







American coverage










Robert McDowell




Sources: FCC, Public Knowledge

Comments     Threshold


RE: They dont understand
By Expunged on 10/28/2011 8:46:41 PM , Rating: 4
It's not the lack of land line phones, it's the quality of the land lines. First DSL can only deliver a given speed at a given distance from the central office. In my area I'm 51 miles by copper from the telco central office. There will never be acceptable DSL speeds on these lines. There is a multitude of multiplexing equipment and repeaters between here and the central office not to mention the fact that when it rains I can't even get dial tone, much less broadband. In 1995 when I first had dial-up access I could connect at 14.4 and 19.2 on a really good day. I think I once remember seeing 21.6 after the ISP and I both had upgraded modems around 1997. Meanwhile, the copper and repair degraded even more and by the end of the dial-up era I routinely connected at 9600.

This is in no way the fault of the several hundred million people who don't live in rural areas and will be paying for this broadband plan. This is the fault of the FCC, the local telco and myself for living in such a remote location. I don't expect anyone to step in and pay for me to have better internet service. There are even more rural areas around here, I know several people who use "radio telephone" where they don't even have a land line. Most of those people have done away with the systems today and are using cell phones but some living in the bottom of canyons still can only use their UHF and VHF radio telephones.

Wireless doesn't work everywhere, the current bands don't penetrate dense vegetation or canyon walls very well. Satellite doesn't even work everywhere, but it comes as close as basically anything. There are just some places that won't ever have the highest standard of living, that's a trade off they make. They won't have pavement to their house, street lights, FOIS, or whatever other luxury they'd like to have but most of them are happy with the trade off and those that aren't should spend their hard earned money to get what they need instead of spending everyone else's money.

RE: They dont understand
By rrburton on 10/29/2011 8:05:50 AM , Rating: 2
Nice to hear a reply from someone with actual experience in the topic. Sad that the government thinks you need to be rescued from yourself.

RE: They dont understand
By The Raven on 10/31/2011 4:57:27 PM , Rating: 2
Yeah and finally someone with some sense gets rated up too. It seems that there is plenty of push back on gov't intervention in the automotive market here at DT, but suggest the gov't get out of broadband adoption and they turn into close-minded morons. Yes people, we all love broadband, but does this make sense? No.

