Study: Rural Broadband In Serious Trouble

Simple Solution

reply to battleop
I also might add that both Hughesnet and Wildblue now offer speeds in the 10-15 Mbps range and Verizon has HomeFusion which runs on 4G which offer speeds of 12 Mbps download 5 Mbps upload. So rural people do have these options. Yes they are expensive, yes they have cruddy caps. The article implies rural people have ZERO options. They do have options they are just lousy.

reply to RR Conductor

reply to BF69
My parents (in rural south-central Virginia) have only two options: satellite or incredibly slow DSL (1Mbps down/128kbps up). The DSL is wildly unreliable, with downtime of nearly 50%. Satellite is simply ludicrous with the price and caps. The DSL is a recent addition, only in the last year. Before it, the only option was dial-up and because of the type of phone system, that was limited to a maximum of 24kbps connection. Needless to say, not many people in that area even bother having internet service. There is no WISP, no Verizon, no cable (not even cable TV available).
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Teabaggers: Destroying America is Priority #1

Study developed by NTCA with Hudson Institute

Who are these people?

reply to battleop

Re: Simple Solution

reply to BF69
Satelite internet is worse than lousy,i had wildblue on my farm and according to everyone i got a "great" signal yes i consistantly got 15,000 to 25,000 Ms latency, that means regardless of internet speed (i had 8meg service) all you could do was check your email and look at internet pages that had little or no pictures, and could never use ANY type of video like you tube, cnn, hell most advertizements pretty much killed basic internet reading. with that kind of latency it make internet viewing so slow dialup feels faster. plus with those HUGE latencies you never know if your "click" actually went through plus the 10-25 gig caps on most satelite services prevent you from downloading any games/video/music for offline use. we gave up and went dialup untill we got out 756k dsl service from centurytell wich was MASSIVLY better than our so called 8 meg satelite service.

Oh, I've dealt with satellite. Back when HughesNet was "DirecWay", I couldn't even download a Linux ISO without getting FAP'd. Hell, standard Windows updates made short work of the bucket they give you everyday.

Only thing it was good for was, maybe, checking your email or running an IM.

reply to id09542

Re: Who are these people?

reply to BF69

Re: Simple Solution

reply to BF69
Can you make up your mind if you want to complain or not complain about choices in your middle of no where town?
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I do not, have not, and will not work for AT&T/Comcast/Verizon/Charter or similar sized company.

reply to battleop
Will WISP's charge a flat fee or will they be usage based? Most everything wireless seems to be usage based and is always more expensive than cable or DSL. WISP would be wonderful if it were priced the same as the options everybody else has. Even if it were priced similarly, it's still a dead end with respect to bandwidth. As urban dwellers are offered fiber with 100Mbs and 1Gbs speeds, rural people will be stuck with 10Mbs or less.

In my opinion, the only hope for rural people is the cable company. The carriers don't want anything to do with them but most cable companies seem to be making an effort to pick up these people.

reply to Simba7
You don't have to have a ton of money to start out. I know of a lot of WISPs that started out with nothing building it as they go and now they have thousands of customers.
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I do not, have not, and will not work for AT&T/Comcast/Verizon/Charter or similar sized company.

reply to mlcarson
"Will WISP's charge a flat fee or will they be usage based?"

It seems to vary from market to market. It seems to largely depend on the WISP's costs to get bandwidth and the capacity for them to deliver it. WISPs currently have limited resources on usable spectrum and their cost to get bandwidth to a rural area can be extremely expensive.

"As urban dwellers are offered fiber with 100Mbs and 1Gbs speeds, rural people will be stuck with 10Mbs or less."

That's a trade off to living in a rural area. There are pros and cons to everything. If enough usable spectrum is available you can see these speeds go up.

"the only hope for rural people is the cable company"

If it hasn't happened by now it's probably not going to happen. The cost of fiber and coax sharply increases as the number of houses you pass decreases. Your per house covered on Fixed wireless is much cheaper because the distance from the AP does not have a large effect on your delivery costs.
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I do not, have not, and will not work for AT&T/Comcast/Verizon/Charter or similar sized company.

reply to battleop
Most WISPs that I know of started off back when 256kbps was sufficient and a T1 could be used to serve 20-30 customers. Now people expect 5 maybe even 10mbps for a WISP. The startup cost is prohibitive.

reply to mlcarson
The cable companies want nothing to do with the very rural. Some are willing to service towns of 500+, but I don't know of any large cable companies actively expanding to markets smaller than that.

reply to battleop
I have to agree. I think resources should be either given with specific requirements or loaned to small companies. Not necessarily just WISPs though. I think most rural telco cooperatives can and are willing to provide service with the best interests of the people they serve in mind, but they simply don't have the capital to do so.

As I have said before, my rural telco cooperative is deploying fiber to all their customers because they received a loan. They are deploying fiber in towns and on gravel roads with only 2-3 houses. It is not that they have been unwilling to serve their most rural customers, they simply have not had the resources.