Is It Time?

[Rod Sheridan]

Agreed Jim, high speed internet access is as important as being able to read and write in previous centuries.

Without high speed internet for everyone, a country winds up at an enormous disadvantage compared to other countries, or even regions in the same country.

At present we find ourselves in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, like previous versions it will have winners and losers, we certainly don't want entire groups of people, or nations to be left behind due a failure to plan for the future.

High speed data will be crucial for the future.

[Mark Bolton]

The other major problem with Keiths argument at least in our area is that companies (Frontier who is now under numerous investigations) were paid BY THE GOVERNMENT to run fiber and increase capacity in many areas and the reels are sitting in a field somewhere covered in weeds. The "government" money that was suppose to fund the expansion was pilfered on corporate executive compensation and not at the lower level to increase bandwidth. They will likely be going down for the count at any minute as will many others when the same issue comes to bear.

I dont know anyone in our area on any of three providers that EVER see's their contracted speeds. None. I am lucky that I see close to mine almost daily but I am only on a 6 meg service and there is a Frontier switch building 10' off the upper side of my shop so the wire from there to where Im sitting is about 140' long. At the house we are to have 40 megs (sudden-stink) and we are lucky to see 23-25.

Its no shock that developing countries have gig internet all day long as they are running on brand new infrastructure. The problem in the US, no different than the power company, the gas company, and so on, is that executive and shareholder compensation has TRUMPED upgrading the infrastructure. In my small community, and I would argue on my small 115 acres of property, there is enough natural gas leaked from gathering lines from numerous wells, dumped straight into the air due to a shear lack of maintenance to heat thousands of homes daily. DAILY. Yet there will be a petition in front of the public service commission every year for a rate increase.

The cost to recover from the pilfering of not maintaining our utility infrastructure and allowing that money to be bled off to executive and shareholder profits will be staggering.

[Ole Anderson]

I am certainly no expert when it comes to internet, other than to say I have been a Comcast customer for 35 years. In that time I believe they upgraded our local distribution network once, from copper to copper. They keep finding ways to get more through the old copper coax. Now I get 200/20 easily and I could pay for twice that at my home. On copper. Who is going to pay for distribution to rural areas? Subsidies by the other regional users? That is us. The government? That is us. Or by charging actual costs to the end user? I agree, everybody needs it. But who is willing to pay for it? It is all about population density. That is why many other countries with much higher densities than us can afford to provide stellar speeds. Ever look out the airliner window going cross country over the United States? A lot of vacant land there folks.

[Jim Becker]

We will either pay for it out of our pockets or we will pay for it by stepping back from being a world leader...

[Keith Outten]

There are benefits and disadvantages to living in a rural area. Those of us who do know and understand there might not be services in the country that are common in the city. We don't have access to fiber networks where I live and many areas of the County still do not have cable TV or Internet services. Satellite dishes are still being used by some. You cannot expect the world to come to you at someone else's expense. For most of us the benefits of living in the country are far more important than access to some technologies that city folk enjoy or just take for granted. When my parents moved here from the city we had a party line telephone and a roof top antenna and it took years before we had access to cable services.

My wife is a high school teacher and I am aware that we have school children in our county that do not have Internet access at home. Most of the people who do not have access can't afford cable. They do have access at the local library and at school. What these children do have access to is a space that they enjoy more then most city people know. There are also friendly neighbors and close friends, we have watched generations of our neighbors grow up here and establish their own homes and families. Living here in the county is a world away from growing up in the city and I could never go back, but that option is always available.

If you live up North and get tired of the cold Winters you know what your options are, but don't expect other people to pay you to move. We were a world leader before the Internet was created, its not that critical IMO. I am a big fan on Internet connectivity but I also understand that there is an extremely bad side of the Net and when it comes to children we have not properly managed the dark side and we will pay for being irresponsible.

[Mark Bolton]

The issue at least to me is that infrastructure is always funded by the mass population. Roads are not paid for proportionately out of each individuals pockets. Fuel tax from people traveling through, trucking, and so on, along with national government subsidies pay for roads, power transmission lines, natural gas and oil transmission lines, and so on. I dont think anyone that enjoys life in a rural area is expecting gig internet service. The question then becomes has high speed internet become an essential no different than electricity and telephone.

