19 Million Americans Cannot Get Broadband Access

First time accepted submitter paullopez writes "The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has announced during its eighth annual broadband progress report on the state of broadband/Internet access in America, that 19 million Americans still do not have access to high-speed broadband above the 3Mbps threshold. However, the report also detailed the advances the progress that is being made, including 'LTE deployment by mobile networks.'" Also at SlashCloud.

Comments

LTE

[Anonymous Coward]

LTE isn't exactly what most would consider "broadband" due to the incredibly low caps and high price. If you only get 5 GB per month (or less) you aren't going to be using it for streaming movies or anything.

Re:LTE

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

But it is a relatively cheap way to 'fulfill' any rural telco obligations you happened to pick up from the FCC in exchange for lucrative spectrum concessions or whatever else it is you actually wanted...

Re:LTE

[takshaka]

I wish I could get LTE. The best I can do is 3G, even though I am 200 yards from houses with cable.

Even so, 3G is a great improvement over dialup.

Re:LTE

[frovingslosh]

Absolutely. They should (also) be reporting on the number of Americans without access to affordable high speed access. And breaking down what all of the caps are both wireless caps and also caps that have been imposed on previously uncapped "land line" services. It is absurd how, while other countries continue to move forward, the US grants monopolies or near monopolies to Internet providers yet lets them chip away at the "service" imposing restrictions designed only to aid their business model and keep them from building out their equipment.

I was also surprised to see the standard stated as above 3Mbs. By that standard I don't even have the Internet, nor do some of my friends who live in very well served cities (although we might both be considered to have access to LTE). Actually AT&T does offer me a higher priced 6Mbs service where I live, but I stopped buying that when it was determined that they were not really providing more than I am getting with the 3Mbs service and they just laughed and said the service never promised 6Mps, only "up to" 6Mbs.

Re:LTE

[h4rr4r]

Why not just run cable the 200 yards?

You can rent a ditchwitch and have it done in short order.

Re:LTE

[Rei]

Lol, how can you suck that bad in America? Here in Iceland we're approaching 80% of the population with 50-100mb *fiber*, despite having 1/10th the population density as the US. Even the capitol region's population density is only about the average population density of America, and that's only about 70% of the population; the largest city outside the capitol region is six hours drive away and has only 17k people. They're currently stringing connections in Vestfirðir, a large, sparsely populated, mountainous region where the largest "city" is just over 3k people. This here is all just counting fiber connections, let alone DSL. And people generally get excellent net service through their cell phones as well (2g map, 3g map for one provider). I've used Facebook on hikes, from the top of mountains before. And it's all cheap, too.

What's up with that, America? Why do you neglect your infrastructure like that? Here we've got multi-kilometer mountain tunnels leading to towns of around 1000 people, and you can't even make it possible for 6% of your population to have 3Mbps *dsl*? Over your existing phone lines?

Re:LTE

[Anonymous Coward]

... and isn't your country even more bankrupt than ours?

Re:LTE

[h4rr4r]

The USAs population density is highly misleading on one hand.

I have lived in places with my nearest neighbor sharing a wall at one extreme, and in another location where the nearest neighbor was 3 miles away.

On the other the USAs phone lines are also crap. Very few here want to pay the taxes or any other of that "evil socialist" stuff like that required to have modern infrastructure.

Re:LTE

[Skarecrow77]

LTE is not a high speed internet connection. not in any way that truly matters. Not while the standard cap is 1-2GB/month. yes you can buy more, have you seen the price on that? 5GB/month (which is still an absurdly low cap) contracts end up about the same as my CAR payment, several times higher than my landline internet.

LTE is a top fuel dragster. it's really impressive for a quarter mile. then you have to take it apart and rebuild it for a month.

"look how fast I can download over my phone!"
"yeah. that's great. you've already hit your cap for the month. it took 13 and half minutes."

what is the point of "high speed" internet that you can't use?

Re:LTE

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple. There is nothing in it for the rich. In the US, if the rich don't get richer, then the project won't get approved. Unless one of those 19 million is related to the Koch brothers (they aren't), then there is zero incentive for some rich corporation to lay down the cable to provide high speed to those users. In Iceland, you are socialist, meaning projects are undertaken for the betterment of all Icelanders. In the US, it is the opposite, projects are only undertaken if the rich get richer.

Re:LTE

[HaZardman27]

Perhaps it has something to do with Iceland's ~100km^2 land area as opposed to the US's ~10m km^2 land area...

Re:LTE

[h4rr4r]

1. T-mobile is again offering unlimited, not sure how far there LTE rollout is.

2. same as car payment is very vague. Mine is 0, and has never been higher. So all my internet service bills exceed that. I know that a car payment on some cars exceeds $1000/month.

3. Some of us still have unlimited plans, and it looks like they might be coming back based on what sprint and tmobile are doing.

Re:LTE

[h4rr4r]

Land area does not matter one bit. Population density is it. You could have a country like Canada 9m km^2 and since the people are all basically in a 20 mile strip along the US border providing them with internet service is not as much of an issue.

Re:LTE

[h4rr4r]

100 mile strip I mean. Either way it means the vast majority of the population is in a small area.

Re:LTE

[NatasRevol]

Well, then the US is covered.

19M people is less than 10% of the nation.

Re:LTE

[Troyusrex]

Had you followed the links you would have seen that the US has "networks technically capable of 100 megabit-plus speeds to over 80 percent of the population through cable’s DOCSIS 3.0 rollout" which exactly matches your claims of what Iceland has. A surprising amount of those without broadband access are on tribal lands which are governed by different laws.

Not to say that the US couldn't do better on this front but the idea that Iceland is wonderful and the US "Suck(s) that bad" is hyperbole and ignores the facts.

Re:LTE

[Oligonicella]

You're a pretty tiny little country, true? Do you have an area comparable to say Oklahoma to Dakota that you fulfilled the promise of high speed to, or are you just conveniently forgetting that your entire country's population/economics/difficulties amount to that of one of our bigger cities?

Re:LTE

[oakgrove]

It's actually 5.9. This is a non-story unless people want to talk about LTE with data caps being counted as "broadband" in the same sense as traditional DSL and cable. Now that's a spin worth wringing one's hands over.

Re:LTE

[aicrules]

Just to point out, US of A has a population of 311 million. 19 million is about 6% of that. Which means 94% of US population does have access to broadband. Seems like that would have been some useful math for you to do prior to touting your country's amazing 80%. Though I do agree that 80% coverage in Iceland is not too shabby.

Re:LTE

[h4rr4r]

Way to miss the point.

I did not say that did it, I said that meant it was feasible. The fact that we failed to do so only speaks to our own failures.

Re:LTE

[ducomputergeek]

You need to fly into Kansas City, rent a car and then drive to Denver sometime. It would give you a clearer perspective on just how much bigger things can be over here.

Re:LTE

[DJRumpy]

It's not only the density issue, but the lack of competition. The government is fully to blame here. They gave monopolies to a single provider for various counties, and now those same companies have little reason to improve service. I've lived in a major metropolitan area for 20+ years. Initially I had a simple modem connection, did a small stint with an ISDN line, and then went to cable right around 2000. At that time, it was a 7Mb/s line. 12 years later, it is still the basic offering with incremental improvement on uplink speed and down speed (10 mb/s down and 128 up), or a hefty price increase to get the 'new' 20 Mb/s speed.

The US has fallen so far behind other developed countries due to the lack of competition it's just not funny anymore. Even the density problem would be resolved with more competition. By it's very nature, more competition brings advances far faster, cheaper production of the necessary materials, and a general lowering trend in price. We see this in almost every electronics industry, but in telecom, the price remains static, or has exploded instead with little actual improvement offered.

Look to any overseas country to see what true competition produces.

Re:LTE

[Anonymous Coward]

Iceland didn't bailout the banks and is recovering quite admirably. If the US doesn't fuck up the global economy by scamming everybody with worthless paper again, Iceland will be fine.

Re:LTE

[ducomputergeek]

We were also early adopters and one of the first to really connect people in our country with electricity and phone lines. Also we weren't bombed out twice last century and as such we have a lot of legacy infrastructure at this point. My grandmother didn't have a private line until the early 1990's. It was still party lines and rotary phones in that part of the country.

Re:LTE

[angelbar]

Seriusly? 200 yards? That's one problem that I see with the US, share a connection with a neighbor of yours. I know, I know the EULA's and the bad neighborhood's. http://www.ubnt.com/airmax#nanobridgem And figure out some sort of load balance.

Re:LTE

[Targon]

Have you looked at the size difference between Iceland and the USA? Averages are very misleading as well, because if 99 percent of the population lives in a city but that city only covers 1 percent of the size of the country, and broadband coverage is limited to the city, then you can say that while 99 percent of the population gets broadband, you can also say that 99 percent of the COUNTRY does not.

In the USA, there are large areas of low population density, where it would cost more to provide the service than the entire population of those towns would be able to pay, even if EVERY person were willing and able to pay for the service. You sound like you have never been here, but to get across many STATES here will take more than 12 hours of driving....consider that sort of distance, and the fact that it is over 3000 miles from coast to coast in the USA. When you get entire towns where the population is under 50 people, not households, but people, then you NEED the government to help subsidize offering services to these sorts of places.

Re:LTE

[Anonymous Coward]

Fool you once, shame on me. Fool you twice... ?

Re:LTE

[ukemike]

Maybe you aren't considering that Iceland is about the size of Arizona...

Re:LTE

[ukemike]

... and isn't your country even more bankrupt than ours?

I suppose you aren't to be blamed for the fact that the media has blacked out stories about Iceland for several years now. So it isn't your fault that you don't know that Icelanders threw out their government and decided that the people didn't owe the bad bank debt. So the banks in Iceland went bankrupt not the Icelandic people. In fact they are emerging from the financial turmoil better than the rest of us. I believe they are also prosecuting some of the CEO's responsible for the debacle in Iceland.

Re:LTE

[Targon]

There IS a basic concept that people who intentionally live in remote areas also ACCEPT the lack of services that living in a more populated area would provide. If you WANT to live deep in the woods, then you have to be willing to spend the money to install and maintain your own fiber optic lines from an area that has a connection, or not complain because YOU willingly are living that far away from where services are offered. In the same way that people in rural areas do not want their tax money going to pay for homeless shelters in cities, most people don't want to pay an extra $2000/year just so someone out in the middle of nowhere can have a high speed Internet connection. Broadband is not "a right", and the US government has not done anything to help providers, so who is going to pick up the bill?

CELLULAR based broadband is a problem in general, because with people moving around, excess bandwidth needs to be available EVERYWHERE, just in case some kid decides to drive somewhere and stream a movie. Now, I can see 802.22(not 802.11) fixing many problems when it comes to broadband availability, but until we see it implemented, I wouldn't count on it being the solution.

Re:LTE

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish I could get LTE. The best I can do is 3G....

"They must think the sun shines out o' your arse, sonny."

Try living in EDGE-land for awhile. Man, I can't wait for this Christmas when 'Return of the King' is finally released.

Re:LTE

[Stiletto]

The tired "population density" argument always comes up, and can be easily invalidated. If it was just population density, New Jersey would be a Mecca of ultra-high-speed Internet.

The USA's lack of broadband penetration compared to Europe and east Asia has very little to do with population density.

Re:LTE

[Anonymous Coward]

LTE isn't exactly what most would consider "broadband" due to the incredibly low caps and high price. If you only get 5 GB per month (or less) you aren't going to be using it for streaming movies or anything.

Pretty much what I was going to say. LTE = broadband (where available). LTE+cap = BS (anywhere available).

Re:LTE

[fa2k]

They should use: is high speed = min( advertised instantaneous speed, cap bytes * 8 / cap period ) > 3 Mbit/s

Re:LTE

[fa2k]

Hm, maybe too strict. Comcast wouldn't be high speed then: http://www.google.co.uk/#hl=en&output=search&q=250+gb+%2F1+month+in+bits+%2F+second
Strike that suggestion, but they should definitely include the caps in the consideration

Re:LTE

[Anonymous Coward]

Lol, how can you suck that bad in America? Here in Iceland we're approaching 80% of the population with 50-100mb *fiber*,

The US has States, no - Counties- that are bigger than your entire country.

Re:LTE

[mjr167]

However, you can use it to surf the internet and get email. Just because it isn't the right plan for you doesn't mean it isn't a good option for rural people with no access to cable.

Re:LTE

[mjr167]

So you are saying that we need a good bombing so we can get new infrastructure? Kind of like burning down the house so you can collect the insurance and build a new one?

Re:LTE

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't mean to sound like a dick but there is more fiber in America than Iceland will ever have you are a fucking idiot if you think your tiny ass country has anything on us. We have to cover way way way more area than you do it has nothing to do with population density.

Re:LTE

[NatasRevol]

Way to miss my point.

My point was that >90% coverage is not failure.

