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19 Million Americans Cannot Get Broadband Access

Posted by samzenpus on from the move-to-the-city dept.

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.

6 of 279 comments (clear)

  1. LTE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:LTE by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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...

    2. Re:LTE by DJRumpy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    3. Re:LTE by ducomputergeek · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      "The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
  2. Re:Rural folk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.)

  3. Re:Those stuck with a farmer head of household by h4rr4r · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.