mean, just because you don't grow corn in a copper mine doesn't mean that there's no value in it. And who says there's no water in the mountains of Idaho and Nevada? I guess all the people up there are just perched on the edges of bare rocks in the middle of a desert?

Your comments aren't usually this delusional. I guess you're having a recreational troll in celebration of Friday?

Re:...and nothing of value was lost

[Jason Earl]

I live in Utah, and when I go to the mountains, I *expect* my cell phone to stop working. Heck, I count on it.

Re:...and nothing of value was lost

[the linux geek]

I live in a medium-sized Kansas city, and 3G is almost unobtainable. No T-mobile presence (as far as I can tell), no AT&T 3G, poor Verizon and Sprint. The only carrier with solid infrastructure here is US Cellular. (I'm on Sprint, and it's frequently an exercise in patience.)

Re:...and nothing of value was lost

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in a medium-sized Kansas city, and 3G is almost unobtainable. No T-mobile presence (as far as I can tell), no AT&T 3G, poor Verizon and Sprint. The only carrier with solid infrastructure here is US Cellular. (I'm on Sprint, and it's frequently an exercise in patience.)

As a South West Kansas City Resident, I'd like to know which wasteland you happen to be in. I have friends with phones on all the major carriers, and I myself am on Sprint. No complaints here. However, I will agree that 4G coverage outside of Wyandotte, Johnson, Jackson counties is pretty non-existant.

Re:...and nothing of value was lost

[Anonymous Coward]

I went on vacation to Nevada for about 3 weeks. The cell towers are along the 'main' roads although they were putting up cell towers at each of the rest stops including secondary roads (north/south). Even then I didn't get signal on my ATT Go phone even though I was standing right next to the tower and could see it. The reason, is because alot of cell towers out west are owned by the local cell company and if that company didn't have an agreement with ATT or Verizon, then if i.e. you have ATT, you couldn't get a signal bar although Verizon phone could standing in the same spot. Moreover, if that tower didn't support GSM, but only CDMA (and vice versa), forget it. I did see a person in the middle of an extremely small town west of ELY, NV use a laptop to connect to the internet at the laundry mat, because he had a phone company cellular card in his USB port. This town is on the only main path heading east/west that all the locals and tourists have to travel if you want paved roads.
My boss was going to fire me after I got back because I didn't call her while on vacation. I explained where I was and that even though the phone companies show the highway I was on had cellular or when I was off the beaten path, I wouldn't be able to call her. Even alot of the motels don't have room phones anymore (due to the cost when few customers drop by at different times of the year - think not in winter) and that they assume everyone has a cell phone these days. I was lucky to get gas, because the restaurant/bar/gas pump place in the middle of nowhere didn't have gas (it used to be a pony express place along that trail). I had to go about 40 miles south and the town didn't have a sign out saying they had motels, food, gas because the state of Nevada didn't allow them to post a sign along the highway. You have to drive around the town to find out if they had gas (hoping not to run out of gas and then find who owned the gas pump since they couldn't afford an attendant - the lady at the restaurant, owned the food place, motel, bar and gas station) I was told by the bar/motel/gas pump that they were awaiting a delivery. Nevada doesn't have gas storage tanks scattered around nor gas pipelines in the state except in major cities or military bases. Thus, he said the western part of NV, gets their gas trucked in everyday from California to about the middle of the state, and Utah trucks gas into the eastern part of Nevada to about the middle of the state. So when you see signs that say "no services" exit after exit or billboards saying "no gas for the next 120 miles - we mean it" (along route 70 in Utah), make sure you have a full tank just in case you break down(i.e flat tire) and need heat in the car. Make sure you call someone - if you can - to let them know where you are at. There's another story of my car breaking down climbing the hill north of Vancouver, Canada, but that will be for another time.

Gee...

[cirby]

Large areas where there's no advanced communications networks.

Of course, nobody really LIVES in most of those huge data voids, which is why nobody puts billions of dollars into building cell towers in those areas, but...

Re:Gee...

