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Should The Government Fix Slow Internet Access? (fivethirtyeight.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a story from Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight site about "the worst internet in America":
FiveThirtyEight analyzed every county's broadband usage using data from researchers at the University of Iowa and Arizona State University and found that Saguache, Colorado was at the bottom. Only 5.6 percent of adults were estimated to have broadband... It has some of the worst internet in the country. That's in part because of the mountains and the isolation they bring... Its population of 6,300 is spread across 3,169 square miles 7,800 feet above sea level, but on land that is mostly flat, so you can almost see the full scope of two mountain ranges as you drive the county's highway...
But Saguache isn't alone in lacking broadband. According to the Federal Communications Commission, 39 percent of rural Americans -- 23 million people -- don't have access. In Pew surveys, those who live in rural areas were about twice as likely not to use the internet as urban or suburban Americans.
In Saguache County download speeds of 12 Mbps (with an upload speed of 2 Mbps) cost $90 a month, and the article points out that when it comes to providing broadband, "small companies and cooperatives are going it more or less alone, without much help yet from the federal government." But that raises an inevitable question. Should the federal government be subsidizing rural internet access?
But Saguache isn't alone in lacking broadband. According to the Federal Communications Commission, 39 percent of rural Americans -- 23 million people -- don't have access. In Pew surveys, those who live in rural areas were about twice as likely not to use the internet as urban or suburban Americans.
In Saguache County download speeds of 12 Mbps (with an upload speed of 2 Mbps) cost $90 a month, and the article points out that when it comes to providing broadband, "small companies and cooperatives are going it more or less alone, without much help yet from the federal government." But that raises an inevitable question. Should the federal government be subsidizing rural internet access?
Before Clinton converted it in to a "laptops for schools" program, the Universal Service Fund was used to fund telephone lines in rural America where the cost was too high. It worked: telephones became ubiquitous. The Universal Service Fund should be restored to its original purpose with the simple tweak: fund the initial builds for broadband Internet access in rural America.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
They should fine the shit out of the telcos who took billions in subsidies to provide broadband to the nation and then reneged on their end of the deal.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
So, those people who decided to live way the heck out in the middle of nowhere to get away from civilization need internet access? Why?
It would probably be cheaper to find the ones who actually want high-speed internet and give them money to move.
It's hilarious to see these "the US has a lot of people who don't get 10 megabit internet, when compared to other countries," while noticing that the countries they compare us to generally don't have a lot of wide open spaces to cover. There's a whole lot of countries that don't have (for example) places like Death Valley or the mountains of Colorado.
On one hand, they want the government to force their favorite solutions to every problem they can imagine (real or otherwise) down everyone's throats whether the solution actually works or not, or fits individual preferences or not (human differences are to be confined to skin color and what you do with your genitalia; everything else must be plus-plus same). On the other hand, they want everyone (with the exception of people running small, organic farms) to lived in highly-planned (by them), densely-populated urban areas.
If somebody wants to live out in the sticks, that's their business. Living out in the sticks generally means lower land prices, but most other things are more expensive because you're further away. Let people figure out their own trade-offs.
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
The US government has been paying for nothing for years.
Verizon Knows You're A Sucker: Takes Taxpayer Subsidies For Broadband, Doesn't Deliver, Lobbies To Drop Requirements
Shocker: Billions In Broadband Subsidies Wasted As Government Turns Blind Eye To Fraud
Wired to fail
What does being rich have to do with it? For that matter, what does the particular country have to do with it? Everyone who doesn't die from deliberate or accidental killing, dies from illness.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
In a country where you die from illness if you're not rich, Internet should not be your priority.
Incorrect. Internet as a critical means of Free Speech is how you communicate the inefficiencies and corruptions of your society to the rest of it. Having a hearable voice to speak truth to power, and reveal injustice, is much more important than focusing on optimizing your healthcare within the existing inefficient/corrupt system.
Free Speech is the beginning of fixing the bigger problems. The Internet should be about Free Speech.
Not the FEDERAL government, certainly. States can enact policies supported by their individual populations however.
People aren't MANDATED to live in rural areas.
If they do, one of the 'sacrifices' they have to make is shitty internet service.