Re:LTE

[Targon]

Unlimited assumes there is excess bandwidth available to virtually all cell phone towers, or each tower can be configured to auto-throttle users based on demand so that their bandwidth limit is never reached. For providers that have been losing customers monthly, rather than gaining, it makes sense to offer what would normally be a losing proposition because they are desperate to get more revenue in the door. AT&T and Verizon would be able to solve the problem by offering different data SPEEDS based on what the customer would want to pay for, but they don't have the creativity to offer anything other than "top speed with data limits" as their way to keep people from using excessive amounts of bandwidth. There should be options, such as Unlimited base 3G speeds for $20/month, or 2GB of data at 7.2Mbps for $20, unlimited 7.2Mbps for $40/month, and other plans that take HSPA+ and LTE data speeds into account. Notice that cable and DSL providers don't give max speeds for the same prices, you get to pick what speed you want your unlimited data to run at, and if you want faster, you pay more. Even with FIOS, if you want the REALLY fast speeds, you have to pay a LOT for it.

Re:LTE

[petermgreen]

Two issues spring to mind

1: he probablly doesn't own all the land between his property and the nearest property
2: if the cableco won't serve his property over something as minor as 200 yards do you think they will really hook up his own cable to theirs and provide him with service? I very much doubt it.

So the only way I could see this working is if he knows the owners of a property who can get cable well enough to have them buy service on his behalf and either can persude the owners of the intervening land to let him run cables or is prepared to take the risk of running unauthorised cables along the road.

I'm sure there are close-knit rural communities where you could do what you suggested but I can imagine in others it being very difficult, especially if you are an outsider who has only recently moved into the community.

Re:LTE

[Jeremy Erwin]

And really .. WTF?? Anyone can search google and do most web browsing just fine with a 3Mb/s line. OK . .they can't get video. Tough shit. I'm not willing to subsidize their internet access so they can watch Jersey Shore on their PC. YouTube videos are mostly crap. TED is elitist/visionary crap.

Frankly, I don't think you have any idea of what 3 Mb/s is capable of, and what it is not capable of. If you want to volunteer a opinion about bandwidth requirements, I suggest you stick to what you have installed. How fast is your line? Is it fast enough for what you want to do? Do you videoconference, or play games online? If you degrade yourself enough to watch online video, what's the maximum resolution you can stream? What's stopping you from upgrading your line?

Re:LTE

[mcgrew]

Iceland: 39,770 square miles
Illinois: 57,914 square miles
USA: 3,794,101 square miles

Iceland: population 320,060
Illinois: 12,869,257
USA: population 314,215,000

A single one of the fifty states (a middle sized state) has more land mass than Iceland, but far fewer people. It's a hell of a lot easier to get broadband in a high density population than out in the boondocks. When you see the scale of the size of the US you can see why it's not as easy here as it is there.

Re:LTE

[Jeremy Erwin]

Yes. If having 40 times the population of Iceland counts as having far fewer people than Iceland.

Iceland has a population density somewhere between North Dakota's and Wyoming's.

Re:LTE

[icebraining]

On the other hand, "broadband" is 3mbps+, not 50-100mbps fiber as (parent claims) Iceland has.

Re:LTE

[petermgreen]

1: he probablly doesn't own all the land between his property and the nearest property

That should have said nearest propery with cable/

Re:LTE

[ravenscar]

The US has 9.8 million square kilometers to cover. I believe that equates to a little less area than 100 Icelands.

The cost/benefit of covering all that area with broadband covereage just doesn't hold up - unless you feel broadband is a right and think cost shouldn't come into play. The US obviously doesn't feel that way (for better or worse).

I'm not trying to argue any particular point of view - I'm just pointing out the massive scale of building out infrastructure for a country the size of the US. Yes, the country undertook some pretty massive infrastructure projects in the past, but that was when labor was cheap and people's lives had little value.

Re:LTE

[Rei]

at 3 Mbps? That's failure.

Re:LTE

[Rei]

Are you forgetting that the smaller a country, the less resources it has to dedicate to a given task?

Issues aren't of overall scale. They're per-capita and population-density-wise. And the comparison just makes America look like a backwater. Of course, most of your systems are like that. Like the fact that people in America still write checks for.. well, anything. Or that you can't manage to control identity theft because of your ludicrous SSN-as-an-identification-password no-single-authoritative-database system. Or on and on.

Re:LTE

[AmazingRuss]

What? There are brown people to bomb. We cant mess around with fibers.

Re:LTE

[AmazingRuss]

We pay plenty of taxes to cover all that. Unfortunately the money is spent on weapons.

Re:LTE

[Rei]

So your argument is that "while it's not the case now, a new tech just hit the market and so we're going to say that in 5 years when it rolls out everything will be different" is equivalent? Judging from history...

Re:LTE

[Rei]

That should have read, Judging from history...

Re:LTE

[Rei]

You need to fly to Keflavík, rent a car, and drive to Borgarfjörður Eystri some time (almost as far). It's not size, its' population density. More people = more resources to allocate to something. In fact, generally the benefit is *more* than linear; doing projects on a large scale is generally easier per-capita than on the small scale. And you really want to compare "ease of construction" across flat farmland to construction going past Eyjafjallajökull, Katla, and Vatnajökull, as well as the mountains in the east?

Re:LTE

[JazzLad]

Or just drive from top to bottom of Texas. One single state, over 900miles (almost 1500km to you non USA'ers). We're the second most populated state & 26th in population density (pretty much right smack in the middle).

Re:LTE

[Rei]

because if 99 percent of the population lives in a city but that city only covers 1 percent of the size of the country

Which would be a relevant point if I hadn't already mentioned that with my "capital region" comment which observed that even our "dense" region is no denser than the US average. Not to mention that just to get to the capital region, cables have to *cross the freaking North Atlantic*, then to get around the country, through rough volcanic terrain, and we have to import all of our electronics hardware and cabling.

You sound like you have never been here,

Hahahahahaa.... ;) Funny, that remark....

When you get entire towns where the population is under 50 people

Oh, so tiny! I've neeeeever seen a town that small before here in Iceland! Certainly not! All we have here are these gigantic coastal fishing metropolises and inland farming supercities...

then you NEED the government to help subsidize offering services to these sorts of places.

Biiiingo.

Re:LTE

[Anonymous Coward]

No, dumbass, he's saying that it's easier to build new infrastructure when you're starting from scratch than to upgrade existing infrastructure. Investing in your business goes against the all-too-common focus on short-term profits.

Re:LTE

[Rei]

It's not that big. About the size of Kentucky. But - key distinction - about 7-8 % of the population of Kentucky, with a crazy twisty unstable volcanic glaciated landscape, located in the middle of the North Atlantic.

The larger the project is, the easier it is per-capita. And unlike us, you don't have to ship in all your hardware and cabling and fund the laying of trans-atlantic data cables with the resources of a population smaller than the city of Santa Ana, California.

Re:LTE

[cpu6502]

19 million w/o broadband. That's fewer than the "50 million without healthcare" the Democrats were quoting during the Obamacare debates. Do we really think that broadband is more important initiative than people having health insurance/coverage?

ALSO: I find it odd the FCC defines broadband as 3 Mbit/s. That means I don't have broadband in my home even though what I do have (1 Mbit/s) is enough to watch videos on the internet. Hmmm. I consider it broadband (100 megahertz wide)..... certainly better than the narrowband (3 megahertz-wide) dialup I used to have.

And finally a lot of those 19 million live in remote areas like Wyoming, Idaho, Dakota, Arizona. They *choose* to live far away from conveniences. Not only do these 19 million lack broadband but also public water & sewer. Many can't even get TV reception since they are so far out. This is a LIFESTYLE CHOICE and we should respect it, rather than demand conformity. (And if these people don't like living in isolation, they can move closer to the nearest city.)

Re:LTE

[Rei]

Only in Alaska, where huge chunks of the state are just a couple counties, including one that's like half of the state. The largest county in the continental US is half the size of Iceland. Iceland is about the size of Kentucky.

Key difference: while Iceland has 1/100th the area of the US, it has 1/1000th the population to fund such construction projects, which furthermore mean importing everything across the North Atlantic, laying transatlantic data cables, and running domestic cables across what's predominantly unstable twisty mountainous wet volcanic/glaciated terrain.

Re:LTE

[Rei]

The US has 9.8 million square kilometers to cover. I believe that equates to a little less area than 100 Icelands.

And the US has 1000 times the population to do it, gets economies of scale and isn't isolated on mountainous, volcanic, glacial terrain on an island in the middle of the North Atlantic. That's hardly an excuse.

Re:LTE

[SillyHamster]

Frankly, I don't think you have any idea of what 3 Mb/s is capable of, and what it is not capable of. If you want to volunteer a opinion about bandwidth requirements, I suggest you stick to what you have installed. How fast is your line? Is it fast enough for what you want to do? Do you videoconference, or play games online? If you degrade yourself enough to watch online video, what's the maximum resolution you can stream? What's stopping you from upgrading your line?

As someone who's lived with 56kbps dialup, 1/1.5Mbps DSL, and 10+ Mbps cable, there's nothing wrong with what he said.

You get the majority of the benefits of "high speed internet" at 768 kbps. Now you can browse text pages and google quickly. Watching video at that speed does suck, but you can still watch it either by waiting or by degrading quality (or both). It's generally enough for online gaming, though you definitely don't want to share it with a roommate/family member streaming video at the same time.

Yes, it's nice to have "instant" downloads, high def video, and so on - just like it's nice to have a gaming rig with cutting edge CPU/GPU and 3 monitors. We call that a "luxury".

Re:LTE

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you! As someone suffering this exact fate (and cable going less than a 1/4 mile away) my choices are AT&T 3G or satellite. Satellite latency makes it unusable for work and the Caps on AT&T make it useless for about everything else. I feel like I am back in the 90s with internet access sold in hours because I'm forced to ration or face insane bills from AT&T.

Re:LTE

[cpu6502]

>>>Lol, how can you suck that bad in America? Here in Iceland we're approaching 80% of the population with 50-100mb *fiber*, despite having 1/10th the population density as the US.

How can you suck so bad in EUROPE? Over in Greece my relatives can't get anything faster than ISDN (128k). I hear it's just as bad in rural parts of Portugal, Spain, Italy, Turkey, Ireland, etc. I have fiber in my American neighborhood, but these poor europeans can't get better than a few kilobits.

Sad. (I'm making a point here: The citizens of the U.S. is no worse-off than many citizens of the EU. We both have the same average broadband speed according to speedtest's published studies. Furthermore comparing an island nation to a continent-spanning nation is silly. We have people living on million-acre homesteads..... an hour from the next nearest family. So far out they can't even get TV or radio reception. Does Iceland have anything like that?)

You should compare like to like: U.S. to EU to Canada to Russia to China.....

Re:LTE

[NatasRevol]

So, >90% of amercians can get >3Mpbs.

How is that failure?

Re:LTE

[Rei]

Because 3Mbps sucks? Why not just say if they've got 56kbps, they're golden?

Re:LTE

[Zadaz]

Iceland has 1% the land mass of the US. I could cover the infrastructure costs of that with my pocket change.

Try covering 3.5 million square miles with up-to-date infrastructure sometime.

Re:LTE

[NatasRevol]

Wow, you're not spoiled, are you.

Re:LTE

[Rei]

Only by virtue of living in a country with half-decent infrastructure.

Re:LTE

[QuantumRiff]

I don't live in the woods. I live right between two towns that are 6-8 miles apart from each other. I have a MAJOR interstate (I-90) 3/4 of a mile from my house. I live 4 miles south of the exit where metro Madison, WI starts (with its 400,000 people) . I have a choice between Cell phones with 5Gb data caps, or rural wireless over 802.11b.. I currently pay $65/month for 1Mb/s. And its spotty, and full of random high latencies. Somehow, ATT manages to stretch 48,000 feet of phone line between us and the central office. ATT guy laughed, and said no equipment had been updated at our CO in over 5 years, and there was no plan to change it. My neighborhood has 50 homes, and Charter runs a fiber right down a road 1/8th a mile away, to go to a Verizon 4G tower. After I finally found someone to talk to (good luck actually finding anyone at Charter to talk to besides tech support, they don't give any info on local offices) the said they "MAY" bring cable to our neighborhood, if I could get every single house in my neighborhood to sign a thing promising to sign up for triple play for 2 years..

I have friends in similar pockets of houses in rural areas with 25Mb fiber, cable, all sorts of things. Just depends on randomness. There is no one to contact to request, or get future rollout plans, because national companies forward all calls to central call centers, and don't know how to even contact local offices. Local offices are very, very quiet, and don't publish info, or numbers. If you do get someone, most of the time, you won't get answers from them. In our state, they pretty much went away with local oversight, and now give out statewide franchises. So you don't even get to show up to town hall meetings of the franchise board..

Re:LTE

[Jeremy Erwin]

A lot of the video websites are optimized for at least 1 Mb, not 768 kps. Short videos are watchable, but buffering is involved. The real problem though, is than many of the streaming sites are supported by video ads--which really screw with the buffers.)
(I just updated from 768 kbs. Some services that I would have liked to use were impractical. And I'm single-- not a "household.")

I think it's a great benefit to businesses, educational institutions and governments to be able to expect a certain minimum bandwidth.

