Why Isn't Good Cheap Internet Available Everywhere?

[travelover]

Quote:

Originally Posted by harllee I lived in a rural area a few years ago and I could only get Centurylink DSL at my house. It was awful. One of the reasons I moved from that rural area into town was to get better internet.

I had it for years and was fine with it.

[pj.mask]

My experience has been the bigger local gov seems to do fine: there is a lot of hubbub about what to do, but when a decision is reached it gets done within reason.
Some of the smaller town gov have less oversight - hope you’re on friendly terms with leaders/police.

The fed has a lot more hubbub and with bigger projects there is always a change in leadership (congress or president) partway through that tries to change the system.

But my observation has been that when there is wide agreement on what we need to do - it gets accomplished just fine.

I’d like to see health insurance and internet (we need to call it a utility) backed by the government. I certainly don’t want to be scrambling for new health insurance if I get laid off from Covid RIF. Colbra is $$$

I’d rather more of the $90k+ I just paid in federal taxes would go more to improve welfare of citizens rather than destructive competition with other countries.

[RunningBum]

Quote:

Originally Posted by REWahoo ^ This, absolutely. Our local Rural Electrification Co-op, after several years of pleading from many of their 30,000 members, did exactly this - started stringing fiber internet service to their customers. Thankfully the Co-op management finally realized it was a matter of self-preservation.

My electrical co-op is doing this too. I'm in a very rural area. Think "The Waltons", which was set in my county and in many areas hasn't changed all that much. The co-op needed to improve the comms of their electrical devices in the field. Fiber was not feasible for this, until they included providing fiber access as a service. They got a government grant to get access to everyone in 5 years. Not sure if they will make it but progress is good so far. Some areas are online and customers seem happy. Fiber has been run on my street and extended to the box outside my house, and I'm just waiting for the final installation. I think they are charging $50 for 100Mbps and $80 for 1Gbps.

[RunningBum]

Quote:

Originally Posted by harllee I lived in a rural area a few years ago and I could only get Centurylink DSL at my house. It was awful. One of the reasons I moved from that rural area into town was to get better internet.

Quote:

Originally Posted by travelover I had it for years and was fine with it.

It's very possible for both to be true. DSL has a limit of something like 18,000 ft without a repeater. I was at something like 17,950, and my signal often went out. People who were closer to the repeater had no such trouble. So it doesn't mean that harllee had unrealistic expectations that travelover did not.

[zinger1457]

Quote:

Originally Posted by harllee I lived in a rural area a few years ago and I could only get Centurylink DSL at my house. It was awful. One of the reasons I moved from that rural area into town was to get better internet.

Live in a rural area and until about a year ago Cox cable was our only high speed Internet option. CenturyLink started offering DSL service in our neighborhood and I switched to them about 8 months ago, happy so far, no down time and been getting the advertised speed. Cheaper than the comparable Cox plan but a little skeptical about their advertised lifetime rate lock, will have to wait and see on that.

[jimbee]

Quote:

Originally Posted by JustVisitingThisPlanet Starting between 44 and 52 degrees north latitude for the first beta. Will expand across US through next year and then other latitudes globally over time.

Thanks for the link, I'm in the zone so I signed up.

[harllee]

Quote:

Originally Posted by travelover I had it for years and was fine with it.

The first couple of years I had Centurylink DSL it was fine. As more and more people moved to our rural area the DSL got slower and slower. Finally in the evenings it just got so slow you could not even get your email. We and the neighbors made many calls to Centurylink and nothing was ever done. They just had too many customers on the line. It was so bad I finally moved into town and got Spectrum cable which is not great (goes out alot) but so much better than Centurylink DSL.

[REWahoo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by RunningBum he co-op needed to improve the comms of their electrical devices in the field. Fiber was not feasible for this, until they included providing fiber access as a service.

This is the same scenario as my co-op. They installed "smart" meters but I believe were having issues reading the data from them over the electric lines. Running fiber allowed them to solve that issue and also provide a service to the members that was in high demand.

I'm really curious to see the co-op's financials this year to get an idea of how the numbers look on payback for offering broadband. The service area covers all or part of seven counties and has more than 4,000 miles of electrical lines, so even if they only run fiber to 80% the service area that's got to be a major up-front expense.

[JustVisitingThisPlanet]

Quote:

Originally Posted by harllee The first couple of years I had Centurylink DSL it was fine. As more and more people moved to our rural area the DSL got slower and slower. Finally in the evenings it just got so slow you could not even get your email. We and the neighbors made many calls to Centurylink and nothing was ever done. They just had too many customers on the line. It was so bad I finally moved into town and got Spectrum cable which is not great (goes out alot) but so much better than Centurylink DSL.

