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America's Digital Divide, Broadband disaster (1 Viewer)

Sam Posten

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In the 90s and 2000s we were worried that lower income folks would be passed over in the Internet age. Today tho it's no longer about having the coin to buy broadband, but how close you are to your neighbors as Urban areas get the best there is and the rural guys get bupkis. Verizon and AT&T are now actively lobbying to be let off the hook for nationwide build up and build outs after collecting billions.http://mag.newsweek.com/2014/03/21/telecom-giants-drag-feet-broadband-whole-country.html
 

Clinton McClure

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My town has a population of under 800 and we were promised by AT&T over 10 years ago that broadband would be available within 6 months as part of Project: Lightspeed. Still hasn't happened. AT&T also thinks my home address is an apartment complex...
 

Scott Merryfield

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My parents live in rural northern Michigan, and they have no access to any hardwired broadband service. Verizon (now Frontier) has been promising DSL for a few years, but still have not delivered. The cable TV service is a mile away on a main road, and they will not extend it down their local dirt road. For now, my dad still has dial-up access, which is almost unusable anymore with almost every website designed for higher bandwidth users.
 

KeithAP

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I love stories like this. The big bad corporations are screwing you over. Hate the big bad corporations!

100% of the fault should be placed at the feet of our elected leaders. They make the rules. If you don't like the game, don't blame the players.

Oh, and I almost forgot... shocked, shocked I am that Newsweek is blaming corporations for the problem and not the current administration. :rolleyes:

-Keith
 

mattCR

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American broadband is a disaster with large portions of the country having nothing.
Blaming companies is part of it.
Blaming any specific political party/etc. ignores all reality.

Fact is, as the industry became deregulated and mergers occured, you couldn't lure those companies into smaller communities.
Some states have passed legislation that specifically prevents them from offering alternative broadband if a cable provider can't allow.. that's all done not by a party or an ideology but thanks to a lot of lobbying efforts... and yes, companies are responsible for that; here in Kansas City, they worked hard to do everything possible to prevent Google from getting in, and they've managed to lock google out of many areas, which is akin to using monopolistic power to prevent competition.

There is a serious digital divide. But if something like the TW-Comcast merger goes through, then we can blame a lot of people for keeping it going.
 

Sam Posten

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Very technical but Level 3 throws the US broadband industry under the bus with real facts:
http://blog.level3.com/global-connectivity/observations-internet-middleman/



One final point; the companies with the congested peering interconnects also happen to rank dead last in customer satisfaction across all industries in the U.S.[2] Not only dead last, but by a massive statistical margin of almost three standard deviations.



Shouldn’t a broadband consumer network with near monopoly control over their customers be expected, if not obligated, to deliver a better experience than this?
 

DaveF

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Sam Posten said:
In the 90s and 2000s we were worried that lower income folks would be passed over in the Internet age. Today tho it's no longer about having the coin to buy broadband, but how close you are to your neighbors as Urban areas get the best there is and the rural guys get bupkis. Verizon and AT&T are now actively lobbying to be let off the hook for nationwide build up and build outs after collecting billions.http://mag.newsweek.com/2014/03/21/telecom-giants-drag-feet-broadband-whole-country.html
I think major suburbs have it best. Dense enough that you get broadband and LTE. But far enough apart that home wifi isn't completely clobbered by too many dozens of overlapping routers and cordless phones and microwave ovens.
 

Stan

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DaveF said:
I think major suburbs have it best. Dense enough that you get broadband and LTE. But far enough apart that home wifi isn't completely clobbered by too many dozens of overlapping routers and cordless phones and microwave ovens.
The big suburbs can get pretty good service, but watch out.

I'm with my most hated company, Comcast, for internet and phone, only because I actually get great service. My internet averages between 27-30Mbs. and my VOIP phone works great.Dish started offering the whole TV/Internet/Phone package. Thought I'd save about $50 a month, but no way am I going to switch.
They contract with Century Link for Internet/Phone, so my internet speed would drop from 30 to 3Mbs over DSL. Even their sales guy said it was a bad idea (must not have been being recorded). He said the minimum for streaming video had to be at least 7Mbs.3Mbs.? I'd fall asleep waiting for a page to load.
Wish you rural guys the best, it will eventually get better.
 

Ron1973

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Clinton McClure said:
Stan - 7Mbps is the minimum for HD quality (actually I think it's 6Mbps). I have 3Mbps and we stream Netflix fine, although in SD quality.
I'm running 3Mbps and run Netflix in HD.
 

Clinton McClure

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I try to run HD but it always reverts to SD quality or below. I think a lot of that has to do with having OTA broadband from a shoddy ISP. But when that's all you can get...
 

Clinton McClure

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When I paid my internet bill last week I was once again saddened by the fact that my 3Mbps "broadband" is lousy and expensive at $70/mo. A good friend lives in another city 15 miles away and gets a rock solid 50Mbps cable connection for roughly half what I pay. I can't wait to move.
 

Patrick_S

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I wish everyone had speedy internet but I can see why providers do not want to spend the money to bring it to the boondocks. They are in the business of making money and the math simply does not add up.


I certainly don't want the government mandating that they do have to roll it out everywhere.


People out in the boondocks choose to live out there and there are pluses and minus. Unfortunately one of the minuses is limited choices for the internet.

Can't Satellite provide a pretty good option or is it also slow?
 

Patrick_S

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I had wondered if it had improved at all since that last time I used it.


I do know it was impossible to VPN into the corporate network since the latency caused it to disconnect all the time.
 

schan1269

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IT works 'OK' for downloading, uplink is the problem.
Patrick_S said:
I had wondered if it had improved at all since that last time I used it.

I do know it was impossible to VPN into the corporate network since the latency caused it to disconnect all the time.
HughesNet Gen4 is closing the latency gap. It will never be "gone", but I have issues playing games.

The issue is 40g a month cap.

I now pay $300/month for 80g of internet(between HN and VZW).

I have no problems playing Xbox, streaming HD/DD+ or downloading in regard to speed.

Capacity is the problem.
 

Clinton McClure

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About 7 years ago we re roofed our house and decided to go with colored tin instead of shingles. It didn't occur to me until the new roof was on that I had put a gigantic deflector over our heads and inside our house became a cell phone dead zone. Absolutely no service. I had to go to AT&T and buy a microcell which uses our broadband connection for phone service to the tower. It requires a low latency always on connection to work so satellite is out of the question.
 

schan1269

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Clinton McClure said:
About 7 years ago we re roofed our house and decided to go with colored tin instead of shingles. It didn't occur to me until the new roof was on that I had put a gigantic deflector over our heads and inside our house became a cell phone dead zone. Absolutely no service. I had to go to AT&T and buy a microcell which uses our broadband connection for phone service to the tower. It requires a low latency always on connection to work so satellite is out of the question.
Sat internet cares not how you shingled your house.

Why the microcell when a Wilson Electronics cellular antenna costs less and has zero latency...with more boost.
 

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