Re:LTE

[Darinbob]

A lot of DSL customers essentially have somethng similar, 1.5Mbps down to 300Kbps or so. And that is perfectly adequate for the majority of people. Consider how many people are still on dialup because even the slower broadband connections can be expensive, from $30-$50. And DSL is common because it relies on infrastructure that already exists to almost every house, the phone lines. Cable is rarer because you often either need to be a cable subscriber to get it or pay a higher non-subscriber rate, plus you need to be in a town with a cable company that offers internet. If someone has super fast cable internet they should be glad for it and not act like people who don't have it are living in squalor. vDSL is nice, I just got that this year, but it covers a small number of potential customers because it requires newer infrastructure.

We'd also be a lot better off if all these people with super fast internet weren't wasting the bandwidth on streaming video during peak hours.

Re:LTE

[roc97007]

Well... um...

Actually, that's pretty cool.

Re:LTE

[Anonymous Coward]

If they put up an LTE tower in a rural area fewer people are subscribing to the service than in a city, and thus the bandwidth per user may be higher. If a township is small it might be cheaper to wire up a central point and then use wireless infrastructure for the last mile.

Re:LTE

[roc97007]

> and you can't even make it possible for 6% of your population to have 3Mbps *dsl*? Over your existing phone lines?

I'm told the problem there, us being the first to have widespread telephone and all, is that we have a lot of ancient infrastructure still in use, which was never envisioned to carry data. I've heard rumors of 100 year old wire still in place. So yeah, no 3Mbps over existing phone lines in some areas, for a rather bizarre value of "existing".

I personally have fiber to the house, but I admit that's not widespread in this country. Putting up new infrastructure in a country this big with this number of households is not a trivial thing.

I read somewhere that some former eastern bloc countries actually have a more modern telephone infrastructure than ours, by virtue of the fact they had to start from scratch after the soviet union broke up, whereas we have all this legacy stuff still in place from early last century.

Re:LTE

[morgauxo]

The government is FULLY to blame?

First, who elected the government?
Second, Didn't those monopolies begin with people not wanting the precious view of their communities ruined by too many wires running on too many poles? Sure... no doubt those monopolies are more than entrenched enough now to simply buy any politicians that might try to change thins but it was the town halls, community planning organizations, etc... who made that happen in the first place. And those are mostly made up of and supported by all the ordinary citizens that live in those communities.

Re:LTE

[morgauxo]

Too late! Homeland Security already bagged him.

Re:LTE

[h4rr4r]

Very true. If I could get 5G at 4G and unlimited 3G that would be enough.

Which is actually what T-mobile is doing, I think.

Re:LTE

[aaarrrgggh]

No problem. Rent a directional boring machine rather than a trencher. Go deep.

Ok, maybe it is cheaper to stick a high-gain wireless link and get a neighbor to put one on their property... But not nearly as fun...

Re:LTE

[morgauxo]

Yes but the intelligence, ability to solve problems and general sanity of any group of human beings goes down, not up as the group grows. Just watch what happens as any small business becomes a large one and see if you disagree.

Re:LTE

[morgauxo]

May I come clean your couch for you and keep what money I find beneath the cushions please?

Re:LTE

[pubwvj]

"Here in Iceland we're approaching 80% of the population with 50-100mb *fiber*, despite having 1/10th the population density as the US."

Thank you for your uninformed opinion. You're comparing apples to orangoutangs. Iceland is a teeny, tiny country with people living closely together and a small population. The United States is enormously vaster with great distances between towns and villages. 19 million people are a drop in the bucket in the United States. 19 million people is nearly 60 times the population of Iceland. In Iceland most of you are in the urban areas which are easy to connect with high speed internet, cell phones, etc. In the United States we have vast areas with widely spaced populations that make it unfeasible to lay fiber everywhere for everyone.

Maybe someday arrogant people like you will get a clue and be able to do math. Doubtful.

Re:LTE

[Rei]

with people living closely together

Directly after you quoted:

despite having 1/10th the population density

You know that there are a lot of Americans out there struggling to overcome the stereotype that Americans are stupid, right? Please don't undercut them.

Höfuðborgarsvæði is 63% of Iceland's population (aka, well under 80%) and 189 people per square kilometer is only the population density of Indiana (yes, even our capitol region is surprisingly low density - for example, here's the president's residence, Bessastaðir, which is perhaps 7km from downtown Reykjavík (Miðbær)). But 63% is well under the percent that have fiber. You can expand to Suðurnes to get Keflavík and Grindavík and parts of Suðurland to get Hveragerði and Selfoss and with parts of Vesturland to get Akranes and Borgarnes... but that's still not enough. Yes, 1/3rd of Iceland's population is in one city, even if you assume that everyone in and around it has fiber, you really have to go out into "the boonies" to get 80%. And that's for *fiber*. On a mountainous volcanic country in the middle of the North Atlantic.

Re:LTE

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe that these providers typically use what's available. If it's DSL, it would use the existing lines, if it's cable or fiber, it would be buried.

Re:LTE

[Adriax]

I wouldn't consider 3 blocks from disneyland as rural america (my old apartment).
My new apartment (in Wyoming) has broadband because I happened to be on the right side of the street near the middle of town.

And true, it is a lifestyle choice to live in wyoming. I personally prefer the lifestyle of having a stable job in a decently populated area where $1200/month gets you a large house, not a 1 bedroom apartment with no insulation or AC in the middle of 110F heat.

Re:LTE

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah yes, the old "fuck the hermits in the desert" argument.

Would you happen to have any NUMBERS to support this?

Re:LTE

[pubwvj]

You just don't get it do you. Iceland is a tiny country with dense population centers. It's easy to wire Iceland. Go do the math for offering the same thing in the USA and then take away your beloved government subsidy to boot.

Re:LTE

[datavirtue]

Everyone has access to some type of internet connection if they can afford it. I have to pay $80 a month for 10GB, but I would rather pay half that for unlimited. Unlike healthcare, government intervention is not likely to reduce quality or availability as it would with healthcare. Healthcare is extremely complicated, broadband policy is not. We have done this before, remember land lines? Now companies practically beg you to install a land line for $15 a month. Decent broadband could be like this too with the stroke of a pen, healthcare not so much. So it isn't really a good comparison, nor is it insightful.

Re:LTE

[crafty.munchkin]

More countries need to follow Iceland's lead!

Re:LTE

[datavirtue]

Because your country is the size of one of our states dude, get out a map!

Re:LTE

[datavirtue]

I watched YouTube for the first time on my TV the other night for an hour, resulting from one search: "PBS." I didn't even scratch the surface, it's free, and the family had a great time. When you sit down in front of YouTube it may be mostly crap, it doesn't hold true for me. I have watched hours of videos from eminent professors, Feynman, Friedman, Sowell, etc... in recent weeks on YouTube for free.

Re:LTE

[Anonymous Coward]

you do realize that ethernet only goes 100 meters (slightly more than 100 yards) before loosing signal don't you?

Re:LTE

[Anonymous Coward]

Kind of like burning down the house so you can collect the insurance and build a new one?

Yes, if you make it look like an electrical thing.

Re:LTE

[Rei]

You just don't get it, do you. Iceland distinctly does not have "dense population centers". It has one population center of only moderate density, and then the rest is "the boonies", as you'd say. And the bigger the country, the *easier* it is to do, because not only do you have more population funding it, but large projects get economies of scale.

Re:LTE

[Rei]

Also, as for your "tiny country" remark, you're quite overstating the case. Iceland is 40% bigger than Ireland. It's a longer drive from Keflavík to Borgafjörður Eystri than from Cleveland to Philadelphia, for example. To reiterate, the US has only 100 times the land area as Iceland. But the US has *1000* times the population to fund projects, with economies of scale, and isn't on a volcanic rock out in the middle of the Atlantic.

Re:LTE

[hazydave]

200 yards from houses with cable... I'd offer to pay one of neighbors broadband bills (or pay for the upgrade to the fastest available at their house), and set up their wireless, and wash their car, and give their dogs a bath, in exchange for letting me set up a house to house 802.11n link (given where my house is, probably at 900MHz.... trees eat 2.4GHz).

Where I am, I can get Verizon 3G pretty well, but it's way too slow and, of course, there are tiny caps. So I'm on satellite, which has a 550MB daily cap before being POTS-i-fied for 24 hours (no caps between 2AM and 7AM). That's 1.5Mb/s down and somewhere around 500kb/s up, the fastest currently from Hughesnet. That's $120/month. They claim a speed upgrade is coming this fall... a way to tear through that 550MB even faster, I'm guessing.

In theory, Verizon will have every cell in their network on LTE before the end of next year. But their pricing precludes any use of LTE for home connections. Eventually, maybe, we'll see 802.22 providers -- white space radio isn't practical for mobile, and there's a ton of potential bandwidth, and the frequencies are the correct ones for rural and other underserved homes. But that's probably a few years away, the way these things move, even with last least relaxation of the white space rules.

I can see a local telephone node from my mailbox, and yeah, it's DSL-capable (a phone tech even told me, once, the board set and software revision needed). But just try finding anyone who'll sell you a DSL connection where the DSL boards aren't already installed. I mean, if they can't also sell TV, they're not interested.

Re:LTE

[hazydave]

Most of Iceland would fit in my livingroom... but yeah, it's a recent thing in the USA to ignore our infrastructure entirely. After all, rich people can always get very good internet connections.

And it's corporate greed. Where I live, I could get a decent DSL connection. But the telecom won't sell me one, because they just don't see any point in installing DSL support (the local node is already in place -- I can see it from my driveway, and it is DSL compatible) for, at best, a couple of houses. That's the private sector for you -- they cherry pick for the highest profit per installation, and there's no requirement that they cover those who are slightly less profitable.

Re:LTE

[hazydave]

There are only about 800,000 Native Americans living on tribal lands, based on the last census. Even if no tribal lands had any form of broadband, that still leaves a heck of a lot of us white-eyes without broadband.

Re:LTE

[Anonymous Coward]

Auburn California, population 13,600, doesn't have broadband except DSL for a few people near highway 49. These people
aren't out in the sticks, they're along I-80, a major freeway and they're 30 miles from the STATE CAPITOL. This is entirely because
AT&T doesn't want to run DSL as the zipcode already has DSL in parts thus it gets credit for serving the whole zipcode.

Re:LTE

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you actually ever been to any of the rural states that you mention in your post? Seriously? No water or sewer, not to mention broadband access or TV? WTF? A very large percentage of customers in North Dakota (I live in ND, so have first person knowledge of this state) have access to easily *more* than 3Mbps, due to the willingness of the rural telcos to deploy fiber rather than rebuild or replace the aging copper plant. I would be willing to bet that the 19 million are most likely in inner city areas.

Oh, and we choose to live here because the quality of life is so much better than in the cities. Lower crime rates, safer areas to raise kids, and a less stressful lifestyle (not to mention more freedoms) are just a few reasons to get out of the urban areas. Not that I am inviting more people to come here: please stay where you are so you don't wreck it for us.

Re:LTE

[SillyHamster]

I think it's a great benefit to businesses, educational institutions and governments to be able to expect a certain minimum bandwidth.

The groups that can really use that "minimum bandwidth" usually have the sense to locate themselves where it can be economically provided.

Some Americans like living far from human civilization. Part of that means being very far away from infrastructure, which means no "affordable" high speed internet. That's simply a tradeoff. It's not an indictment of American society - people are exercising their liberty within their economic constraints. (Economic constraints not being optional)

Re:LTE

[Anonymous Coward]

YTF should taxes go towards building Verizon's equipment?

there's always a bottom 5%

[Jerry Smith]

Especially the rural area are a bit difficult to service (yes I read part of the article). On the other hand: people that choose to live there, do they nééd fixed-line access?

Re:there's always a bottom 5%

[Anonymous Coward]

They need to have the option to pay the telco for the lines - even if it's in the $100,000 price range to run fiber. Communities band together to get stuff like that done.

Re:there's always a bottom 5%

[drinkypoo]

I cannot get the speeds now defined as broadband where I live. The fastest thing I can buy is 2Mbps for over $100/mo. For $50/mo I get 768k bursting to 1.5Mbps delivered from the top of my local volcano and bounced in from four mountaintops away. AT&T owns literally every fiber link into my county. It's cheaper for them to do this than to buy it from the one AT&T reseller who operates here, or god forbid, directly from AT&T. And the line going up the volcano used to fail all the time, in spite of it not being in a particularly challenging location to maintain (it runs through scrub, not a forest, and there are access roads.)

You can get cable internet or DSL within a bowshot. I'm just getting fucked over.

Re:there's always a bottom 5%

[KillaBeave]

The problem generally isn't the communities of more than 1000, it's all the dispersed "neighborhoods" in the rural parts. Back in my hometown there's multiple rural parts that probably have around 500 or so people living in them, but they're all on between 5-20 acres ... with tracts of farmland thrown in for good measure. The houses will generally cluster in groups of 5 or 6 along a stretch of road, each one on multiple acres and these clusters will be a mile or two apart form each other. Thus far it hasn't been feasible (read profitable) to run cable lines out there between these dispersed clusters of houses and this is only a few miles (about 3-5) out of town where broadband is available. It's not like they are in the middle of nowhere, but they aren't organized into communities either.