The problem to me is not that the speeds are not through the roof the problem is that the providers have been paid by their customers and the tax payer to improve and expand service and they have squandered and misappropriated the money they were given to do so. At the house where we have sudden-stink they went through a bad spot and had contractors in from other areas and we had one at the house for some work and he said he had been in the industry for 20 years and had never seen switch gear and equipment as out-dated as he was working on. Yet the CEO and shareholders continue to get paid.

My property is off grid. There is no option for internet other than tethered cell access. I agree fully you choose where you live. But when you are connected to a phone/dsl and you simply cant get ANY service what so ever its a bit ridiculous.

[Edwin Santos]

That's a good question, Ronald...but ultimately, the answer is what is best for the people in our society and country and how we are able to compete with the rest of the world.

We will either pay for it out of our pockets or we will pay for it by stepping back from being a world leader...

It's not a cut and dry issue. If it were, there wouldn't be a persisting debate. But I tend to agree with the above comments. Each person has the right to define their own balancing act between what is good for themselves personally, and what is good for society as a whole, the so-called me vs. we equation. Where it gets tricky is where we can't have our cake and eat it too, but rather must sacrifice one side of the equation for the good of the other.
Private enterprise is very important, but it cannot be a total societal solution for the economic reasons many here are pointing out. However history shows us that when a society becomes polarized into classes of haves and have-nots, it never results in a stable, sustainable society for the long run.

Paradoxically, the immigration wave that brought immigrant to the US in the 19th and early 20th century was comprised of a large percentage of people fleeing the class system of Europe where they were shut out of opportunity. The idea of the American Dream was that a level playing field made opportunity available to all. The internet was supposed to be a democratizer, making education and knowledge available to all, but if the tool itself is inaccessible to a meaningful number of people, those people are shut out of an opportunity.

The President has been talking lately about economic stimulation through Federal investment in infrastructure. Again, looking back to history, public investment in national infrastructure was definitely a cylinder in the post-war economic engine, and it may have the potential to do it again. Perhaps widespread internet access could be part of such a movement, even if it were a hybrid public/private approach in respect of the existing infrastructure. It seems to me the Fed and State highway system did not ignore rural areas, so if physical transportation could blanket the entire country, why couldn't internet access?
Edwin

BTW, yes, the comment above about the dark side of the internet is totally valid. But the benefits of the tool outweigh the risks of the dark aspects. To forego it entirely for safety reasons would be like foregoing owning a car only because there are accidents on the road all the time. In our case, we're fortunate enough to have high speed internet for our family and to afford to buy content filtering controls to at least attempt to keep the kids safe online. I realize it's probably still not 100% safe, but even 80% is better than 0%.

[Bruce Wrenn]

Right now children enjoy access to neither local library, nor school for internet services. As for rural, we live between two towns separated by less than three miles on our road, and co joined most other roads. Regularly these two towns are ranked as the best place to live, so we AIN"T IN THE BOON DOCKS. For many years both towns granted EXCLUSIVE franchises to providers, which meant the was no competition. I ride thru rural areas in other parts of the state, where houses are MILES APART, and see co-ax/ fiber strung from the poles with service drops to the houses. Remember at one time there was no rural mail delivery, you had go to post office to get your mail. RFD stands for Rural Free Delivery, FYI. When buying gas in Virginia, the gas taxes help pay for roads I will never drive on. Supposed I could get those taxes back? Fat chance. You go to hospital and part of your bill is to cover those who can't pay. The federal road taxes on fuel seldom return 100% to originating states. Only a few states get back what they pay, and a few get a lot more than they pay. Look at the roads around northern Virginia as an example. I-95 south of Richmond is little changed since it was built in the sixties, but north of Richmond, it's a different story. Again, we are paying for roads we will never drive on. We have an arena in this county that I have never set foot in. It's supported by the hotel / motel / prepared foods taxes, which means every time I buy a burger, or take wife to dinner, I'm helping pay for something I don't use. The list is endless

[Rod Sheridan]

Yes Bruce, and that's great, all those taxes make for a society worth living in.........Regards, Rod.

[Keith Outten]

Our system of roads are there for anyone to use, we share them equally, however I must drive much farther to get on an Interstate highway because I live in a rural area. I accept that there isn't enough traffic in my area to warrant the expense of providing better access. I cannot use your internet connection.

Northern Virginia is politically powerful. Richmond is the capital of Virginia where everyone sends their tax money, they take care of their city before anyone else is considered for funds.

