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Rural America Is Building Its Own Internet Because No One Else Will (vice.com)
New submitter bumblebaetuna writes: In many cases, it's not financially viable for big internet service providers like Comcast and CharterSpectrum to expand into rural communities: They're not densely populated, and running fiber optic cable into rocky Appalachian soil isn't cheap. Even with federal grants designed to make these expansions more affordable, there are hundreds of communities across the US that are essentially internet deserts -- so many are building it themselves. But in true heartland, bootstrap fashion, these towns, hollows -- small rural communities located in the valleys between Appalachia hills -- and stretches of farmland have banded together to bring internet to their doors. They cobble together innovative and creative solutions to get around the financial, technological, and topological barriers to widespread internet.
As soon as you educate an Appalachian, they realize that the sensible thing to do is to move somewhere else.
I grew up in the Cumberland coal region of eastern Tennessee, and in my HS graduating class, everyone with better than a 3.5 GPA has moved elsewhere.
We graduated on a Wednesday. I left on Thursday.
"We have crappy Internet provision because of Big Government!"
"Yeah! Let's make our government even less like those in France, Germany, and Scandinavia where the Internet access is several times as good."
And to fend off the inevitable "But we have it harder because the US is less dense than Europe!"
1) You are not less dense than Canada and Australia
2) US Internet provision sucks in US cities, too, and they are quite dense
You do not have crappy Internet because of "corrupt Clinton-style government". You have it because of not-technically-corrupt government that is *influenced* by large corporations that have an oligopoly on service provision. This influence is bipartisan, with a slight preference for Republican. (Until Trump, whose level of revolving-door state/corporate appointments has hit a new level.)