If I still lived there I would want a house out there. It's a really good life, quiet, peaceful plenty of room for the kids and dogs to play. But in reality I would have to buy a house in town because of lack of broadband. My brother that still lives back home is currently in the same situation ... and he's buying in town.

Re:there's always a bottom 5%

[alen]

and add to the fact that the small towns hate big companies and make them fund yarn museums for the privilege of running their lines

Re:there's always a bottom 5%

[h4rr4r]

Good life?
If you like having no cultural events, no museums, nothing to do at all. I grew up in that environment and I much rather drive 4 hours to hunt than every time I need groceries.

My current home is 10 minutes to the grocery store, in a quite neighborhood, with a pool and lots of place to play for kids and animals.

Re:there's always a bottom 5%

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other hand: people that choose to live there, do they nééd fixed-line access?

Your argument about "choosing" to live there is flawed. This assumes that broadband was even publicly available when people moved to a rural area. Many people, including my parents, lived in the country before dial-up was even common place. And they "choose" to stay because they can't afford to move into an area with broadband. Besides, its hard to justify moving just because you want to get high-speed internet.

Re:there's always a bottom 5%

[Anonymous Coward]

You think that's bad, try building your house in a swamp.

Re:there's always a bottom 5%

[the plant doctor]

On the other hand: people that choose to live there, do they nééd fixed-line access?

Except we didn't have this attitude toward electricity and telephone. We made sure that everyone was brought up to par with everyone else in rural areas.

I'm sorry to see that we have this attitude toward Internet connections now. What has happened since the Rural Electrification Act that we find it acceptable to say "they chose to live there, therefore should go without"?

Re:there's always a bottom 5%

[h4rr4r]

I disagree on the last point. I bought a house recently and would not even consider one without FIOS anymore than I would consider one without running water and electricity.

Re:there's always a bottom 5%

[h4rr4r]

A massive political shift to the right is what happened.
Just 20 some years ago conservatives were the ones who were pushing for everyone to be required to be insured for their health as they were for their cars. Today that is seen as almost socialism.

Re:there's always a bottom 5%

[Troyusrex]

Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up.

Re:there's always a bottom 5%

[Ag0n]

Actually the Rural areas are generally the easiest from what I've seen out here in North Dakota. Many farmsteads have fiber run to them because it's easy to run cable in ditches where there are no buildings, gaslines, plumbing, and other such hazards to laying cable that there are with populated areas. However, some other members of my family haven't been as lucky buying a house in a new development. They don't have the ability to get phone or cable without paying a $5,000 fee to the cable company because there aren't enough people living out there to justify them laying cable as of yet.

Re:there's always a bottom 5%

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in a "Rural Area". TWO MILES from Silicon Valley!!!!!!!

I cannot get broadband, other than 4G LTE, and, trust me, it does NOT count as broadband!!!

Re:there's always a bottom 5%

[CheshireDragon]

FiOS was my whole deciding factor when I moved. My one place had Time Warner Cable and they were just awful. Cutting out between 11pm and 2-3am at least 3-4 nights a week and my online time was between 10p and 2a. So yes, it pissed me off quite a bit when I was paying 50$ for 15Mbit service and not even being able to use it. There was no one else to get internet from and Time Warner's excuse month after month was they were upgrading. Which was bullshit. I think that is their default response to constantly shitty service.
When my lease was up I specifically looked for a place that had FiOS. I found one, have been there 3yrs and I had one hiccup about a year ago. It was the router and if I unplugged and plugged back in it would work for 20min. Did that for 2 days until I got the new one and haven't had a problem since.

Re:there's always a bottom 5%

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, are you even serious? You think farmers keeping an eye on commodities prices can do it on DIALUP? You think technical writers working from home don't need teleconferencing? You think elderly and disabled people need to get dropped 15 times on a dialup modem while trying to connect to the Social Security Administration (which more and more is REQUIRING stuff to be done on the net)?

Re:there's always a bottom 5%

[Targon]

You choose to live there, so you either buy, install, and maintain your own fiber to where you live, or accept the higher prices. Basically, it is like intentionally moving into a prison block, then complaining that you have to be worried about getting raped. If you don't like being out of range of good broadband, then MOVE.

Re:there's always a bottom 5%

[Targon]

It is called the government running at a deficit, and people not being happy with the fact. FAST Internet is also seen as a luxury, not a necessity. There is no human health risk in not having an Internet connection.

Re:there's always a bottom 5%

[Jeremy Erwin]

In prison, shouldn't the guards be responsible for protecting the inmates from rape? Now, I know the US prison system is supposed to be a third world hellhole, but really, whose fault is that? Not the prisoner's, certainly. Fix it, please...

Re:there's always a bottom 5%

[__aaeihw9960]

If you don't like being out of range of good broadband, then MOVE.

And, targon, what do you suggest if everyone who lives in the country decides to move? You do realize where your food comes from, right?

Re:there's always a bottom 5%

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you sell the family farm that was in your family for generations when you picked up and moved to get FiOS? No, you moved from an apartment.

Re:there's always a bottom 5%

[Targon]

Farmers are too busy to worry about sitting on the Internet. 802.22 wireless will solve most of these issues if/when it gets deployed. It may not be good for mobile devices, but service to the home will work.

Re:there's always a bottom 5%

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in an area that the FCC says is covered by Cable (charter) Broadband. I can attest that Cable does not come anywhere near me (15+ miles to the nearest cable TV service, and nearly 20 to the nearest Cable Internet service). Yet because the cable co turned in information that states that I should be able to get cable where I live, the Government WON'T even consider doing anything to assist me in getting broadband to my area.

DSL? U-Verse(AT&T's psudo fiber)? Fiber? None of these are available from AT&T in this area. Even the local city has section that cannot get DSL or U-Verse. Fiber is non-existant unless you require a full OC-1 or greater line.

4G-LTE doesn't exist outside the "big 3" cites downstate in Michigan, and AT&T's 4g (3G+ enhancements) doesn't cover my area like they claim. I live in a small 5-house dead zone for such services, including those provided by Verizon who happen to share the same cell tower. Topography, and vegetation, are factors here. Why would they fix something for a measly 5 households?

Satellite? What a joke. While is MIGHT be available to some people around me, I have vegetation that is blocking my access that I cannot cut down (not on my property).

So what can I get? I can get Dialup. I can get ISDN (though AT&T won't install it any more according to my ISP). Dialup gets me about 26.4K because the lines are so bad, and AT&T has either pair-gained or Multiplexed my line. ISDN, which is what I currently have, and have had for 12 years works, but 128Kb is not enough to do much any more. A good example is the /. itself. 12 years ago, it took a minute or less to load, now it takes nearly 4 minutes to load.

I can't use the online education options. They require 3Mb+ broadband. If I were to become unemployed the State uses an online Unemployment system, which will not load over dialup, and barely loads over ISDN. I would have to travel nearly 30 miles to get to a Wi-Fi hotspot to get online to file my Unemployment paperwork each week to collect my Unemployment Insurance.

Where do I live? 14 miles outside the local City limits, but in a small-ish community of about 100 households clustered around a small lake. We have phone service, and according to the codes in AT&T's computer the RT is all that needs an upgrade to offer us DSL or U-Verse. AT&T has stated that they have no plans to upgrade the equipment. According to several reports prior to 2010, AT&T claimed that my area could also get DSL. Just like the Cable company reports to the FCC claim that I can get cable.

I checked with my county and township. There is a franchise agreement between charter and them to provide cable services. Locking out competition. There is a franchise agreement with AT&T for phone services. Again, locking out competition... for phone service. Both Charter and AT&T have a history of litigation against anyone who trying to install their own lines for 'municipal' broadband.

So, what should those of us who are under-served or not-served do? It has little to do with where we live and a lot to do with what is profitable for the corporations to provide.

Re:there's always a bottom 5%

[Anonymous Coward]

>If you like having no cultural events, no museums, nothing to do at all. I grew up in that environment and I much rather drive 4 hours to hunt than every time I need groceries.

Sounds awesome to me. I'd much rather drive once or twice a year to see museums, and drive 15 minutes to get groceries than fight traffic 2 times a day to go to work.

The best part is the government leaves you alone, both physically and they hardly tax you, too. :)

Re:there's always a bottom 5%

[h4rr4r]

If you are driving 15 minutes to get groceries you are not living out in the boonies.

Re:there's always a bottom 5%

[bbelt16ag]

well at my mom's place in ruar ocala national forest, atleast on the top tip of it we get some service.. They are using ATT though i am not sure of their caps. I did however show them there is infrastucture they can buy to fix the weak signal, as long as they have a signal... /Wireless-Extenders prepaid-card dualbandbooster

Re:there's always a bottom 5%

[bbelt16ag]

sorry links went away new to this... http://www.amazon.com/Wireless-Extenders-YX026-CEL-Directional-Outdoor/dp/B0028Y4BL0/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1345126337&sr=8-8&keywords=femtocell http://www.amazon.com/900-USB-Connect-Prepaid-Card/dp/B0046REQWQ/ref=sr_1_9?s=wireless&ie=UTF8&qid=1345136922&sr=1-9&keywords=mobile+broadband http://www.amazon.com/Wireless-Extenders-YX540-Dual-Band-Booster/dp/B003U4TLL2/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1345126337&sr=8-6&keywords=femtocell

Re:there's always a bottom 5%

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree that this should be a free market thing. If you don't like the downsides of living in the country, please move. Don't force me to pay for your internet. The bullshit line about "that's where food comes from" is just lame. I don't mind paying .1% more for food so farmers can buy an internet connection. Most of the people living in rural areas are not farmers.

Farmers are too busy to worry about sitting on the Internet.

Farmers are insanely busy. I haven't lived in a rural area for 20 years, but even then they used lots of technology. They make small profits off of large quantities of goods. They watch commodity prices very closely. Internet access is critical to their business. The internet is not just for porn and netflix.

Rural folk

[skipkent]

There are about 48 millions Americans in rural areas, so about half of them can't get high speed access. I'd say that isn't a huge deal, I'm guessing most of these people are either too poor to get it, or wouldn't care about faster speeds in the first place. Which is probably why no one has bothered to bring the link to them.

Re:Rural folk

[Anonymous Coward]

Errr...no.

Speaking as one who just moved away from a rural area, a decent broadband connection would have been highly desirable for both work and personal reasons, and I would have (and could've afforded to have) paid out the nose for it.

The lack of broadband access in rural areas has nothing whatsoever to do with whether the rural community wants / needs / can afford access; rather, it is a function of whether the telecoms can be bothered (they cannot.)

Re:Rural folk

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit - you live in the city don't you? The problem is that it isn't profitable for an ISP to run physical lines when it's a couple miles between customers. It takes an awful long time to recoup installation costs of $2500+ per customer. If offered 20Mbit internet, most would jump at the opportunity. Would you rather drive 15 miles round trip to rent a Redbox movie, drive 60 miles round trip to a theater, or stream Netflix? On top of that, these people likely drive a pickup or SUV that gets no more than 20mpg - $50/mo is pocket change compared to the monthly fuel bill.

Re:Rural folk

[MickyTheIdiot]

Personally, I would place access to decent internet one of the #1 priorities if you want to get industry and business into a certain area. In those areas it is already a necessity. That's why comments like this one (as well as the belief in some circles that money put into broadband development is wasted) baffle me. If you want quality of life to improve in these areas you need to get them the basics. Decent internet access is now one of those basics.

Re:Rural folk

[h4rr4r]

20Mb internet is available, and offered. It just costs tens of thousands to setup and several hundreds to a few thousands a month.

Just like the cost to put in your own well, septic, and everything else you need when you live in the country that you don't in the city, it is expensive.

Re:Rural folk

[Anonymous Coward]

And those costs are exponentially greater than what it costs in an urban environment because the provider has absorbed the cost of deploying the infrastructure. If living expenses in rural areas were exponentially greater than what they are in urban areas, then the outrageous costs for broadband could be justified but it's not. With some reasonable planning on the providers part, they can deploy infrastructure that they won't have to replace for decades, just like they have done with most of the POTS system.

Most of those examples are one time costs and can last for decades before they need to be replaced. Sure, the septic needs to be pumped every once in a while, but if you're really that hard up for cash, you can do it yourself. In the city most of those things become monthly or quarterly recurring costs instead of capital investments.

captcha: industry

Re:Rural folk

[Targon]

It IS an investment, but you can't invest if you have no money. There is always a balance that needs to be struck between how much something costs, and the payoff, and if it is more expensive than the long-term returns, then it is questionable at best to invest in it. Now, what happens with businesses and tax incentives by states is that there is lost tax revenues from the business not paying as much if any taxes, but all the employees who now have work in the state now will be paying taxes, plus the supporting businesses(food industry for example) increasing profits, which in turn means more tax revenues. So, it is a risk to offer tax breaks, but if a business does well, all those employees and other economic benefits make it an acceptable risk.

So, what benefit is there to providing broadband to very rural areas if it does not directly or even indirectly boost the economy of that area. If only three people end up with work or extra work in an area due to providing broadband, that is not enough of a benefit to make it worth the $100,000+ expense needed to bring in broadband, plus the ongoing expenses. You should also keep in mind that since most states are running a budget deficit as well, it isn't as if there is a lot of money available to pay for what goes on in other states.

