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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.
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.
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?
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
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.
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?
Make them run with USB sticks, solve two problems.
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.
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.
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.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
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.
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.
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.
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.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
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?
So will the Americans collecting charity in the form of Medicare suddenly count as having "insurance"?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
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.
The politicians are working hard to ensure we all get our much-needed soma... I mean, broadband access.
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.
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?
(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).
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.
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.
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.
Ken
(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.
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.
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.
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.
Ken
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.
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.
How is this insightful? The guy is lucky enough that he doesn't have a medical condition that qualified as "pre existing".
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.
Gently reply
19 million don't have access to broadband and another 26 million can't afford it.
... hick families.
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.
Don't Blame me if I seem bitter, I'm at work, and the TV only plays soap operas.
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.
I sure hope your wife works.
The fact that your employer offers coverage is great, not everyone making under $15/hour has that option.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
...that 19mil of our population live out in the middle of nowheresville.
"That's right...I said it."
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 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.
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.
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.
poop or poor? Freudian slip on your part?
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.
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.)
At one time, (IBM compatible) PCs were limited to 640 Kilobytes
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/
"That's the sort of blinkered, philistine pig ignorance I've come to expect from you non-creative garbage."-Monty Python
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Spot on, old sport! When their ancestors settled there 100 years ago, they bloody well knew the downsides!
It's easy to have the latest stuff when you're late to the party.
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.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
He said there was medical treatment available for everyone. I offered a counter example.
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?
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...
-A
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.
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.
12,869,257 people is "far fewer" than 320,600 people? Are you sure?
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.
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).
-Dave Haynie
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).
-Dave Haynie
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.
-Dave Haynie
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 !!!
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.
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).
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.