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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.
Appalachian? These are the deplorable Trump-voters, do they need to reach the Nazi pages?
Or order Tiki-torches for the Saturday cross-burning?
Rural communities helping themselves? Not to be allowed in todays Corporate America.
Yet another reason to support smaller government whenever possible, and not allow a centralized monster to take over that can be controlled by any remote faction of people...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
We're going go build our own Internet, with blackjack and hookers! In fact, forget the blackjack!
#DeleteFacebook
Internet access should be treated like a utility. Everybody in the US should have access to affordable, reliable Internet access.
If the red state rubes want to keep voting against their best interests, then fuck 'em. Let them pay for their own Internet access.
I don't respond to AC's.
those trump voting commie fagots need to suck on the teet of MSM propaganda, and google-vision beamed into their heads. suck my cock you niger assards.
instead of whining that someone won't do it for you.
Imagine that.
doesnt use market forces they expect and sponge of the big bad guberment to do it for them.
Welfare queens move to an urban area thats market forces.
I would be interested in wireless internet myself. There are some condos near my house that have gigabit but I "only" get 250mbps/10mbps internet. (Honestly upload is the only thing that still bothers me with the internet). I would happily pay someone to put a small 7" antenna in their window for a wireless gateway and pay them like $10 a month or something for the window lease.
There should be a craigslist section for connecting people with gigabit to those who want it.
The invisible hand of the free market will fix everything, this is just letting the proletariat control the means of production and THAT is communism. You are taking money out of the hands of needy corporations, ya dirty pinkos.
Nice assertion, got anything to back it up with?
So... when are people figuring out that the US isn't a 1st world country anymore?
Really?! I wonder if they'll continue to use TCP/IP as the protocol for this new Internet that they're building.
sig: sauer
...amazing what can be done if a bunch of smart people are willing to donate time worth enormous amounts of money. See, for example, GNU/Linux...
Nice assertion, got anything to back it up with?
Yes. An AR-15.
all the bought and paid for state politicians?
Rural America(the counties/localities) that embark on their own network building should be able to recoup some of the money the federal gov't has given to companies like AT&T, that have pocketed upwards of 20 billion dollars that was promised for fiber/network expansion.
That money should not just enrich the network operators.
Further, AT&T & Co. should be on the hook for the money of companies they combined with as well.
No corporate welfare.
Isn't that like a 1.5 elsewhere?
but the mega corps. I remember reading of a small town implementing municipal wifi and how lawyers were parachuted in to wreck it. Far as I know that town never did get reliable Internet. Point is, you can't allow municipal broadband to exist anywhere because once the cat's out of the bag on how cheap and effective it is everyone will want it and AT&T, Cox, Comcast and the whole she-bang will be out of cush job.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
... into rocky Appalachian soil
Ummm. Run it overhead?
With the power lines. On the same poles.
Have gnu, will travel.
A good friend of mine was outside of broadband territory (well, he could get DSL, but it was expensive, very unreliable, and barely faster than a 56k modem), so we set up a "micro-ISP" with a microwave link relayed into the nearest town.
It wasn't exactly cheap -- I think he spent around $10k all in -- but he got his neighbors in on it to share costs. Now, there's a group of about 20 people who went from effectively no broadband to better broadband than most people in the city are getting.
I really don't know what city folk think rural america has no internet? But in fact most have satellite internet from Hughes Net or Blue. Some are close enough to sign up for wireless ISP provider and some have a cell tower for which they just buy a unlimited data plan and a myfi device. One thing about rural america. They don't wait for idiot city folk who think they still talk on a party phone line and screw the cows.
As long as the government doesn't interfere, there's no problem in it.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
The link about innovative solutions was an essay by a congressman boasting about leading the charge and not forgetting the rural areas anymore. Didn't see any mention of anything innovative.
If two are equally corrupt (assuming that's the case), I'd prefer...
When you vote for the lesser of two evils, evil always wins.
If the government decides it wants to fuck up education, blow up the moon, burn rainforests, etc, your bullet penis won't matter.
If walmart decides it wants to buy legislation for X Y Z (exploiting plebs in the process) because it benefits them somehow, it still won't matter.
You can have your gun, I don't care, but think beyond your little bubble.
"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.)
Live nearby DC, but given how rural, there's no way that cable or fios makes sense. Enter a small isp, provides Netflix able bandwidth. My antenna points to a neighbors house omni, their other antenna points to the isps on a ridge miles away. It's reasonably priced, and stays up really well.
(Oh, thought I'd make this nerd ish post vs yall blathering about hrc v trump )
Haven't we been paying that fee that's supposed to cover building out internet to rural areas. Does that mean the telecos and Comcast have been pocketing the fee and not actually doing the work?
Actually, that would kinda figure, wouldn't it?
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Like a small in a valley community in Wales - just do it. They put a repeater TV ariel near a mountain top, with the person who owned the areas help, and nobody has questioned it for 50 years. Apparently getting a mobile repeater is going to be more of a problem because the power that is needed, but they might just blanket the valley with Wifi.
Romania shows up in top 10 broadband speed constantly and it's not even a developed nation like South Korea. How did they do it?
They were called "neighbourhood networks". People decided to go against common sense and deployed office-rated Cat5 and office-rated switches wherever they could, without asking for permission from anybody. They spanned local city areas and helped jumpstart the speedy broadband revolution. If it were left to the national telecom company Romania would still be on expensive dial-up.
Then a bunch of people with money came and bought the networks and consolidated the market, but the "damage" was already done: can't get away with shitty speeds and high prices anymore. Now you get 1Gb fiber to wherever your computer is located - i.e. without converting to Cat5 in the stairwell, for peanuts. In the cities, anyway. The countryside still gets American-quality connections :)
"Everybody's naked underneath" -- The Doctor
Who ELSE'S responsibility is it to build something for rural America?
If you don't want to live in one of the sweltering crapholes we call American cities, one of the "costs" is that you don't have as easy access to a host of services, internet broadband being one of them.
They want it, they can pay to build it. And I say this as someone from rural MN where the best broad band we could get until couple of years ago was 10/1 adsl.
-Styopa
aren't shotgun shells cheaper than $5/each?
You think that rifle is going to help you in negotiations with Comcast?
horror vacui
So, if I'm reading this right, ISPs like Comcast are so bad at providing Internet service in some places that backwater local governments and plucky rag-tag bands of amateurs are able to do what those ISPs don't, can't, or won't
Have they considered hiring out their hard-won expertise?
Probably not. For one thing, they'd probably need all sorts of licenses and permits and registrations and certifications to protect, uh, the public. That's it. To protect the public.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.