It is like all the money that has been given to help the starving children in Ethiopia....after all these decades, and all that money spent, has there been ANY improvement in the situation there? The idea of charity, or investments, is that there SHOULD be some benefit and hopefully long term improvements. If there have been no significant improvements, then what's the point? Giving welfare is the same way, people should not be on welfare their entire lives, and if the people on welfare do not give back to the community, then why again is the money being given in the first place, why not just let those people be homeless if they are not willing to work?

Re:Rural folk

[desdinova 216]

the money exists but is being used for Payoffs/campaign contributions *bribes* to politicians, and Salaries to C*O's

So there are two groups ...

[Anonymous Coward]

There are those who are stuck on a reservation, and those who chose to live where they do. The first group has a legitimate beef. Why should I have to pay to support the second group's lifestyle choice. By the way, it's mine, and dial up is still completely adequate for SMTP, though harder to get. In the sticks is a lifestyle choice, that half a billion people worldwide have chosen to flee.

Re:So there are two groups ...

[SuricouRaven]

Have you seen modern spam and mailing lists? Two k of text, and a couple of meg of embedded graphics. Broadband is so common now, people are forgetting to conserve.

Re:So there are two groups ...

[Anonymous Coward]

There are those who are stuck on a reservation, and those who chose to live where they do.

Ever considered that there are people living in rural areas who:

1. aren't living on a reservation but are unable to move due to financial constraints, caring for family etc?
2. that have chosen to live in a rural area but would still like/benefit from broadband access.

Re:So there are two groups ...

[ad454]

Agreed. I am willing to pay more in taxes to subsidise equivalent infastructure services to those who choose to live in rural areas, once those in rural areas pay to subsidise us in urban areas with similar air quality, space, crime rates, etc.

Re:So there are two groups ...

[Thorodin]

Stuck on a reservation? Can you elaborate? I do not know of anywhere in the US where you are forced to live in one place.

Re:So there are two groups ...

[MightyYar]

I'd argue that it is in society's interests to have well-educated, content farmers - even if that means we pay a little extra for things.

Re:So there are two groups ...

[MickyTheIdiot]

There are well-to-do persons living in some of these non-broadband areas. Here in Indiana here quite a number of people what WANT broadband but their only choice is extremely poor satellite connections. The problem is that this is still, to a corporation like AT&T, small demand.

If Internet access isn't on the level of utility now then it will be within five years. This is one of those problems the market can not solve... so it's something we need to push on the outside. I don't mean just government, I mean some local geek co-ops and the like too.

Re:So there are two groups ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Point 1, fine.
Point 2 is completely moot. I want a 7000 square foot home on an island on a lake with electricity, water, sewage and broadband Internet, and I want it for less than $100k, and it's totally the government's fault that I can't have that.

Re:So there are two groups ...

[__aaeihw9960]

My local "geek co-op" looked at the plausibility of running fiber and hooking into the local fiber channel. (Super-extra-megawatt highspeed fiber connecting two of the nearest massive metropolitan areas runs through our community). Total bill? Just this side of 1.5Mil. For a community of 50 people. And that's almost entirely the man-hours, equipment needed, and BASIC fees to the telco that owns it. We didn't even factor in any permits or any other pop-up, bullshit permissions that the company could come up with.

The icing on the cake was that when we wanted to run water lines to a new house, we had to have a representative from the company that owns the fiber present while we unearthed it. His mere presence was so valuable to our job-site that we had the privilege of paying ~$5,000. I was pretty fucking excited about that.

Re:So there are two groups ...

[h4rr4r]

Why run all fiber?
What distances are we dealing with here?

Is there a demarc, or does the fiber just go right on by?

What is the phone company using? What can they provide? Never underestimate the bandwidth of a shitload of twisted pair.

Re:So there are two groups ...

[__aaeihw9960]

Why run all fiber

Because that's what the guy down the road said was our best option. I'm not the tech. side. I'm the governmental/cover our ass side, policies and procedures and all that.

What distances are we dealing with here?

Anywhere from less than 50 feet between houses to around 15 miles between houses, for a total straight line run of around 120-140 miles(ish). if we could cut across property, we could cut that in half, but most of our property is farm-land, and is theoretically subject to soil movement that could not justify the risk, or could not justify the future problems that we may run into (moving terraces, the inability to deep-soil plow/v-rip, etc).

Is there a demarc, or does the fiber just go right on by? What is the phone company using? What can they provide? Never underestimate the bandwidth of a shitload of twisted pair.

Lol, wut? No, seriously though, here's my ignorance showing. The character that is in the lead on assessing the technology for us, I have to assume, knows that answer. I do not. Not my specialty sadly. My specialty is keeping our butts covered when the telco or Uncle Sam come looking for our papers, either permits or greenbacks.

Re:So there are two groups ...

[smooth wombat]

Living on a reservation essentially forces you to live there. You are part of a separate nation as far as the government is concerned.

There was a case a few years back where a woman wanted to run for office in Washington state. Everything was set to go until someone realized (or her opponent found out) that she was not a resident of Washington State but a member of whatever her Indian tribe was. Thus, she was ineligible to run for office even though, technically, she was living within the bounds of Washington State.

One can move off the reservation, but it's not like you or I picking up our stuff and moving to a new state. There are a whole host of other issues the rest of us take for granted.

Re:So there are two groups ...

[Thorodin]

No. It does not. Perhaps certain benefits are lost but we don't have fences forcing anyone to stay in one place (well, other than convicts).

FFS

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Can we stop fretting about the fact that there isn't a hard link run to every last spot in the boonies and start fretting about why access is so damn slow, and so damn expensive, even in the parts of the US where the economics of deployment are most favorable?

Re:FFS

[second_coming]

While people are "happy" to pay high prices for capped and low speed / unreliable services there is no incentive for the internet providers to spend vast amounts upgrading the infrastructure.

You either need a government backed incentive to roll out high speed internet country wide (meaning to everyone not just people in cities) or you need some foreign companies to start moving into the US market to introduce some competition that will force the existing companies to become more competitive in the price and quality of what they offer.

Re:FFS

[Targon]

Let me ask, how expensive do you think it is to provide access, even in a small 2 square mile area? The USA does NOT have a government run backbone that is easily connected to and that would make it easy for new providers to get established. Not everywhere has a university that would even get government grants to bring access out into those areas as well, and that is what many forget.

Now, here's the basic formula for a business to operate at a profit: Income-expenses > 0

If the expenses(and just maintaining the lines is expensive when you have idiots that dig and cut through the lines, storms, and just needing to replace equipment over time) are high, then that makes it difficult in many cases to justify expanding a network into an unprofitable area. Why would you spend $5 million at a minimum to try adding "competition" when you expenses will exceed your revenues for at least 20 years? The only way to do it is to go BIG, meaning $1 Trillion to blanket a large area and then offer something the existing companies do not offer, or do things better, and then you are risking a LOT of money where people may not have a problem with the existing service, so might not switch to YOUR company anyway.

Re:FFS

[bbelt16ag]

uh we have had bills in the past like 30 years that were suppose to offer incentive. the big bussiness took and the money and did nothing! NOTHING! It won't work till they are held accountable. Long live Occupy and Anonymous!

An epiphany!

[Anonymous Coward]

Make them run with USB sticks, solve two problems.

Only 19 million?

[icannotthinkofaname]

So, what you're telling me is that there are more Americans with broadband access than with health insurance?

And to think that we actually have legislators who are actively trying to block UHC legislation! Man, that is messed up!

Re:Only 19 million?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a high school diploma, no college experience, make 14.65 an hour, a wife and two kids, one car, no cable TV service, one cell phone, no landline, 12mbps net connection. But I do elect for the insurance and we are covered. So find a way to do it, stop bitching about whats fair and what's not, and just do the best you can.

Re:Only 19 million?

[MightyYar]

So will the Americans collecting charity in the form of Medicare suddenly count as having "insurance"?

Re:Only 19 million?

[necro81]

So, what you're telling me is that there are more Americans with broadband access than with health insurance?

I think you are conflating "broadband access" with "actually being online at broadband speeds." There are huge numbers of people, tens of millions, who live in an area where broadband is a readily available service, but who choose not to have it. The 19 million figure is the population who live in an area where broadband simply isn't available, owing largely to geography and sparse infrastructure. I couldn't tell you how those numbers compare to the number of people who could have insurance but choose not to have it, or to the number of people who want to have health insurance but can't get it. What makes the statistics even more difficult is that "can't get it" can mean several things: (1) have a pre-existing condition that no insurance company will take on, (2) could get insurance but simply can't afford the price, (3) choose not to get it, because having it would disqualify them from some other, more valuable benefit.

And although I think the structure of the American health care system is crap, it isn't like broadband access and health insurnace are equivalent services whose numbers are worth comparison. Broadband costs tens of dollars a month in most areas; health insurance costs hundreds or thousands (either to the user, their employer, the state, or some combination of those). Broadband is a service that people utilize daily; health insurance is something you don't need at all...until the moment you do.

Re:Only 19 million?

[necro81]

And to think that we actually have legislators who are actively trying to block UHC legislation! Man, that is messed up!

Oh well, many of those same legislators are actively blocking efforts at universal broadband access, too. Ever hear the story of the small rural community that formed a co-op, installed fiber, then got stomped on by the regional telco that never offered broadband to that community, all with the full backing of the "private enterprise can never do wrong" politicians?

Re:Only 19 million?

[Bigby]

(1) 19 million have no access to a broadband internet connection where they live at 3 Mbps or higher; that doesn't mean they actually paid to use that access yet
(2) This isn't about broadband, but broadband at 3 Mbps or higher. They had to put a limit to make it more dramatic. I would assume that only a couple million, if that, are still have non-broadband accessibility (dial-up only).

Re:Only 19 million?

[Bigby]

(3) And I forgot about your health insurance comment. 100% of people are able to receive at least some health care. Again, it is where the threshold is set. We can all play with statistics all day.

Re:Only 19 million?

[MickyTheIdiot]

How is this insightful? The guy is lucky enough that he doesn't have a medical condition that qualified as "pre existing".

Re:Only 19 million?

[h4rr4r]

I sure hope your wife works.

The fact that your employer offers coverage is great, not everyone making under $15/hour has that option.

Re:Only 19 million?

[h4rr4r]

Less than 3Mbps might as well be dialup.

You can't really stream much video over it, video conferencing is probably right out and I doubt that slow a link is very reliable. They had to put a limit on it, or people would assume like you that even ISDN should be considered broadband.

Mind you much of what you are considering broadband is actually baseband. So they might as well keep redefining broadband over and over since they already destroyed the term.

Re:Only 19 million?

[h4rr4r]

He "elected" to take coverage. That means his employer is paying for most of it. Even a pre-existing condition would be covered by a group policy.

What he is ignoring or ignorant of is that the amount he is paying is very little compared to what his employer pays for coverage for 4 people.

Re:Only 19 million?

[h4rr4r]

You mean in the ER?
Where they will not give you any healthcare of value if you have a chronic condition?

You know what a cancer patient gets in the ER? Told to go home to die.

Re:Only 19 million?

[jimbouse]

Less than 3Mbps might as well be dialup.

You can't really stream much video over it, video conferencing is probably right out and I doubt that slow a link is very reliable. They had to put a limit on it, or people would assume like you that even ISDN should be considered broadband.

Mind you much of what you are considering broadband is actually baseband. So they might as well keep redefining broadband over and over since they already destroyed the term.

A stable 1Mbit connection is plenty fast to stream from any provider.

The problem is that ISP's oversubscribe so your 3Mbit connection is really like 512kbps.

Source: I own a small ISP.

Re:Only 19 million?

[omnichad]

If you really get your full bandwidth of 3Mbps, Netflix only requires 0.6Mbps (~600kbps) for "Good" quality. Only HD requires more than 3Mbps. Yes, that's for one TV and nothing else going on.

Streaming video is quite comfortable as long as you have a guaranteed 1Mbps. Youtube, Netflix, Hulu - all will run just fine.

Re:Only 19 million?

[h4rr4r]

1Mbit will not even do 1 HD netflix stream. Most homes have more than one tv and may well have user on a computer while others are watching more than one HD tv.

Re:Only 19 million?

[Anonymous Coward]

At one point ISDN was considered broadband.

captcha: reported

Re:Only 19 million?

[Jeremy Erwin]

At one time, (IBM compatible) PCs were limited to 640 Kilobytes

Re:Only 19 million?

[Anonymous Coward]

If a cancer patient shows up in the Emergency Room without a medical emergency, he should be sent home--ASAP.
When my wife had a miscarriage a few years ago and I rushed her to the ER hemorrhaging, she nearly died because there were a bunch of people without actual emergencies crowding the place!

Re:Only 19 million?

[Jeremy Erwin]

It seems like every slashdot discussion than mentions HD or Bluray, someone will note that Bluray is obsolete-- streaming, or "gasp" torrenting is so much better, and the discs need to die. But, if I lived out in the boonies, Amazon will mail me a disc, and it'll look gorgeous. If companies follow the advice of slashdot and stop producing blurays, I would not be able to stream films-- because no one will sell me the bandwidth.

