IT Professionals

Where Is All The Broadband Access?

Posted by on Jun 25, 2007 | 3 Comments

This is really not news to me, as I have been watching some slanted indicators of this for some time now. When it comes the availability of broadband, the US is definately behind much of the developed world in my opinion. How far behind are we you ask? Try about 16th in line, according to one recent report, anyway.
With all of this said, I am considering that this is but one report making this accusation on this day in June. But to be totally honest, I do not need a stack of reports to point out that we are still lagging behind others in this area. Seriously, I think by now, for anyone who reads the papers is well aware of this by now.

But all of this aside, I would be willing to bet a great deal of this reasoning comes from being able to monetize rural regions of the US. And yet when grassroots efforts attempt to fill in this gap that broadband providers leave behind, organizers are often told “no” in part because of some regulatory nonsense needed to get large scale wireless connectivity to remote regions of this country.

In the past, I have been told that the worst hit areas are the rural population centers such as New Mexico, Montana and Wyoming. If any of this data is “off” or perhaps improvements are being made to rectify this problem, then please, by all means let us know through the comments area.

[tags]broadband,cable,dsl[/tags]

  • marc klink

    The US is behind in general, be cause we were ahead, for so long. By that, I mean that when a country, say Viet Nam has had no telephone or cable in many areas, and then gets either or both, it only follows that broadband will follow, due to new infrastructure.
    In the US, say Nebraska, Mom and Pop have been talking on those same 2 24 gauge wires since Matilda at the town hall worked the switch board. Those wires are old, thin, most likely corroded, and junctions are probably much less than ideal. Cable isn’t cheap to run, fiber is more costly, and since the phones work, Ma Bell isn’t in the greatest hurry to upgrade.

    I live in a small town in Southern California, and Verizon is putting in fiber to all the new developments. Since I don’t live in a new development, there are no plans for new fiber [just like Mom and Pop in Nebraska]. I have it better than many, though, because I live close to the CO of Verizon, so I can have 3Mb DSL. It is unlimited, in every way, which local cable around here is not. Cable is twice the price, because I have Directv, and has caps on downloads. I wore out a month’s worth of limits in 1 day when I tried cable in 2002, and 2003, and things haven’t changed. Cable has a bad name around here, so there are areas not far away [

  • Robert Francis

    Matt, I live only 10 miles from VA. Tech. University, home of one of the first “electronic villages”, Blacksburg, VA.

    The only service I can get is dial-up, and I’m lucky to achieve 28800, most days 26400 is my connection.

    I just read the US has slipped to 24th in the world, and I believe it!

    I also learned, that until recently, if any phone numbers within a prefix, had high speed access, then that prefix was reported to the FCC as having high speed service. My prefix includes most of the town of Blacksburg, which has had DSL for years, and a lot of the county, so guess what? I may be the last person on earth to receive DSL or cable.

  • nos sedai

    Another factor not mentioned is that of competition. I live in an affluent neighborhood in a large US city, supposedly with DSL available everywhere you turn. But the fact of the matter is that our telco would not install the necessary infrastructure because they did not want to have to provide access to competitors, such as Covad. So they delayed and delayed, forcing Covad et al into Chapter 11, and cable broadband eventually got most of the market.

    Access to infrastructure is huge, and a case in point is the competition between the automotive and rail industries early last century. The automotive industry was able to successfully lobby Congress to build all the road infrastructure, where the rail companies have to build and maintain their own rail infrastructure. Needless to say, most of our freight goes by truck. And rail just can’t compete with cars, bus lines, or airlines for the travel dollar. (who builds the airports? Bingo! got it in one.)