| Based on these "interviews" and "tech bits" I have recently seen about the BB industry moving forward with their faster equipment ,gives me the feeling that for me, you, and everyone else on dialup, or living in rural N. America the situation will not be changing any time soon. As far as i can see, they are coming pretty close to filling out their cherry-picked dense urban and suburban areas. And now they are shifting their focus to upgrading those areas with little to no thought for the unserved.
The one question I have not seen asked or addressed is if they are going to start rolling out NEW availability to areas, or filling in area dark spots using the still working, replaced, "Slow DSL" equipment? My uneducated guess is that no, they probably will not. The old equip will most likely be tossed, and the only new rollouts are going to be for new neighborhood builds. I expect a few token areas to get coverage but you know, gotta keep up with that new tech and forge ahead.
So, to back me up, here are 2 examples of how they like to do it in Georgia:
Comcast cable ends about a 1/2 mile up the street from my home, tried to get a cable engineer out here to see about finishing out the line to my house and possibly catching 4 other residences along the way. On the day he came out I saw him standing on the side of the road staring up at the sky *end of cable run* looking clueless before he calls and notifies me that "Comcast Does NOT Serve MY Area." So I went by their office to fill out a form afterwards requesting a new cable service run to my home and hoping to get some answers. The woman sits and starts pecking my info into her computer before notifying me that since I already had an engineer out to survey they will not install any cable for me, saying that they just don't serve my area, end of story. So regardless of how the subdivides at both ends of the road I live on enjoy their Comcast cable, Comcast doesn't serve my area.
Bellsouth on the other hand, my only other choice, has been pretty clear on their lack of interest about putting any equipment into my area that could serve my home along with many others. I have called and met with their engineers numerous times at my home. They have even been at a loss on HOW exactly the phone lines are routed from the CO to my home, so I now have distance estimates between 11-33k feet from the CO, while living no more 2 1/2 miles from it, and no clear answer to how my phone service gets here. I finally got slick about it and rode around gathering all the addresses near me, reverse looked them up online to procure phone numbers. I get online and go to the Bellsouth website and began entering them in one by one. Guess what I discover?
Anywhere there is a subdivide near me, DSL is available for the people in the subdivide. For the existing houses near the subdivide, no DSL for them, Its only when I get within a mile of the CO that nearly every home is available. The ground is sprouting RT's all around me, but only for the people buying newly built homes. Then it became clear to me, each new RT for each new Subdivide has a main running to it, each one is buried on top of the one before it. Between me and the CO there is a buried fustercluck of a mess of lines and they aren't going to spend the time or money figuring it out. You would think they could haved tied in the existing homes to their expensive equipment for more customers, but "logic" obviously takes a back seat to the short-term bottom line these days, so they didn't.
Not too long ago this area could have been called rural, but not anymore. The rate that houses and stores are going up around me is astounding. Within 5 years I expect to be smack in the middle of soccer-mom suburbia, I don't expect to have any broadband before then unless it's exotic and expensive.
Dear Lord, How many more Walmarts must be built around me before I too can be blessed with the Almighty Broadband? |
 An3
@dixie-net.com | Yeah, this already basically said that the places with DSL will be upgraded, everyone else is screwed. Which I think is garbage because there's obviously a market for it in rural areas, and I'm positive that anyone who even tried to deploy decent (3M or higher) broadband would make a LOT of money. But its always in the same states. Why is 100M necessary in places that get 15M already? So they can watch TV on the Internet? Meh.
Plus, what's with this 15/2 stuff? Why can't we get more even upload/download speeds? Something like 8/8M...Is there a law of physics I'm missing here? Can someone explain why this is so hard? |
