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Comments on news posted 2006-01-06 18:23:45: "Broadband access is no longer just a fun thing. It has become an essential utility no matter where you live," says Brian Dabson, associate director of the Rural Policy Research Institute at the University of Missouri-Columbia. ..
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gatorkram
Spelling and Grammer impared
Premium
join:2002-07-22
Winterville, NC
clubs:
 ·Embarq
 ·linode
| every phone number in america I think every single phone number in America should be able to at least 128/128 isdn at a very fair and affordable rate, and unlimited at that.
Is this really to much to ask for in the year 2006?
I know I'd be willing to get it, as I can't get dsl, or cable, and SAT isn't worth the cost of equipment, nor do I think its very useful for most of the things I use the internet for.
The problem is, of course, isdn is not only way over priced in my area, its also not unlimited.
$80 a month for 200 channel hours might seem fine to some, but then you also have to add up the costs of isp service on top of that, and you still only end up with 8 hours or so a day of SINGLE channel 64k use.
I remember a long time ago, back in the BBS days, and when ISDN was just becoming popular for higher speeds, everyone thought all phone service was going to go digital. To bad it didn't....
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Give me bandwidth or give me death! | |
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hugemammeltoe
@comcast.net | : Do I have to shut off my net connection in the event of an emergency? | |
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rural guy
@csolve.ne
| reality check for all you high-speed advocates in this discussion, the facts are that around 40% of the entire internet user base still is on 56K or slower dial-up, and geographically speaking, most of the world has no other choice - if you are lucky enough to be able to get high-speed of ANY TYPE, count your blessings, sit down and shaddup - in my rural area, 56k is it, there are NO other alternatives except satellite (hello 2500 ping), but life goes on, almost every household on my road is worth well over $1M, but population density is low and there is NO proposed service on the horizon for at least 2 years out. DSL and cable will NEVER serve this area unless they can get 30 mile plus range to a CO- nearest CO to me is about 24 miles as the crow flies. Nor do i see fibre ever being installed for the same reasons. But i live in a natural paradise, there are many more horses around here than people, would I move to a city just to get high speed, absolutely not, the quality of life here is so high i feel pity for city dwellers. So, broadband is not a vital utility on par with electricity, you don't need it to survive, most of my neighbours are living with 56k for surfing, or don't have internet at all, and the sun still rises every day. | |
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nixen
Rockin' the Boxen
Premium
join:2002-10-04
Alexandria, VA
 ·Cox HSI
·Speakeasy
| Yes and No I'd say that, from a purely residential perpective, it's not quite a utility, yet. But, even in that regard, it's close. I know, in my case, any place I think of moving to has to have broadband if I'm to be effective in my job.
However, for viable business community the availability of broadband in a community is a genuine requirement.
-tom
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"Some people have morals, standards and ideals about quality, but I'm an American: I couldn't care less." --Tony Pierce (paraphrased) | |
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Annoyed19k
@Dial1.Atla
| From my perspective I used to live in a large city and had 5- Mbit cable access.
Then I moved to my brothers place out in the country.
Here it is 9 miles to the nearest gas station.
My BEST connection rate here via modem is 19Kbps.
Is broadband a utility, yes it is.
A utility is something you use to accomplish something but doesn't mean its required. Electricity , a utility, is necessary to use a clothes washer, but you don't have to have it to wash clothes. Similar with broadband. It is necessary for some things which are becoming mainstream, but there are alternative ways to accomplish the same task.
Some points to ponder:
People in rural areas have to have good transportation to access things like work, libraries, schools. I see lots of colleges offering on-line courses now. Out of reach for rural America.
Children in broadband homes have access to the internet to do research for school/homework. Something rural children have to rely on the library for, which can be an issue if you don't have transportation. Some will say , they can use dial-up to do the research. I suggest you give it a try .
You will find that more and more websites are catering to broadband users and designing there sites accordingly. Heavy
usage of graphics, plug-ins. You might say you can turn those off, well you can sometimes, other times the sites will not work because they have placed the menus in the graphics and the plug-ins. Graphics web site designers seem to no longer care about size/compression.
Voip . Do people in rural areas deserve to pay more for phone service because of where they live ?
On-line gaming. A dead concept for rural America.
Software updates. It used to be companies made downloads as small as possible for updates, fixes. Now the trend is to make it whatever size is easiest for them. Purchase a printer and there is a 45MB software update ? Most of which is because of the size of the installer, manual updates, pictures, etc. All stuff that could have been made available separately .Dial-up doesn't seem to matter anymore.
So is broadband a necessity. No. But it is MORE important to people in the rural areas than in the city where access to alternatives to using broadband are rampant.
The telcos need someone to give them a kick to get rolling on providing broadband to all, not just where its convenient.
I did contact the Telco here, Sprint about what options there were. They said they had no plans for broadband deployment here in the foreseeable future as the infrastructure just wasn't here. I laughed because 60 feet from my front door is telco boxes on the side of the road marked "Buried Fiber Optic Cable, call Sprint before digging". Surely that same fiber could at least carry 128k lines .
Products bought that now have slips of paper saying "go to www.companysite" to get the manual or ask for help. Same sites that are catering to broadband.
I'm not mad or jealous, just noticing how a new "digital divide" is developing between broadband and dial-up users.
I am actually grateful that I had the chance to go from broadband to dialup for now. Its given me the chance to see the divide happening that I otherwise would have overlooked. | |
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