Internet in the Country

[TMR]

Just reading has me in awe... with no Internet in Washington State and had a heck of a time to get 1.3 download here in Oakland CA...

Prior to last week we had download of about 1.0-1.5 with frequent "packet loss" which would hang it up completely. The local county participated in the internet to the rural area (?) program and got grants and loans to bring fiber optic to the home. MANY miles strung on power poles and some buried along the local highways. Then underground to basement wall outside home...and now hook up inside house and LIVE.

The whole process was about 2-3 years late in getting done and there was a major rush as some of the Fed money expired on June 30. I still believe they will need to go back to the well for more $$$$$ before this is all done and running at a financial break-even. Had to cost lots of money for all the delays as they had a staff of workers, purchased a building and took way longer before revenue than planned. Also word is that the "buy in" rate has been much lower than anticipated in their forecasts. We shall see. TMR

 

[Tdog]

This thread has been going for some time. I am among those where satellite is the only option besides dial-up.
ATT offers Uverse to roads just south & north of ours but maintains that ours is 'unqualified because of loop length'. What they really mean is they did not install the equipment required to service our road. Makes me wonder about capitalism!
Some of us on the road have written to the local Public Service Commissioner - - so far to no avail. I've been making the point that broadband internet these days should be treated as a utility similar to phones & electricity. Yesterday, I ran across this:

Broadband is a ?core utility? like electricity, White House report says | Ars Technica

 

[Tdog]

This thread has been going for some time. I am among those where satellite is the only option besides dial-up.
ATT offers Uverse to roads just south & north of ours but maintains that ours is 'unqualified because of loop length'. What they really mean is they did not install the equipment required to service our road. Makes me wonder about capitalism!
Some of us on the road have written to the local Public Service Commissioner - - so far to no avail. I've been making the point that broadband internet these days should be treated as a utility similar to phones & electricity. Yesterday, I ran across this:

Broadband is a ?core utility? like electricity, White House report says | Ars Technica

 

[kcflhrc]

If they start treating Broadband as a Utility you won't like the outcome. It is not regulated in Kansas and should stay that way. It's a luxury, not a necessity like electricity and phone. We don't need the government in anymore of our business and if they start regulating it then the prices will will go sky high. Keep in mind again, the cost involved vs the return. It's business, plain and simple. However, the CAF funding will offset a lot of the cost. But where do you think that money is coming from? Yep, you and I.

 

[RedNeckGeek]

If they start treating Broadband as a Utility you won't like the outcome. It is not regulated in Kansas and should stay that way. It's a luxury, not a necessity like electricity and phone. We don't need the government in anymore of our business and if they start regulating it then the prices will will go sky high. Keep in mind again, the cost involved vs the return. It's business, plain and simple. However, the CAF funding will offset a lot of the cost. But where do you think that money is coming from? Yep, you and I.

The main reason that landline, cell phone, and Internet services cost so much in this country it that each company has to pay for its own infrastructure to deliver the service. How many cell phone providers do we need, each providing essentially the same service, each spending billions on infrastructure? How many satellite companies and phone companies do we need doing the same thing? The land line telephone companies are a perfect example of how deregulation has resulted in increased costs to the consumer.

In many foreign countries, particularly Asia, the gummint funds or heavily subsidizes the infrastructure, and subscription costs are lower and service is more pervasive than anything we have here in the US. I'm not a fan of big government in any sense, but in this case the economics of the situation seem to dictate a single infrastructure overseen by a benevolent monopoly of government and private industry.

 

[kcflhrc]

The main reason that landline, cell phone, and Internet services cost so much in this country it that each company has to pay for its own infrastructure to deliver the service. How many cell phone providers do we need, each providing essentially the same service, each spending billions on infrastructure?

This is simply not true. Lots of Telcos share infrastructure. I could start a wireless company tomorrow and not need spend a dime on equipment. We lease our fiber and facilities to several as well as us leasing from them.

 

[paulharvey]

For everyone saying the companies are greedy to not run 3 competing services to your dead end road; $4 per pole attachment per line, per month! Drive down your road and count power poles, and realize that the phone/cable/all joint users have to rent space on the pole from the power company. That is why you see so much buried phone now. It only takes what 4 or 5 pole attachments until there's Zero profit to be made, plus they have to invest in wire and labor to run the money loosing venture to your home. Greedy evil corporations. Now, measure how far to a major switch or central office and think of $2.50/LF minimum to run buried wire... huge investment for something that might be obsolete by the time it comes close to break even.