We are and have always been a society of have and have-nots. General Washington didn't cross the Delaware River with his feet wrapped in rags, he wore comfortable warm boots. The street I live on was in terrible shape for decades until someone who lived on our street was elected to the Board Of Supervisors. The difference between our system and many others is that the have-nots have the same voting power as the haves and when the have-nots decide to exercise their authority in mass they can make the earth tremble.

Fair is just a word in the dictionary somewhere between faint and fart

[Thomas McCurnin]

Cable TV and Internet was never developed, installed, maintained, and paid for by Government Funds, for the simple reason that wiring large cities and small rural areas was a hugely expensive proposition and would yield zero income from the subscribers. Therefore, cities granted exclusive franchises to large cable companies to pay for the wire, run the cables, maintain the system and to provide content. This is the business model that 100% of the municipalities have chosen, and as far as I know, it is the only politically feasible way of dealing with TV and Internet.

The options are:

1. 100% Government Take Over. One could have Government buy the cable, run it to the home, maintain it, and then contract with a cable company for content. I don't see any City wanting to undertake that massive expense. The Federal Government has a similar problem with Post Offices, and maintaining Post Offices in small, rural areas is simply not profitable and is not justified. But then again, if bringing mail service at an enormous expense to Podunk Center Iowa, population 538, is deemed to be "worth it," in the scheme of the greater good, then terrific, have your Post Office and lets build high speed Internet to this backwater town for the sake of the 75 students there. President Roosevelt's TVA program took that exact approach and felt building roads, bridges, and dams providing electricity, telephones, and other modern services to rural America was important. Perhaps we want to re-visit an infrastructure program. But there's no free lunch--you have to pay for it with taxes.

2. Franchising the Cable Rights to a Private Vendor and Extract Additional Promises. This is capitalism and where we are at right now, franchising the rights to operate cable within muncipalities. The idea that we are going to burden the private industry e.g., "regulate" the private sector, taking away the free market and supply and demand, is simply a non-starter in most political circles, especially in rural America. These franchises come up for renewals every decade or two, and there are many competing concepts, such as keeping rates low, providing better content and faster service. The fact of the matter is that forcing the cable company to provide high speed Internet to Podunk Center, Iowa population 538, is a complete loss for the cable vendor, and they ain't gonna do it, unless the 538 citizens collectively agree to reimburse the company with increased taxes, as there is no free lunch. If you don't like this option, then go up to Option One, above.

I offer no opinion on these options, other than to say we have collectively chosen Option Two--we have to deal with it.

[Jim Becker]

Tom, only a portion of Internet access is provided by "cable" operators. While current fiber installs by the big telcos were not funded by the government, the copper infrastructure absolutely was and while it's less used now for Internet, it was one of the primary vectors for earlier access, starting with dial-up and then progressing to various forms of DSL. I mentioned this earlier, but because that copper was to a large extent funded by government "back in the day", the carriers were required to permit alternative providers to use that copper to provide competitive services for DSL and in many cases, even for land-line phone service. They are not required to do that for their fiber installation because that was paid for by the independent companies. However, they were indeed given financial tax incentives by government to build out new infrastructure and as has been mentioned by at least one other person, they didn't perform while still getting the incentives.

[Jim Becker]

Related to this discussion...

Why rural Americans are having a hard time working from home

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/29/us/ru...rnd/index.html

[Brian Elfert]

I've written before about the Boy Scout camp in Northern Minnesota that has fiber optic Internet in the middle of nowhere about 8 miles from a paved road. The local phone company spent about $150 million to wire a 5,000 square mile area. No idea how much was from taxes. It is better service than I get at home although my home speed is plenty fast.

I believe Comcast has installed fiber optics in my area although the fiber is only to neighborhoods where it switches back to coax. I have 175 megabit and no trouble working from home.

[Mike Henderson]

I believe Comcast has installed fiber optics in my area although the fiber is only to neighborhoods where it switches back to coax. I have 175 megabit and no trouble working from home.

I believe just about all the cable systems have replaced their backbone with fiber to the neighborhood. When I was working, back in 2000, that was pretty common.

The thing to look out for with cable is that they can give you very high speed down (from the Internet to your computer) but the speed up (from your computer to the Internet) is often really limited. It has to do with the spectrum allocation on the cable - upstream doesn't have a lot of spectrum. Of course, my knowledge of cable systems is dated (I retired shortly after 2000) so they may have made some changes.

Mike