I'm reminded of the bullshit limousine liberals who moved out to western Montana for the low prices, splendid vistas, lack of congestion, and privacy...and then bitched the first winter because the power occasionally went out and nobody came to clear the snow from their 2 mile driveways.
Life's a series of tradeoffs. It's not the federal government's role to build safety nets for people.
-Styopa
I think you may be misusing Betteridge's Law a little For instance, if I publish an article with the head line "Should convicted murderers be punished?", the rather skimpy logic you apply to the problem would suggest "No, they should not." The "law" in question is a bit of ironic observation, and is not meant to be an absolute rule, like say, the inverse square law in physics.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Makes construction and deployment of utiities rather difficult!
No, it doesn't. My city-owned electric utility built a fiber network in a few years, at an affordable cost, and everyone in the service area can have high-speed internet at an affordable price. Wasn't hard at all.
Unfortunately, too many state Legislators are preventing city governments from doing that same thing across the land. They don't give the local community a choice,but impose it from afar.
See, your problem, LynnwoodRooster, is that you think we're all stupid, and have no ability to recognize the difference between serving the people and doing something mindless like evenly distributing service over every square inch of the country.
But we aren't. Not all of us will fall for your foolish attempts at deception. Instead, we are capable of realizing that there are improvements to be made, and they can readily be accomplished. Broadband internet access could readily be provided for everyone who wants it, and the cost would be easy to afford.
Of course, you've heard this before, because your moronic argument has been torn down, but you keep repeating it, since as a fraud and a liar, you can't behave with integrity.
Sad.
CenturyLink is full of shit right now. They are backpedaling very VERY hard. I always go and do screen caps like that from time to time to show the shit service they offer in my neighborhood. One day, the site shows gigabit internet, so I went and signed up (thinking it was a fluke), and sure enough, they went and signed me up and I've been on it over a year!! (I'll save the rant for how unstable it has been for another time), but since then, I've gone back to check what offerings they have for my house and neighbors, and they've reverted back to only 3mbps DSL. So despite the fact that fiber is ran to my house and is right next to all of my neighbors, they won't allow anyone new to connect to it anymore. I've talked with the service guys, and our optical splitter is a 64-port trunk with 24 active connections, and a second trunk running to the same box which is not activated yet. Despite this level of connectivity in my neighborhood, they'd rather have everyone sign up for the slowest and shittiest DSL service imaginable.
The dinosaurs lacked high-speed access to the internet too, you insensitive clod . . . and now they're extinct! Coincidence? I think not.
When I moved here, I paid for a new CO and upgraded lines, so that I could get DSL. The phone company installed it without charging me for labor and a neighbor paid for an extra mile of new lines. This wired up all but one house, and they don't want Internet. It can be done.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Insightful? Seriously? Those who want a completely deregulation are ignorance. Those who want more regulations are also ignorance.
No one should completely trust any private companies to do the right thing all the time. If you do, I have a bridge to sell you because those companies are there to make money. If they can find a way to gain more profits, some of them (if not most) will do whether it is the right thing to do. That's why regulations are there in attempt to block them from doing so.
Too many regulations would also cause more problems and make the situation more complicated. More regulations may also open up more new ways of exploitations. When it becomes too much, it could block the "right" way of doing business as well. So more regulations is not the way to solve the problem.
I understand that regulations may not be able to cover every exploitation, but that's why we should revise regulation instead of getting rid of it. Think of exploitation as bugs in a software. And think of regulations as patches. When you patch a software, it may open up new bugs. Sadly in this case, you can't complete rewrite the whole software (even though I think it could be a better solution) because you can't completely and simply throw away the current business model. That's why revision is a better option.
Moderate way is the way to go in anything in lives.
Municipal broadband systems already exist. Their customers report higher satisfaction with their ISP than people served by private companies. So yes, cities can run broadband networks just fine.
They can also fill potholes just fine if you don't attempt to starve them via tax cuts.
Need some not that expensive meds on a regular basis to stay alive....government shouldn't absorb the entire cost, but it should give a good discount so that 60% of population wouldn't be spending very much at all.
Congratulations on your good health and youth. I hope you don't find out how easy it is to suddenly need expensive meds. Especially as that youth part goes away.