Edit: and when road work means the phone company (or water or gas or power) have to relocate their utilities, about 90% of the time, they get Zero money for the engineering effort, materials, labor, or anything from DOT

 

[CurlyDave]

If they start treating Broadband as a Utility you won't like the outcome. It is not regulated in Kansas and should stay that way. It's a luxury, not a necessity like electricity and phone. We don't need the government in anymore of our business and if they start regulating it then the prices will will go sky high. Keep in mind again, the cost involved vs the return. It's business, plain and simple. However, the CAF funding will offset a lot of the cost. But where do you think that money is coming from? Yep, you and I.

I disagree that it is not a necessity.

When I had jury duty, I had to look up the instructions for each day on the web. I pay 80% of our bills on the internet. Internet has replaced the yellow pages for business listings. All of my investments are done on the internet. A neighbor who is on unemployment has to interact with the unemployment people on the internet. It would be quite a bit easier for me to live off-grid as far as electricity is concerned than internet.

Right now, we get a lowly 3Mbps down and only 1 up through a local provider who sends it over microwaves to a dish on our roof. We need line of sight to a tower, which we are fortunate to have. This is just barely fast enough to stream a football game to a less-than-full-size window on the computer. The only compensation is that I am looking at it from 18 inches away.

Less than 1/2 mile from us, they have cable TV and internet, but the cable people refuse to extend service up the street to us. Even if we pay the whole cost.

About the only thing that balances it out is the fact that we are on the very end of a one-way street. No one drives by by accident, and we don't have a lot of the problems with strangers and wanderers that come with being on a more heavily traveled road. But, the internet issue is frustrating.

 

[scboolitcaster]

Hey all,

I'm using Hughes satellite (which is terrible, even gen 4) and also a 4G AT&T device that gives me a home phone (you plug a handset into it) and internet access wirelessly throughout the house.

I need the AT&T connection because I am a software engineer who works from home from time to time and need to access other systems remotely, sometimes using remote desktop. So I need a rather low latency connection which is not possible with satellite.

The other thing is that I have a teenage boy, who likes to look at youtube, chat with his friends, play online games, and things like that.
I pay about 180 a month for 60GB (I get a 25% discount thanks to an arrangement between my employer and AT&T).

I have a love/hate relationship with AT&T. There is DSL in my area (which I would love to get) and in fact I checked with AT&T before I bought the property and was told I could get DSL. After I bought the land, drilled the well, built the road, and built the house.. I find out that no, I can't get DSL. Or uverse. Had I known, I'd have kept looking. Thank goodness I can get 4G.

To avoid unpleasant overage surprises on the wireless ($10/GB overage fees add up quickly) I put together a cheap openwrt router that shuts off AT&T internet access when the limit is reached.

In regards to internet being a necessity, for me it is. Not only is it required for my job, but my son homeschools and the internet is a tremendous resource for him. There's almost nothing a person can't learn to do with a little perseverance and internet access.

 

[Oaktree]

I disagree that it is not a necessity.

When I had jury duty, I had to look up the instructions for each day on the web. I pay 80% of our bills on the internet. Internet has replaced the yellow pages for business listings. All of my investments are done on the internet. A neighbor who is on unemployment has to interact with the unemployment people on the internet. It would be quite a bit easier for me to live off-grid as far as electricity is concerned than internet.

I don't know if I'd call internet a "necessity", but in the 2nd decade of the 21st century you're certainly behind the 8 ball if you don't have it.
You mentioned having "only" 3 meg down and 1 up...until a couple years ago that was WAY better than I had with Wildblue (I was lucky if I got 250k down), and for the most part was good enough. My biggest complaint (other than outages every time it rained/snowed) was the latency. I'm mostly retired, but still do some contract work for my former employer of which much is remote administration. Lotsa luck with a VPN connection over satellite!

I can't think of anything I do that "needs" any more than a 3M connection, don't have any particular interest in streaming video.

We kind of lucked out a couple years ago...Time-Warner cable and Fairpoint (phone co) both ran fiber down this road. It was a fairly limited area that they wired though...a state highway that roughly parallels my side road has neither.