[zuzulo]

Absolutely. Which is why this visualization is not useful. Now if they mapped the intersection of population density and cell coverage, that would be interesting. ;-)

Re:Gee...

[garyebickford]

I used to live in central Oregon, back in the day when cell phones were bricks. We were up riding horses in the Cascade Mountains, and one of our party fell and might have a back problem, so I rode back to our vehicle and called 911. The parking lot was down in a canyon, so I had to stand on top of the car to get a signal. I did get connected - to a 911 center 100 miles away, skipping over the nearest one in Bend (only 30 miles away)! They were a little confused for a while, but it all worked out with a three-step patch to the nearest EMT folks. Somehow I doubt that would work any more - today's phones have about 1/20 the transmit power as the old analog phones. But in that area there are many more towers, and reception up in the mountains is pretty good.

Re:Gee...

[amiga3D]

Yes. That would actually show useful data. I don't think people living out in the boonies expect or in many cases even want 3G coverage. On the other hand I watch all the droid and iphone users where I work drearily waiting while the supposed verizon and at&t broadband achieves slightly better than dialup speeds.

Re:Gee...

[Anonymous Coward]

Somehow I doubt that would work any more - today's phones have about 1/20 the transmit power as the old analog phones.

CDMA modulation allows you to use much more of the channel capacity than analog modulations. The tiny antennas should have a more significant effect than the change in power.

Re:Gee...

[rhysweatherley]

"Of course, nobody really LIVES in most of those huge data voids, ..."

Yes, because farmers don't need to call 911 for help in an emergency, call the local food co-op to check this week's prices, order new seed from a supplier's web site, or e-mail the mechanic to get an ETA as to when the tractor will be fixed. And we certainly don't want the farmer's kids getting a decent education via distance learning web sites, or talking to their friends in nearby cities.

Putting cell towers in those areas is not profitable, but it is necessary. I say this as an Australian - for over a decade the commercial carriers did squat to wire up the country-side. The Australian government had to create its own carrier from scratch because the free market just didn't care about the 95% of the country where "nobody really lives there". Oh, except for the people who do.

Re:Gee...

[__aaqvdr516]

I live on the east coast. I have neither 3G nor 4G. I also do not have high speed internet access. It's not like people don't live here either.

Where I live, people aren't even as spread out as they are over the western wastelands.

Re:Gee...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm from Idaho, and most of the area in Idaho that is the dead zone is in designated wilderness areas or areas with very low population. Although, we did only get 3G about a year back - things do come to us much more slowly than large metro areas.

Re:Gee...

[DerekLyons]

The article doesn't say cellular voice coverage isn't available there - it says cellular data coverage isn't there. The aren't the same thing, not even close. Not to mention, the lack of cellular data coverage isn't the same thing as lack of internet access.

Re:Gee...

[Anonymous Coward]

Y'know, in the US, they do have cellphone service there with data, dialup, and if they want to pay for it, high speed satellite broadband data.

Emails contacting the tractor mechanic? Please. For the price of a combine tractor, they should be throwing in a laptop and satphone so the thing streams youtube cat videos while the farmer accidentally runs over his children.

Re:Gee...

[DarkMagician07]

The problem with that is where I am at, there's typically no voice coverage, either. There are huge areas in rural Western, WA that you can't get a cell signal because there's hills and mountains between you and any towers. What's even more funny is that when I'm at home, I get service from one tower that is 40 miles away. If the power goes out, there's no other tower nearby to take the calls, and there's no plan for any of the telco's to put one in. Heck, the one tower that feeds 4 towns (one having a population of 4 - 5000) is typically down for a total of about a month out of the year. Instead of putting a little money into upgrading it and it's capacity, they simply put money into fixing an EDGE tower, where a 3G or LTE tower would make more sense.

The problem isn't that they can't upgrade the tower, it's that they don't want to because the other company that uses their bands would also reap the benefits of the newer tower and access due to sharing agreements. For them, keeping us on limited voice + EDGE is the best way to go, I guess.

Re:Gee...