Apple currently sells OSX 10.7 as a 4.05 GB download-- . It would be nice if every Apple user, even if rural, could choose to purchase this OS update, and download the patches, without worrying that Apple's servers will mysteriously abort the connection in the seventh hour.

Re:Only 19 million?

[Anonymous Coward]

Neither the P nor the GP mentioned HD, you added that. 1mbps is plenty for Netflix if you're smart enough to not do an HD feed.

Re:Only 19 million?

[h4rr4r]

He said there was medical treatment available for everyone. I offered a counter example.

Re:Only 19 million?

[hazydave]

Broadband is what you want... it's the correct solution to the problem. The problem isn't the broadband, it's getting connections to people at a price both these consumers and some supplier are willing to agree upon. The solutions for rural folks, like myself, are never likely to involved wires/fibers -- there's just too little incentive for the network suppliers, even with their 40% profit margins, to hook us up. And mobile wireless is no better -- in the USA, it's actually been in retrograde for some time. Sure, the bandwidths have improved, but the cost of service has been going up over the last ten years, with data caps and increased per GB charges.

So it's likely to remain some form of fixed wireless. I'm on satellite now, and that's $120/month for HughesNet's SoHo service, which has crazy low daily data caps and service that was considered broadband when I signed up ten years ago, but no longer qualifies (1.5Mb/s down, up to 500Mb/s up). They claim they're speeding it up this fall, we'll see... and they've said nothing about increasing the data caps, so I assume it's still 550MB per day.

Health Insurance is broken because "Insurance" is the wrong answer. It should be Health Care. I insure my house, my car, etc. because, while I'm not expecting them to be damaged, I know it's possible. People, on the other hand, will break -- it's inevitable. The only question is whether that first big health problem kills you or not. The high corporate profits (typically in excess of 30%), the incentive to over test and over prescribe, it's all part of the basis for healthcare being private industry insurance. It's a fundamentally wrong solution to the problem. Looking at countries that do it differently (pretty much every other major Western Democracy), they're getting better healthcare, living longer, and spending half of what we in the US spend on it.

Sure, it's easy to ignore... until something serious hits you or a family member. If you're lucky, you're covered, at least mostly. If not, you're probably going to have to sell your house, maybe even go into bankruptcy, to keep yourself or that family member alive. My wife was diagnosed with breast cancer two-and-a-half year... pretty common; about 12% of all women in the USA will get it within their lifetime. She's going for her 11th surgery this Monday. She was fortunately covered, though it's nearly always an argument with the Insurance Company for each new test or procedure -- I believe this is standard policy at most insurance companies, since plenty of their customers don't know if they're covered or not, and when intimidated by the insurance company, they simply pay the bill. Medical expensive have run well in excess of either of our salaries these last couple of years. And in the grand scheme of things, this was a relatively minor cancer (stage 2, the 15% of breast cancers that don't show up at all on X-Ray). In other countries, this would have been treated the same way (I have an Oncologist friend in Italy I conferred with the entire time), but the costs would have been dramatically lower: lower prices on the same drugs, and no skimming 30%+ to pay an unnecessary layer of insurance company profits and management (compare to Medicare, which I'm sure isn't perfect, but has a 2% overhead).

Re:Only 19 million?

[hazydave]

Depends on what you're streaming. 720p video is 2Mb/s from YouTube, 2.8-3.4Mb/s from Netflix. Yes, you can stream ok-quality SD video at 1Mb/s. Or download a moderate Linux distro in a day or so. My HughesNet connection is theoretically 1.5Mb/s, but there's that whole "weakest link" thing... it's not coming down at 1.5Mb/s if it doesn't get past other bottlenecks at that speed (which is the case with all ISPs, it's just a couple of levels worse with satellite, plus the 750ms or so minimum latency... it does take time for the trip to orbit and back).

Comparisons...

[Anonymous Coward]

In rural areas, almost one-fourth of the population (in rural areas) – which is 14.5 million Americans – lack access to fixed broadband.

And many lack medical care - and it's a problem throughout the lower classes of society, too.

With this annual report, it’s good to remember that the U.S. is far much better off than the U.K. when it comes to LTE deployment with respect to carrier networks.

But the UK kicks our ass when it comes to access to healthcare.

It's nice to know we got our priorities in order here!

USA! USA! USA!

.

.

Why is this a dire situation?

[Anonymous Coward]

46 million Americans live below the poverty line ($23,000/yr income for a family of four). Aren't food and shelter more important than being able to stream "American Idol" to a mobile device?

Even if broadband is "available", it might not be reasonably priced given the network infrastructure monopolies/oligopoly.

Why is 3 Mbps the threshold? My DSL service is below 2 Mbps and it seems fine.

Re:Why is this a dire situation?

[kenh]

The report is about access, not adoption rates. The point is they can't get service over 3 Mbs where they live, regardless of cost.

Poor people have cable TV, they likely have a big TV, and it makes economic sense, because that is a huge part of their entertainment. The profoundly poor will not have cable - in my mind poop is 1x to 2x the poverty level, profoundly poor is below the poverty line.

Re:Why is this a dire situation?

[MickyTheIdiot]

I don't think that people without decent internet access (not talking broadband necessarily) have the same business opportunity as those with it. Small cities and areas without decent access are not going to get businesses to set up there and it's harder to create a business without it.

Re:Why is this a dire situation?

[omnichad]

poop or poor? Freudian slip on your part?

Sounds good.

[Ecuador]

Sounds good, since until 3 years ago when I lived in NYC, you could not get over 3Mbps almost anywhere in the city (I had asked for a house in Queens, a house in Brooklyn and two office locations in Manhattan one in Chelsea and one in Upper West side).
Unless nothing has changed and they consider TWC's 5Mbit to be "over 3Mbps". I had tried that service and due to the fact that the upstream was 384Kbps it was actually slower than Verizon's 3/768 even when downloading. Also a bit before I left, Speakeasy was offering ADSL2 service to one of our Manhattan locations, but that was $160/month. I still would not consider that >3Mbps, because it is not cheaper than combining 3-4 3Mbps connections.

Those stuck with a farmer head of household

[tepples]

There are those who are stuck on a reservation, and those who chose to live where they do. The first group has a legitimate beef. Why should I have to pay to support the second group's lifestyle choice.

For one thing, not everybody who lives in a rural area chooses to live in a rural area. Some of them might be members of a household whose head has chosen to live in a rural area. Why must, for example, the daughter of a farmer miss out on being able to participate in online communication with her peers?

For another, why must someone's participation in mainstream culture be incompatible with growing the food that you will end up eating?

Re:Those stuck with a farmer head of household

[h4rr4r]

Because for some strange reason Americans no longer see any value in enriching the lives of anyone but themselves. We no longer value having an educated society, nor a a well connected one.

Enlightened self interest is dead. The "I got mine, fuck you" mentality killed it.

This is what happens when you have the kind of political shift to the right we had over the last 20 years.

Re:Those stuck with a farmer head of household

[Targon]

It is more about how expensive it is just to live these days. Those who are living comfortably are more charitable in general than those who are barely able to pay their bills. All those people out of work due to the recession, a lack of jobs, and the people that DO have money being VERY cautious about spending it. When someone is paying your bills for you(including those in academia who get grants and such), it is very easy to forget how difficult life can be, so suggesting that what you have(for free or close to it) should be available to EVERYONE shows a flaw in the understanding of the life of many/most people.

I pay for my service, $50 or so per month....do the majority of people living in areas without broadband want to pay that much, or are they living in financially distressed areas? It isn't JUST the cost of providing service to an area, it is having people willing to pay for the service, plus maintenance expenses. What about the expense to add bandwidth to an area as use goes up, who pays for that when the kids are all streaming movies all day long?

I am all for charity, when I am not broke, but don't ask me to be charitable when I am having problems paying the mortgage. The government needs to be the same way, stop being charitable with other countries without there being some sort of return on the investment. We help countries in the middle east, they should PAY us all our expenses for helping them, either in oil, or in some other way.

Re:Those stuck with a farmer head of household

[__aaeihw9960]

That's exactly right. Every argument that is in the news right now, whether it's related to right to life/right to choose, gay marriage, the 1%, whatever it is. It's all related to "Fuck you people." I don't know when, or where that attitude came from, but it is e.v.e.r.y.w.h.e.r.e.

I think, quite honestly, that what we're going through now is because heavy investors got a small taste of victory in privatizing Russia, South America, Poland, the various middle eastern countries that got shafted, and Greece and other parts of Europe starting in the 70's and 80's, and moving in steadily stronger steps to today. I think that these heavy investors are hungry for the next cash cow - they tried Asia, and the Asian tigers shut their asses down, so who's next? USA, USA, USA. We're fat and happy, so why not break us for a profit? Why not 'shock' our economy back to health so they can win some more? ('They' doesn't equal some tin-foil hat amorphous blob, it equals heavy hitters in the telecommunications, chemical, food and plastics industry, along with institutions like the IMF and World Bank)

I genuinely believe that in the next 10 years or so, this talk of 'austerity measures' are going to revert back to what they used to be called 'shocks to the government to stimulate private economic growth'. I also believe that in the next 10 years, we're going to see this attitude that was developed in the US turn its teeth inward and start taking bites out of our country. I firmly believe that we will have more rampant unemployment for young folks - fuck them, right? - and the money will funnel faster to a few people. I don't believe that we're headed for a collapse, because if we fall, so do most others (or at least it won't help), but I do believe that we're headed for a lost generation of workers.

WOW, that got off topic. Sorry.

Re:Those stuck with a farmer head of household

[SillyHamster]

Our gov't consistently spends more than it has year after year, on "other people" - and to you that's a symptom of how selfish the American public is.

Nonsense. That politicians stay in power doing that, because they're appealing to American's better nature - "Hey, even though we're spending a lot of money, it's for other people!"

But the system is broken because the politicians are lying about that. They're skimming off the top for themselves and their buddies, and using the funds to increase their own political power rather than actually helping people.

Turns out helping people isn't about throwing money at their problems - but that's the solution a large number of politicians will push, because it involves giving them control over that money.

Re:Those stuck with a farmer head of household

[Anonymous Coward]

Those who are living comfortably are more charitable in general than those who are barely able to pay their bills.

While it is awesome that this was the case for you, in my experience this has not been true. People with money seem more inclined to espouse that everyone simply 'needs to work harder' while people that can empathize tend to look after those around them. Granted, this is just my experience, but giving you another perspective.

We were a family of 4 when I was earning $12/hr (with 2 small children, my wife stayed home with them). We got by (without welfare) as we didn't have iPhones (we had 1 landline & no cellphone), broadband, cable TV, etc and didn't spend any money on eating out or entertainment beyond the occasional redbox. It was tight, but we made it. Occasionally something would happen and we would need adtl help; our neighbours no better off than we would make sure we got by and when the situation was reversed we did the same. We are no longer in this situation and for the most part the only people we see that are particularly generous this way are people that were once in a situation as we once were. Those who never went through very difficult financial times (not of their own making) do not often seem to have this charitable side IME.

Posting anon to avoid potential backlash (not from you).

Oh, and I was just responding to that one point you made, I completely agree on your other points regarding academics and foreign aid. It's time we put our noses in our own affairs as a nation.

Don't worry...

[Cornwallis]

The politicians are working hard to ensure we all get our much-needed soma... I mean, broadband access.

Good enough

[Kurast]

TFA cites the 3Mbs mithical barrier.
For me, this is good enough, as I don't use streaming or am a heavy downloader.

Just ten years ago, my broadband was 512kbps, and it was damn fast.

Wrong Metric

[diagonti]

So this metric needs to be changed to unmetered broadband access. There is no point in having lots of bandwidth if you don't have the allowed bits to use it. The speed metric should be allowed_bits/time.

Re:Wrong Metric

[tomhath]

You get what you pay for. Want unmetered? Buy unmetered.

Small WISP do more

[pcjunky]

Small WISPs do more to service rural areas than all the big cellular carriers combined. If the FCC wants these folks to have access to high speed Internet then quit selling all the spectrum to the highest bidder and make some of that "white Space" spectrum free and un-licensed.

Re:Small WISP do more

[hazydave]

The white spaces are inherently free and unlicensed... it's just that the technology for this (802.22) isn't quite in place yet. The folks who actually do have the licenses (eg, broadcast television) worked very hard to make it nearly impossible to build a working white space radio, and even harder to use it (you had to have both a GPS and an internet connection of some kind, to make sure it was still legal to use the frequency you wanted to use, even before making that first connection). The FCC relaxed some of the rules a little bit last year, and that's likely to make it more practical.

For those who don't know, the idea of a white space radio is to re-purpose the unused parts of the TV band, dynamically, as another ISM style band (like 2.4GHz and 900MHz, only with hundreds of megahertz of bandwidth). To make this work, you have to play very nicely with neighboring television channels. Part of that's restricting every channel to 6MHz, but also backing off of adjacent channels in use (one of the frustrating things of the original specs, you had to have crazy quiet side lobes on your signal, way beyond anything required for 802.11 or cellular, and then STILL had lower power limits if there wasn't a guard channel between you and the occupied ATSC channel), and checking your location via an online database to eliminate known commercial stations. And still, you were supposed to be able to detect analog microphone use in some of the ranges (there were only about 50 licenses sold, nationally, for wireless analog mics, but there are tens of thousands or more in actual use).