Yeah DSL is very susceptible to oversubscribing within neighborhood (as well a distance). Cable (DOCSIS) can be too but less of an issue now as most have upgraded to gigabit because most don't subscribe to it or use it all. However if you have a choice of Cable and DSL and you're fine with a slower tier for a lower price, DSL might not be oversubscribed in your area given most neighbors are probably using cable. So DSL can be worth a shot if looking to save and fine with a lower tiered speed. Can always go back to cable if it doesn't work out. And don't tell your neighbors if DSL works well because if everyone jumps then you may slow down.

[Red Badger]

Quote:

Originally Posted by John Galt III Remember in the 90's when dial up at 56K was only $5.95 per month AND yes, you could make airline reservations, check your 401K, make changes to your 401K, and do all sorts of things, for only $5.95 per month AND only using 56K bps max. You could do ALL that good stuff on a 56K dial up modem. Now, to do the SAME stuff, they force you to use 1000 times as many bits, and pay 10 times as much, for a faster connection you don't want or need. For more ads and more dancing clowns you don't need or want. Sure, dialup still exists, for about $10 per month, at 56K, but you can't even access an airline reservation website, or your 401K website. No 'bare bones' option. It's Cadillac or nothing today. That sucks.

-1. I like the fast stuff. Also don't miss someone picking up the phone and crashing my connection. Also, surrendered our landline phone around 2004 - only used by telemarketers calling at dinner time.

Besides, boobs took forever to load.

[Calico]

Quote:

Originally Posted by sengsational Pricing models that try to get more out of those who have more, but still try to get every possible customer, combined with little to no competition. I have found that the more time you're willing to spend playing chicken with them, the better the deal. But I've been fortunate in that I often had an alternative, and that I didn't/don't need/want the fastest speeds. Right now Google Fiber is $55 and Speculum Cable is begging me with a rate of "$40" with no increases for 3 years. But it's TimeWarner by any other name, and they don't change their stripes. The $40 doesn't include $15 or more in junk fees. Even if the total was less, I still feel better enriching the supposed 'do no evil' company, since they made the fiber investment that forced AT&T to also put in fiber. There's actually 3 choices now...a first in the history of the neighborhood.

Thanks for the Monday laugh!!

[Rustic23]

Facebook is working on a robot that spins fiber over power lines

https://www.lightreading.com/optical.../d/d-id/762392

[bobie]

About 5 years ago a group of homeowners got together and got a company to hang fiber on our road.
We all had to sing a long contract and it's been sold a few different times due to the dark fiber lines in the bundle. Right now I'm paying $4,126 a year for 2.5 Gbps.

I think I have an option for a wireless internet service where I'm at. I'm told it's cheaper than cable internet where were at, but never looked into it.

[REWahoo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bobie Right now I'm paying $4,126 for 2.5 Gbps.

Yikes!

[bobie]

Sorry that's a year.

[MRG]

Quote:

Originally Posted by harllee The first couple of years I had Centurylink DSL it was fine. As more and more people moved to our rural area the DSL got slower and slower. Finally in the evenings it just got so slow you could not even get your email. We and the neighbors made many calls to Centurylink and nothing was ever done. They just had too many customers on the line. It was so bad I finally moved into town and got Spectrum cable which is not great (goes out alot) but so much better than Centurylink DSL.

I can tell when tourists start coming back to town from how slow Century Link is.

[travelover]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bobie Sorry that's a year.

Yea but - $350 a month - wow.

[John Galt III]

Quote:

Originally Posted by JustVisitingThisPlanet Yeah DSL is very susceptible to oversubscribing within neighborhood (as well a distance). Cable (DOCSIS) can be too but less of an issue now as most have upgraded to gigabit because most don't subscribe to it or use it all. However if you have a choice of Cable and DSL and you're fine with a slower tier for a lower price, DSL might not be oversubscribed in your area given most neighbors are probably using cable. So DSL can be worth a shot if looking to save and fine with a lower tiered speed. Can always go back to cable if it doesn't work out. And don't tell your neighbors if DSL works well because if everyone jumps then you may slow down.

It would be nice if these fancy websites that are loaded up with useless nice-looking fluff that uses 90% of their bytes, would have an option you could specify to just 'give me the facts, man' and not send me that useless 90% that I don't need. Then the slow connection would be much faster, no? But I guess that would reduce profits, so that's out, right, if all these people with slow, *less expensive* connections were allowed to use the internet in a functional manner? On the DSL thing, my parents had DSL for a while, and yes, it froze up temporarily sometimes playing youtube.

[JustVisitingThisPlanet]

^Using a browser like Brave will help cut out most of the junk.

[FLD3C]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gumby I think that it would be a good thing for the government to help bring high-speed internet to rural America - perhaps a modern successor to the Rural Electrification Administration and rural electric co-ops that brought electricity to the farms and mountains of this country. It is just not economically viable for the current commercial providers to do it.

An excellent idea for fiscal stimulus