[Anonymous Coward]

But it doesn't say that either -- it says no 3G or better data coverage. In fact, both AT&T and T-mobile offer GPRS (or EDGE) everywhere there's a GSM signal (T-mo, at least, is entirely upgraded to EDGE, dunno about AT&T)

Re:Gee...

[Kymermosst]

I had a similar situation when I lived in central Oregon (specifically Redmond). I pulled out my trusty ham radio HT which was smaller and had better range than most cell phones at the time. Autopatched to emergency services via a repeater situated near Smith Rocks, which has way better coverage than any cell tower.

Just because there isn't cell coverage doesn't mean there is no communications. Those who want communications ability have it.

Re:Gee...

[Anonymous Coward]

Cellular voice coverage is still a big problem. I used to live in Missoula, Montana, and cell coverage was a fucking joke in one of the largest cities in the state.

Re:Gee...

[garyebickford]

Howdy neighbor! :D

Re:Gee...

[vantagec]

I live there, you insensitive clod! And so does everyone I see on a daily basis. Not everyone lives in the continuous urban sprawl of BosNyWash. How many people does it take to exceed your threshold of "nobody"?

Link to map

[Noghlin]

http://a.tiles.mapbox.com/v1/fcc.mobility-fund-phase-1-potentially-eligible-areas-oct-2011-data/mm/legend,zoompan,tooltips,zoomwheel,zoombox,attribution,bwdetect,share.html#4.00/35.00/-97.00

Some days...

[bigredradio]

No 3G access? Some days that would seem like heaven instead of a wasteland. I suggest we section it off and make a campground.

Re:Some days...

[DaveAtFraud]

I was going to post, "It's not a bug. It's a feature" but replying to your post will do.

I ended up vacationing in Silverton Colorado in mid-September 2001. The B&B we stayed in had no TV and only one phone and it was at the foot of the stairs with guest room all on the second floor. Even better, Silverton had (and I think continues to have) absolutely no cell phone service. The town has even acted to PREVENT carriers from installing cell towers.

It's an absolutly fantastic place to really get away from it all and be almost impossible to reach short of someone sending a courrier. Great hiking in the summer and awesome skiing in the winter.

Cheers,
Dave

Re:Some days...

[ColdWetDog]

You can run, but you can't hide.

Satellite phones still work.

Re:Some days...

[slinches]

I suggest we section it off and make a campground.

They already did. A lot of the places that have no coverage are park land or wilderness areas.

Link to the map

[AF_Cheddar_Head]

http://tiles.mapbox.com/fcc/map/mobility-fund-phase-1-potentially-eligible-areas

Re:Link to the map

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you!!

Re:Link to the map

[qubezz]

The map link is good, the linked article has you trapped on that site with no outgoing links and no real information other than "look at this map". Real journalists would also be answering who, what, when, why, and how, the answer to which is that this survey was done as part of "Mobility Fund Phase 1", a $300 million dollar payout by the federal government to mobile telco providers to service these areas. It's a reverse auction, telcos bid to put in 3G and how much it will take the government paying them for them to do it. Perfect opportunity for the phone companies to collude and bilk the taxpayer for the most money, and to make exclusive deals to ensure the most roaming billing possible happens when you are there.

Here's the public notice (pdf), a request for public comments, hidden well enough that nobody in the public will notice before it's too late. From the FCC auction 901 site.

No people = no cellphones

[bragr]

Seriously, have you ever been to those places that are all in black? The population density is less than 1 person per square mile in a lot of them. A lot less in most places. Large portions of Nevada have population densities of 0 people per square mile. There is just no reason to build towers in the middle of no where.

Re:No people = no cellphones

[ColdWetDog]

What about Moose?

Look at Alaska - all those blank spots. All those poor Mooses without 3G coverage. How are they ever going to get to watch Northern Exposure reruns? While it's common to denigrate them as just another ungulate, Moose are smarter than the average American voter, smell better than the average American voter and certainly are better behaved.

Where's the love?

