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.

Comments

Re:Don't worry, regulation will end that nonsense

[silentcoder]

Well rest assured Trump is trying very hard (though I now doubt he is competent enough to succeed) - to give you the smallest goverment of all. A government of one.
There's a name for those things, what was it again... oh right a dictatorship.

Now how about we stop assuming things and look at facts ? The most successful and wealthiest countries on earth have teh biggest governments -because their economy and systems and infrastructure are big and complex and that means you need rather more people to manage it all.
The most corrupt and poor and suffering nations tend to have the smallest governments - and usually those governments really don't do much at all.

The freeest countries on earth ... have the LARGEST governments on average- because they tend to be countries where people get a say in their own governances - and just listening to all of them alone requires making government rather bigger. They tend to use that say to pressure government into providing the specific services they need which the private sector has failed to supply, or failed to supply at a price accessible to enough of them, and this makes government, again, bigger. A bigger government is not an impediment to freedom (if restrained by adequate checks and balances like a good constitution and judicial system) - in fact it's an inevitable CONSEQUENCE of freedom. That's why the more oppressive governments are - the smaller they tend to be. Why would the dictator waste money hiring anybody to do any government service ? That's less money he can pocket for himself ! He does operate government like a business - and like any business owner he is trying to maximise his personal income -by keeping government as lean as possible and only doing things he can personally make money out of.

The libertarian credo may sound nice -but it doesn't fit either empirical fact or simple logic. It's simply illogical to imagine that a free people would ALLOW government to be small, or that an oppressive government would WANT to be big. It doesn't fit the obvious incentives.

The republican party's whole "small government" schpiel has never been true anyway, it's nothing but an excuse to do giveaways to their corporate buddies. "Oh it costs you money to dump the cyanide safely ? That's fine, we'll let you dump it in people's drinking water instead" is a pretty terrible giveaway and easily sold as "making government smaller and getting rid of cumbersome regulations that hurt business".
But, if they ever actually DID it, the only possible outcome would be turn the USA into a banana republic. That's the only kind of government that you can EVER have if you have a "small" one.

Turns out that with government, much like a penis, it really IS much more desirable to have a big one.