Thee Megabit?

[kenh]

Are we seriously calling anything under three megabit unacceptable?

The 19 million people mentioned in the above write-up are not without any means of Internet access, they are without Internet access in excess of 3 megabits - they could have 2 or 2.5 megabit access and fall into the 19 million Americans the article discusses.

What would the number be if we ratcheted back the cutoff from the three megabits in the report to say one megabit? How about if we made it 768K?

There are honestly tens of millions of Americans that care very little about either Internet access generally or high-speed Internet access specifically.

Re:Thee Megabit?

[Dcnjoe60]

Not too long ago, there was talk about providing high speed internet to every household through the power grid. Even several test cities tried it with very good results. However, the major telecommunication companies lobbied to kill it. Go figure.

Re:Thee Megabit?

[Anonymous Coward]

If by good results you mean caused tons of interference and was killed before it could destroy HAM radio, sure.

Re:Thee Megabit?

[necro81]

I don't think that it's a matter of less-than-3mbps being unacceptable, just deficient. Like it or not, access to a high-speed connection to the larger world, for each home and community that wants it, is a requisite for economic development, just like telegraph and railroad access was in the late-19th century, and electricity and telephony was by the mid-20th century. Just having an internet connection is not sufficient; having a connection that can support bi-directional streaming video is what one should be aiming for,* and a connection rated for 3 mbps (peak) is about what it takes to do that. A connection rated at 768kbps might be able to handle it, but at low, varying, and unreliable quality.

* Why is bi-directional video (e.g., good quality Skype) such an important functional metric? It's not, in and of itself, although there are lots of good uses for that. But if your connection can do that, you can do any number of other useful things.

Re:Thee Megabit?

[CheshireDragon]

kenh, what is your current speed?
I would NOT consider 768K, high speed. I wouldn't even consider 3mbit fast. Maybe, if you are going from dial-up to 3Mbit that would be a jump, but if I dropped from my 50Mbit down to even 10Mbit, I would die.

Re:Thee Megabit?

[swillden]

Are we seriously calling anything under three megabit unacceptable?

Yes.

The Internet is increasingly becoming the transport of choice for video, not just text and occasional static images.

I think a bigger problem with the study is that it only sets a minimum bar for downstream bandwidth. They really need to consider upstream bandwidth, latency and maximum usage as well. I think a good minimum standard would be 3 Mbps down, 500 Kbps up, maximum round trip time to major Internet sites of 200 ms and a total usage cap (up and/or down) of no less than 100 GB per month.

Re:Thee Megabit?

[Jeremy Erwin]

My life support functions are in the cloud.

Re:Thee Megabit?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never had faster than the 1.5Mbps DSL I have now.
We can stream a movie on Netflix, install OS updates, and surf the web simultaneously.
We could get faster access, but I see no need for Comcast to ever see a dime of my money.

Re:Thee Megabit?

[bobcat7677]

That being said, WildBlue offers Satellite internet plans with 12Mbps down and 3Mbps up pretty much everywhere in the US starting at $50/mo . I just got back from spending a week at dad's cabin way up in the mountains of northern Idaho and had email, facebook, pandora and youtube all week long courtesy of a WildBlue dish. The ~600MS latency of course makes some applications like VOIP problematic, but it more than meets the basic definition of "broadband internet".

So by their own definition, the figure of 19million Americans not being able to get "broadband" is horse shit.

There are lies, damn lies and then there are statistics.

Re:Thee Megabit?

[swillden]

Satellite is why I included the latency requirement. 600 ms pings make VOIP or video chat almost impossible, any sort of interactive or real-time collaborative uses problematic (ever try collaborative editing of a Google Doc over satellite?) and even dramatically slows simple web browsing. I disagree that it meets the basic definition of broadband Internet. It's inadequate for whole classes of usage. I'm glad it's available for just the sort of occasional use that you described, but its availability shouldn't be considered when assessing the deployment of residential Internet.

Re:Thee Megabit?

[bobjr94]

We had satellite for several years, ping time are more like 900 to 1200 on a good day. We also had only a 325mb per day limit, a few videos and a windows update and I was done for the day.

Re:Thee Megabit?

[hambone142]

The killer with Wildblue and other satellite internet providers is the FCC's "Fair Access Policy" . After a very small data cap is met, the connection is hobbled to a very slow speed. That makes it impossible for streaming video for any length of time.

Re:Thee Megabit?

[hazydave]

In the days of 768K DSL, was 50K dialup unacceptable? Given an upward limit of 100-300Mb/s from some suppliers, it's not at all wrong to think of 3Mb/s and under as the trailing, embarrassing edge of internet access these days.

Re:Thee Megabit?

[swillden]

Given an upward limit of 100-300Mb/s from some suppliers

Not to mention the Google Fiber rolling out in KC. 1 Gbps, symmetric, no caps. Yeah, 3 Mbps is looking pretty anemic these days. Hell, Google is offering 5 Mbps free to anyone who gets their house connected.

First World Problems

[EmagGeek]

Twice as many people live below the poverty line, and even more don't have access to affordable health care, and we're pitching a fit about having fast access to a global computer network.

In the last 3 years, the number of people on food stamps has more than doubled, and the number of people with health insurance has declined in spite of the new health care law.

Our education system is also falling apart at the seams as our young people become less and less competitive, and less and less able to earn a living as a result, due to that failure.

If we're going to treat the speed of our internet connections as a national crisis, in spite of all these other substantial problems, I would propose we stop right now and re-examine our priorities.

Re:First World Problems

[Dcnjoe60]

Twice as many people live below the poverty line, and even more don't have access to affordable health care, and we're pitching a fit about having fast access to a global computer network.

In the last 3 years, the number of people on food stamps has more than doubled, and the number of people with health insurance has declined in spite of the new health care law.

Our education system is also falling apart at the seams as our young people become less and less competitive, and less and less able to earn a living as a result, due to that failure.

If we're going to treat the speed of our internet connections as a national crisis, in spite of all these other substantial problems, I would propose we stop right now and re-examine our priorities.

You don't think that maybe the worst recession in history outside the Great Depression has something to do with those numbers?

Re:First World Problems

[EmagGeek]

I don't see how that is relevant. We still need to worry about those things before we worry about universal high-speed access to the Internet.

Access

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it more important that 100 million can't afford broadband.

Not Just Rural

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in a Boston suburb - 3 miles as the crow flies. DSL at 1.5mbps is the best I can get. So its not just rural areas that are having coverage issues.

There is highspeed metered wireless available - but I live on the wrong side of a hill from the tower to get access to it.

so?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are billions across the world who don't have any form of internet. So whats the big deal with America?

90% of Cities Lack Access to Wilderness

[retroworks]

I grew up in northwest Arkansas, around mostly conservative religious anti-government hard working self-sufficient type (moved to the East Coast for Univ). Maybe the USA needs to just stop subsidizing post offices and forcing airlines to fly to small cities, and stop letting septic tanks make suburban homes cheaper than people paying for city sewer because water treatment is too expensive, etc.. There should be advantages to the people who live in / near cities (just as there are advantages to rural living we cannot guarantee city folk). Trying to bring every city advantage to every corner of the country isn't wanted by the original inhabitants, at least not at the cost demanded (or the free market would have done it). Maybe they will discover that broadband doesn't belong in every single niche. Or maybe someone will figure out a cheaper way to bring broadband to the country.

Re:90% of Cities Lack Access to Wilderness

[Dcnjoe60]

I grew up in northwest Arkansas, around mostly conservative religious anti-government hard working self-sufficient type (moved to the East Coast for Univ). Maybe the USA needs to just stop subsidizing post offices and forcing airlines to fly to small cities, and stop letting septic tanks make suburban homes cheaper than people paying for city sewer because water treatment is too expensive, etc.. There should be advantages to the people who live in / near cities (just as there are advantages to rural living we cannot guarantee city folk). Trying to bring every city advantage to every corner of the country isn't wanted by the original inhabitants, at least not at the cost demanded (or the free market would have done it). Maybe they will discover that broadband doesn't belong in every single niche. Or maybe someone will figure out a cheaper way to bring broadband to the country.

I agree 100%! Since most power plants are built out in the country instead of the city, the city folk shouldn't get the benefit of that electricity. Same with natural gas. Last time I was in a major city, I didn't see one natural gas well or nuclear plant. Then, too, let the city folk grow their own food. So yes, let the country folk quit subsidizing the city folk.

Re:90% of Cities Lack Access to Wilderness

[h4rr4r]

Gas wells exist in cities they cover them with fake houses and such. Sometimes they don't even do that.

http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/list-power-reactor-units.html
This shows just how close many are to cities. In some cases this puts them right in the suburbs.

The reality is rural areas are poorer. They are subsidized by cities. Farming subsidies are some of the biggest subsidies in our country. THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT!

We should subsidize farmers to prevent another dustbowl. We should provide internet connections to rural areas so our society can be connected. We cannot and should not live as two people separated only by population density.

Re:90% of Cities Lack Access to Wilderness

[who_stole_my_kidneys]

Exactly, not everyone wants/needs broadband.

Re:90% of Cities Lack Access to Wilderness

[Anonymous Coward]

Never been to New Jersey?

Re:90% of Cities Lack Access to Wilderness

[hazydave]

Umm.. the Post Office is self-funded. It's regulated by Congress, but not funded by Congress.

That's not all

[Dcnjoe60]

19 million don't have access to broadband and another 26 million can't afford it.

So that's approximately 500,000...

[dohzer]

... hick families.

Blocked by the competition.

[Nodar]

I work for a small rural (very rural) telco that is laying fiber to our customers, and supplying them with up to 100mbps speeds. Then the big guys come in, block our access to polls and such in attempts to service remote customers, but then, themselves, refuse to service them. We think it has something to do with hoarding funds that are available for servicing rural customers. Also, our customers, a large majority of them, can't get anything close to dependable cellular data, heck, most of them can't even get enough signal for cellular voice. Our voice will never get heard, because we are too small, but doing the best we can to service these people.

Re:Blocked by the competition.

[taoboy]

Thank you, Nodar, for the only really insightful post of this whole discussion.

Re:Blocked by the competition.

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to work for a small telco/ISP. The way that they fought this was to get themselves listed as an essential service by servicing police departments and the courts. Switch down at the colo an hour and a half away? Police escort to get there faster. Now they're starting to lay fiber to connect several schools and towns instead of depending on the ILEC the do it.

Whats worse

[Anonymous Coward]

is that in many eaeas there is only one broadband ISP, so they can price gouge their customers! There needs to be a price cap of $29.95 on 12Mbps internet. Anyone paying more is getting ripped off!

Re:Whats worse

[hazydave]

Depends on what you have already. For 12Mb/s access with no caps, I'd happily turn over the $120/month I'm paying for satellite (1.5Mb/s, 550MB daily cap). And that's currently the best satellite deal I can get, which is better than anyone's 3G cellular (no company is doing fixed terrestrial wireless here). No other options.

On the other hand, if you have cable and FiOS both available, and 100Mb/s plans for $50/month, then yeah, 12Mb/s would be pretty slow, and I'd expect it cheap.

Easy ultimatium

[Karmashock]

Currently we grant the telecommunications giants regional monopolies. There is only one cable company serving you. There is only one local phone company serving you.

Tell the company that they have to make high speed internet available at a reasonable price to everyone within their region OR alternative companies will be granted a license within that zone to lay their own wire in direct competition.

Really, they should be able to do this regardless. However, many people are attached to the notion that allowing multiple companies to run wire would just be too messy. It wouldn't and it would solve our bandwidth issues in about six seconds flat. But this seems like a reasonable compromise.

Several small communities in rural states have tried to set up a local ISP just for themselves and have been shut down by court order. The big telecommunications companies claimed it violated their monopoly rights.

Well there you go... that's why the internet is slow there. Not lack of subsidies but excessive regulations that do little beyond promoting the status quo.

This IS the problem

[Charliemopps]

If you wonder why everyone's capping service, The FCC is why.
The Feds come in and pay you to offer "broadband" in an area. So you install T1's, put in some DSL cards, etc...
Then the feds are gone. Never to return.
Meanwhile you have about 12 people fed by a single remote that has 3 T1s
All 12 of them turn on netflix on Friday night and... now you have problems
It's not profitable or cost effective to give those 12 people service that fast for the price the feds want you to charge. The only answer is capping their service.

Re:This IS the problem

[Hunter Shoptaw]

Ummm, if you're an ISP and your installing T1's, I'd say the problem is right abouuuuuuuut there.

Re:This IS the problem

[hazydave]

If they're streaming Netflix in HD, you'll saturate those three T1s with just one viewer. The problem there would be using 51-year-old links to backhaul an internet connection sold as "modern".

Because we're a sub-species?