Re:No people = no cellphones

[dkf]

While it's common to denigrate them as just another ungulate, Moose are smarter than the average American voter, smell better than the average American voter and certainly are better behaved.

The average tree stump can outwit a moose. While I remain cynical about my fellow men, I really think that moose are still more stupid than that.

What's more, moose don't pay taxes or vote and they taste delicious.

Re:No people = no cellphones

[evilviper]

Seriously, have you ever been to those places that are all in black? The population density is less than 1 person per square mile in a lot of them.

Yeah, nobody lives in Palm Springs, San Luis Obispo, Montery, etc. Even the "middle-of-nowhere" in California has tons of people. Even the figures on the map are deflated by averaging huge areas with absolutely no people, in with real towns with reasonable population density.

Besides that, from the map it looks like the FCC is much more concerned with "road miles". ie. just because nobody lives there, doesn't mean thousands of people don't drive through there, all the time. I know that's true of the dark areas around national parts, and similar.

Re:No people = no cellphones

[Anonymous Coward]

In northern NY, there are vast tracts of the state forest preserve without service. Mainly because the state constitution prohibits building cell towers there. In fact, we are happy and proud that portion of the state can't be changed. We LIKE getting away from cell technology.

not always great in the Northeast

[hb253]

I live in the Northeast (NJ) and coverage at my house is pitiful. I can't imagine what it's like in more remote areas.

The thing that isn't mentioned much is that even in areas with good signal, the sound quality of current digital cellular systems stinks. Even back in the 90's, analog cellular had WAY better sound quality.

Relief map

[belthize]

I'm willing to bet a relief map that just showed less than and greater than 7000 feet elevation would very closely match the map.

I live in one of the areas that is surrounded by black and sure enough it's a river valley. No great mystery, putting wireless in unpopulated mountainous terrain is not worth the effort.

Spongge

[Anonymous Coward]

locating #GNAAG,

Frist Ps0T from Envada

[oodaloop]

Sorry, took a while to get a signal.

So no coverage in mountains or the desert?

[jeffeb3]

That's OK with me. When I go mountain camping, I don't want to get a phone call. There is a lot of BLM, National Forrest, and regional parks in that part of the US too. It's a lot of forest/mountains/desert if you ask me. I live in Denver, which has very good 3G/4G coverage.

Bad and Good

[amiga3D]

There are trade offs wherever you live. People living out in the back end of Utah get to avoid the plague of crime and pollution of the populated areas and they miss out on facebook.

Tesla to the rescue!

[macraig]

What we need is one gigantic Tesla coil the size of Mons Olympus smack in the middle of the country. We can use it to beam wireless power to every phone and small gadget in the country and get rid of them nasty batteries and use the power feed as a carrier signal for everything else. (/sarcasm)

"internet is a right"

[p51d007]

I can just see it now...the government will then come out and say that 3g or whatever "is a right", which means the only agency that can do it, will be the government. Explain to me how a private company is to be PROFITABLE (oh that ugly word...profit), if they are to build out an expensive thing like towers, cabinets etc, in an area WITH FEW PEOPLE. I guess we'll be giving wolves & bears free access next. There are a lot of areas that have few people. If you were to overlay this map, with a population density map, odds are they would almost line up. Tell the government to go F**k off!

Form a community wireless...

[charlieo88]

Form a community wireless initiative and the telcos will be in there to squash any such thing before you can say, "Can you hear me now?"

No Cell Service Here

[swbirding]

What a joke, there is no cell service - of any type - where I live. On the other hand, I have a daily use package which works just fine when I travel to those areas where there is cell service. Being in constant touch is an affectation which has been exploited by the likes of Verizon and AT&T - how incredibly sad for those people who could use their money for basic safety and welfare.

Why stop to mobile broadband?

[danbob999]

Why stop to mobile broadband? Why not movie theaters or professional sport teams? Each village should deserve one. Does who work in agriculture might want to enjoy these activities too.
Living in the country has some advantages. Fresh air, more space, nature. It also has shortcomings like not being the first to get new cellular technologies deployed.

Re:Why stop to mobile broadband?

[NeutronCowboy]

Are you the same moron who argued that the Internet is the same as having a Domino's close by? Let's turn the argument around: why should the fly-over states have roads, hospitals, a functioning sewage system or access to the telephone? Do they really need to have a post office within 100 miles of the town of Podunck, Nowhere?

As someone else said: taxes buy you civilization. If you don't enjoy the various things that taxes buy you, go live on island and build out your own superpower. After all, it's just as easy as it is in Civ 5.

Re:Why stop to mobile broadband?

[NeutronCowboy]

Hah, I see the Rand libertarians have mod points today. Fun.

Because they watch too much tv.

[novar21]

They don't relize that the fields are not plowed by mule or oxen anymore. They would be stunned to see the tech in the harvesters and tractors these days. GPS, radios, air conditioning. Heck, thats just the equipment for the field. Then in the homes usually are computers hooked to the internet to trade futures on what they are growing/raising. Then there are applications to measure livestock growth/health as well as soil analysis systems. The city dwellers think you just throw out some food and water and the animals take care of themselves (no vets/tests needed). Or that there aren't any regulations on them in respect to soil conservation or contamination. Not to mention air quality. Sad, but most just don't have a clue.

florida!

[bbelt16ag]

Ok can i please gather your attention to the Florida area! There are swaths of area that need coverage!. check out the area around marion county. I know this is horse country and there a a larger perserver in the area, but there are lot of people living up there.. They either must use dialup or satellite. The poorest are the ones who can't afford this and go with out. Celluar can change this! If they roll out high speed in these areas.

Silicon Valley!

[k6mfw]

hey! I hear all this about great coverage in places like Asia and Europe (even former Warsaw Pact countries) but we got crapola coverage in the land that developed this stuff. Google does have free wifi in Mountain View but geez it is slow. Well there is option of getting the iphone kind of thing... SJC airport seems to have great free wifi (it has been very fast when I've been there). There is Starbucks but I don't care for their coffee. I'm not concerned about most rural areas of US, if I go to such places, I leave my computer at home (look up at night, you can see stars. And that big long cloud is not a cloud. It is part of the galaxy our star is located).

WLW did this in 1934-1939 Re:Tesla to the rescue!

[Anonymous Coward]

WLW broadcast at 500 KW from Cincinnati, Ohio, USA from 1934 to 1939. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WLW for details.

No 3G Cowphone?

[saccade.com]

I guess we'll have to wait before the cowphone can go 3G...

Did they mark the areas where its impossible?

[Liquid-Gecka]

The map does not appear to actually mark the areas of the country where it is completely impossible to setup service. In Idaho, where I grew up, there are huge tracts of government property with restrictions and limitations that make it impossible to have cell service, let alone 3G.

Craters of the Moon is one of the largest exposed lava rock flats in the world. If you go to Google maps and search for "idaho", you will see a huge black spot in the bottom right. The flow is actually much larger than that and its all one big preserve. Its impossible to run underground cables since its all basically solid rock, and running overhead wires is pretty damn challenging as well given the lack of roads.

The Frank Church wilderness area which makes up a large chunk of the middle of the state specifically bans wires and electricity, cell towers, wheels, and pretty much any other modern technology. There is no way it will have 3G coverage any time soon.

Montana has the Bob Marshal wilderness area, Wyoming has Yellowstone, California has Yosemite, etc.

Hell, even the south western part of Idaho is just a big flat desert with virtually no farms, roads, or people. Why should we worry about its 3g coverage?

Re:Did they mark the areas where its impossible?

[evilviper]

Its impossible to run underground cables since its all basically solid rock, and running overhead wires is pretty damn challenging as well given the lack of roads.

First off, the FCC is probably ONLY mapping roads to begin with. "Road miles" is a prominent metric on the map, and people don't get very far without roads, so no roads means no population.