[__aaeihw9960]

That is easily the most ignorant statement I've seen on this site in quite some time.

We're not all locals that fuck our sister and sit around swilling moonshine. We have jobs. We run businesses. We communicate with the outside world. Some of us hold advanced degrees. Some of us, and this may be hard for you to understand, live out here because we enjoy peace and quiet. The stereotype of the no-shirt, no-shoes, bib-overall wearing banjo playing tobacco chewing yocal has been dead since the 50's. Please travel outside of your circle-jerk of friends every now and then.

It is inconvenient to have to pay out the teeth for anything close to high-speed, but that comes with the territory. Is it a shame that our 'high-speed' is just a basic lip-service given to us to grease wheels for whatever lucrative deal major telecommunications companies have attached to it? Absolutely, and we lose every time (unless we care to run $1.5Mil in fiber for a community of 50 people. . . ). Is it bullshit that vast swaths of the country are left behind technologically simply because of our location? My opinion is yes, but I've didn't live in the big ol' city too gosh-darn long, so maybe I just needs me some more of that there fancy book learnin'.

We have a use for high-speed internet. It's called commerce and communication. In other words, I'm not sure if you're a troll, or just ignorant.

Re:Because we're a sub-species?

[NatasRevol]

I'm not sure if you're a troll, or just ignorant.

I'd have to go with hipster.

Re:Because we're a sub-species?

[JazzLad]

Is that like "all of the above"?

The FCC is wrong

[WaffleMonster]

Lots of rural access is served by small ISPs as the big guys won't touch those markets with a 10ft pole. None of these outfits have full time legal/process teams. Most have never even heard of FCC form 477 or simply incapable or unwilling to fill it out. The FCC for the most part lacks the will to enforce/care. Virtually all of the FCC data is coming from mid-sized to large providers only.

The FCCs definitions and inconsistancies still crack me up.

On pg 7 "In this report, we assess our nationâ(TM)s progress to date using the existing speed benchmark of 4 Mbps/1 Mbps."

Yet the map and summary are drawing conclusions based on 3mbit/768kbps. Why?

Yet still if you read the text of 477 "broadband" is considered to be "transfer rates
exceeding 200 kbps in at least one direction"

Some consistancy would be nice rather than playing games with the word "broadband" to be assured a desired outcome in a given context.

so am I reading this right? 19mil out of 314mil?

[Anonymous Coward]

So all this crap is about 6% of the population? and we've got Iceland in the house talking sheot and trying to brag about how 80% of their population has access?
what...ever. Put into context, that's about the same number of people wearing diapers in the US!!!

WISP Operator Here

[jimbouse]

I own a small WISP (fixed Wireless ISP). I report my customers to the FCC via Form 477.

I have plans up-to 10 Mbit (if the customer is willing to pay for it). When you are serving customers with a density of 5 houses per sq mile, the infrastructure cost to deliver that speed is pretty high. My ISP provides service at $36/Mbit. Buy as much speed as you want. 10Mbit = $360/mo.

Once you realize that speeds being sold "in town" are "up to" speeds, you realize that a 12Mbit cable connection provides a consistent 2Mbit connection. My bandwidth prices are competitive. You can run NetFlix, Hulu, YouTube, etc over a 1Mbit connection without buffering (as long as it is a stable 1Mbit). Anything over 2 Mbit is rarely noticed if you are not downloading or running multiple streams.

Re:WISP Operator Here

[Jeremy Erwin]

Cable ISPs share bandwidth. DSL, not so much. I'm on the low end of FIOS, so I really can't comment on that.

Suspicious !!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Not having Internet is like not having Facebook suspicious they must be all spy on doh but they don't have internet hmmm lucky them.

not my fault...

[CheshireDragon]

...that 19mil of our population live out in the middle of nowheresville.

education system needs to drop college for all and

[Joe_Dragon]

education system needs to drop college for all and we need more tech / trade / apprenticeships.

The tech / IT field can use a good trade / apprenticeships system not the old college system.

vote Mitt Romney for no pre-existing health care

[Joe_Dragon]

vote Mitt Romney for no pre-existing health care and the only way to get under there plan is to be part of a high pool and under there plan you can get sick and get dropped and blacked listed from the non high cost pools.

the numers are misleading.

[Biggseye]

Like most Governmental information it is phrased in a way that in my opinion is misleading. you do realize that 19 Million is a lot of people, but it is less than 7% of the total population. There are many more that can not cable access, natural gas for heating ad cooking, and many other things. 100% coverage for broadband is all but impossible. There are areas in the US that it just is not financially feasible to supply. And the last thing we want is the Government getting in providing it. The is a disaster. All things being equal, the government can screw up anything.

satellite

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe most of the 19 million can get satellite internet that is broadband but with high latency.

That's easy

[Anonymous Coward]

Just redefine broadband to be whatever the slowest people have.

You guys and your 'technical solutions'.

Dang... 3Mbps isn't broadband anymore?

[neminem]

I was gonna be all like, "haha suckers, that's what you get for living in middle-of-nowheresville! Move to a proper city!" I live right in the middle of a city that might not be in the top 10 biggest in the US by population, but is definitely in the top 50, and I have a choice between 1Mbps and 3. No wonder there are 19m. (Yes, it is annoying. I'm assuming it's a last mile issue.)

Reasonable Satellite Access is Available

[Barondude]

Disclaimer: I work for ViaSat, Inc.

We do sell high speed satellite internet access across the rural US. The FCC doesn't count it on their map. While lovers of FPS games won't be satisfied because of the latency, general net access (email, web browsing, streaming) is quite good.

http://www.exede.com/

We need special LTE plans for rural folks

[ZorinLynx]

Considering how low-density rural areas and how congestion isn't a big deal there, telcos should offer special "rural LTE access" plans. They would have reasonably high caps, much like cable and DSL (250-300GB, maybe more), with the proviso that you can only use them at one location. If you roam to a different tower outside the rural area, the normal caps apply.

This would be a great way for telcos to serve these customers and provide real service without having to run wires. And if the LTE modem is fixed in one location, they can use directional antennas and such to increase range. Congestion isn't an issue in an area where you might have five people in a square mile.

Built on Fill.

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course the fourth one did. All the debris acting as fill material.

more

[anonieuweling]

Only 19 million?
There's more americans on foodstamps!
So why would they need more than 3 Mbps? They have other priorities I'd guess.

So what's wrong with baseband?

[Anonymous Coward]

I run 1Gbps baseband on my home network. What's wrong with that? /s/ Anonymous Smarty-Pants Coward

Broadband isn't

[pubwvj]

3Mbps?!? Virtually nobody has that in Vermont or other rural areas. City folk are spoiled. No wonder the internet is slowing down. Try 128Kbaud on for size. Slow down. There's more to life than streaming.

Re:Broadband isn't

[Deekin_Scalesinger]

No thanks: http://www.speedtest.net/result/2138465750.png

Demographics

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this count the connections rated for "up to 5Mb/s" but never deliver more than 2Mbs?

Here, here

[ThatsNotPudding]

Especially the rural area are a bit difficult to service (yes I read part of the article). On the other hand: people that choose to live there, do they need fixed-line access?

Spot on, old sport! When their ancestors settled there 100 years ago, they bloody well knew the downsides!

"I don't feel tardy..."

[kackle]

It's easy to have the latest stuff when you're late to the party.

A better question...

[loshwomp]

19 million Americans still do not have access to high-speed broadband above the 3Mbps threshold.

Of those who have access to high-speed broadband, how many have access from non-monopoly providers?

Rural Electrification Act

[Aesculapius]

Why not follow the same procedure that was already done in 1936? The Rural Electrification Act gave federal loans to the electric companies with the sole purpose of delivering electricity to all rural areas.
The act created the Rural Utilities Service that also oversaw telephone. Perhaps adding data access to their purview...

im one of the 19 million

[bobjr94]

In 98580 we have no cable, tv or internet or dsl. We are stuck with verizon 3g data service for 80$ a month but with only 10gb per month. I have to download games, updates and videos at work and bring them home on usb drives.

3mbps is still broadband

[Anonymous Coward]

You can do just about anything like streaming videos and playing mmo's with it. If you're willing to wait a day to download a few gigs, then by all means but it's still fast enough to do what is needed online. Even dialup can support voice and video chat up to a degree. I remember downloading hundreds of megs in one shot on dial-up. It was hilariously slow but it still got the job done and I survived. The government shouldn't step in and mandate nation-wide broadband. I'm already paying too much for my internet, I don't need to be paying for the cost of others because they felt the need to move in the middle of a forest.

ALL Americans can't get broadband access

[Anonymous Coward]

At least not something the rest of the world would call "broadband".

A matter of economics

[hambone142]

I live in a rural area (Sierra Foothills of California). I chose to live there because I don't like high density housing and the problems related to it. With this "nice place to live" I also have no sewer (but have septic system), no public water (but have a well and you can't tell the difference except I don't get a water bill) and slow internet. Until recent, my choices were dial up modem and satellite internet (a ripoff at $119/month with imposed FCC "Fair Access Policy".) FAP ensures you really can't stream video or use internet radio for any period of time. Else, if very small data download limits are exceeded, you're reduced to something near dialup modem speed. Recently, there are a few companies that have installed various forms of wireless internet services. I'm paying $59/month for 1.2 megabit (maximum) download using a 900 mHz. "Motorola Canopy" system. That's the fastest available out here. DSL would seem like lightening speed. The problem is that cable companies have to run a relatively long length of cable to "maybe" connect a couple of users. It's just not cost effective for them to do so. Unless wireless speeds rapidly increase or until there's an available means to superimpose internet signals on the power mains, this is likely what I'm going to be stuck with. Cellphone reception is also sketchy here. I really don't believe I have a "right to high speed internet". Rural living has it's pros and cons. I've made my own choice and I'm happy with it.

Re:A matter of economics

[Deekin_Scalesinger]

See? This guy I like. I have fantastic bandwidth. I also have homeless people, crime, and sirens going off at all hours of the day and night. As the parent said I've made my own choice and I'm happy with it. People who bitch about things like this have only themselves to blame.

19 million has to be _way_ low

[Anonymous Coward]

I only get 2.2 or so when the moon is full and I can bribe the Century Link tech to sacrifice a chicken over the mid-20th century junction box.

lol

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone in IT can tell you: 19 million Americans don't need broadband above 3mbps. As far as unmetered - it's not available in most locations. Many people are locked into a bandwidth limit because of their dwelling - for example, many apartments don't offer 50+ mbps broadband, or more specifically, AOLTWC doesn't allow it. Back to the point though, most people don't need broadband. They don't even know how to use computers.

Comparing numbers

[DragonWriter]

Iceland: population 320,060
Illinois: 12,869,257

A single one of the fifty states (a middle sized state) has more land mass than Iceland, but far fewer people.

12,869,257 people is "far fewer" than 320,600 people? Are you sure?

Re:Comparing numbers

[mcgrew]

You are correct, I don't know how I made that error. Maybe what my mom calls a "senior moment" and what samzepus calls "cerebreal flatulence."

I have an idea

[slashmydots]

They've had about a decade and a half to get within range of broadband. By now, 19 million people need to move if they want internet. I know a family that my parents are friends with who moved the Arizona and a year later moved back here to Wisconsin because it was too hot. That was the only reason. I think those 19 million people are right there with them on the intelligence scale.

A Good Report

[Anonymous Coward]

A good report on the internet state of affairs in the USA.

Yet.

19 million 'Americans'.

Could this number be the number of 'Americans' that President Barak Obama
desperately, in his mind, need to send to their deaths in order to 'tip' the 2012
election in his favor.

Obama's October Surprise.

We will see.

So what, let the market decide!

[WOOFYGOOFY]

So WHAT if there are holes filled with people who are unprofitable for the monopolies to service? That's the Free Market at work. In 50 or 80 years, the same Free Market will produce a Solution. That's how pure Free Markets work, and if you don't like it, then you're a socialist.

How do you expect to create a permanent underclass if some people don't have better opportunities than others from birth? Don't you know how we run things around here?

The same was true in the 60s with that damn Civil Rights Bill that every good libertarian opposed: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/20/rand-paul-tells-maddow-th_n_582872.html Those slaves had only been free for less than 100 years. Another two, three hundred, and the Free Market would have decided they were worth serving lunch to at lunch counters after all.

What we DON'T need is Big Government coming in like they did with their whole socialist rural electrification project in '35 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_electrification#United_States and deciding who the market should serve and what the market can charge.

Romney / Ryan 2012 !! End Socialism in America !!!

Re:education system needs to drop college for all

[EmagGeek]

I couldn't agree more. We have a desperate shortage of qualified craftsmen in this country, especially machinists. I am always struggling to find qualified machinists.

Seems low

[Hellmark]

Really, that's a surprisingly low number. My parents live on the outskirts of St Louis, and where they are 1.5mbit DSL is the fastest available, making them part of the "19 Million without broadband access" because it is being defined as 3mbit. You'd figure there'd be more people who have broadband, just it isn't 3mbit. Hell, I'd buy that there are 19 million who are in the 1-2mbit class, before I'd think that there are 19 million who have speeds slower than 3mbit.