Secondly, no cables doesn't mean no cell service. The phone companies invented microwave links, which gave us cheap long-distance service decades ago. Besides a data link, power is the only prereq... that can increasingly be provided by wind turbines or solar panels, perhaps supplemented by backup diesel generators. But in general, no power lines also means no people, so it's largely a moot point.

Is this the free version of Google maps?

[Anonymous Coward]

It would seem that I can't zoom in and many features are missing.... For the fcc ? On a mobile device?

Can't "afford" to build...

[Anonymous Coward]

... but we still pay out the nose, the same rates, for inferior coverage and service. It's not that it's not economically viable to put towers out here, it's that it is far more profitable to put a tower in a densely populated area. So, basically the telephone utilities are using the vast rural population as underserved "cash cows" and funneling that profit to stay competitive in the more profitable urban spaces. In short, it's not that they get more bang for their buck in the cities, it's that they're getting more buck for their bang in the country.

As a utility, using a public resource (radio spectrum), we can justify (and have justified) any sort of service requirement to enter a market. For example, cable companies having to provide service to every household of an area if it wants to serve any house in that area.

Cell phones should be subject to the same sorts of laws. Because the US government is my negotiator and represents me and several hundred million other americans in negotiations with the corporations that want our business. Up to the point of actually losing money (and even then), someone will be willing to provide a service under any set of stipulations. Like health care, the government (our negotiator) should be reviewing profit levels and driving up mandated service levels until profits drop to near zero across all industries. It's better for the consumer (P = R - C; P = 0 -> C = R)

The plains would be a wasteland ..

[chromaexcursion]

the only reason the plains aren't a wasteland is geography. FLAT. signals carry a long ways. mountains are hell on RF. not enough people want to live there. it's a lifestyle choice. If you don't like it, move. As someone who pays a hidden tax to the rural electrification fund, and has to listen to those who benefit gripe about how "their" tax dollars are spent. ...

It's true.

[mosb1000]

Many of these areas in Idaho (where I'm from) are actually too rugged to be used for logging. Why anyone would think they need 3G coverage is beyond me.

Satellite Phones?

[mosb1000]

Ever heard of satellite phones?

The Data

[Anonymous Coward]

You can find the call and the data here: http://wireless.fcc.gov/auctions/default.htm?job=auction_summary&id=901

The black areas represent those ares that don't have 3G or better service *and* have either primary, secondary or local/rural/city roads, i.e., areas without roads are excluded.

This accounts for 889,828.5 sq miles (25.5% of the US's area) with a population of 1,947,267 people (0.62% of the US population).

Reassured

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a senior systems engineer for a rather large hosting/cloud provider. In other words, I am not a Luddite.

My mom actually lives right in the middle of the black splotch in Southwestern Gillespie County, Texas. There are some spots on her property where you can get a shaky voice signal but nothing like a 3g connection. So no data.

And it is a complete dead zone at her house. And I like it that way.

It is very reassuring that there are some spots on this planet where I can tell my boss that I will be truly unreachable for a day or two.

When we lose that we will have lost a valuable commodity.

I would rather not see the money wasted. But I will be happy if this is executed with the usual competence of most government projects.

Need maps for broadband buildout

[Anonymous Coward]

Mountain Bell aka USWest aka Qwest aka Centurylink doesn't seem particularly interested in broadband buildout - ADSL greater than 1.5Mbps which is rendered much slower due to line static leading to lost packets. US leadership is concerned about lack of technical interest in US students - perhaps some effort to improve technical foundations might reverse that disinterest. Unfortunately quarter-to-date year-to-date focused businesses will never do that. Meanwhile US graduates pathetically many business & accounting students. Ugh!

National Radio Quiet Zone

[kilo_foxtrot84]

Thanks, the one in TFA was terrible. I notice a dark patch right on the border of West Virginia and Virginia... it corresponds pretty well to the National Radio Quiet Zone. Shouldn't that remain an area that has minimal 3G/4G coverage?

Yes.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, that is a fact. Expecting all the conveniences of modern life that come about only through the aggregated efforts of large populations while you forgo the negative consequences of such aggregate large populations just says that you are a selfish prick!