RURAL INTERNET? Be still, my heart (but not too still). My favorite ISP ever was a town ISP in Massachusetts, but my current state doesn't permit such a thing. But my current state wants us all to die, so why should they want us to be able to do our jobs or our kids to do their homework?
Which is why the Professional Liberals need to start doing Lincoln Project style commercials and putting the Republicans on BLAST every time they do some shit like that. Commercials, ads, whatever! They can start with dragging them for their resistance to the Covid Relief package.
wait a second why are we being nice to people in rural areas that don't vote blue while the GOP consistently shits on all those "democrat run" cities? oh that's right, because we're the good guys
Not to mention that Spectrum cut off my Internet for five straight days and then another two days and then, last week, another day, but still sends me hundreds of harassing phone calls if my payment is a day late. I wonder if the tech failures are due to not fucking paying their employees properly.
Yeah, switching to Fios is gonna be a headache, but I'm done with Time Warner.
This is exactly why broadband needs to be treated as a public utility. We don't want or need competing interstate expressways, and we recognize that electricity providers may all use the same infrastructure and only compete for the final 50 feet delivering into homes. Etc.
We've already started working on that, south of the border, through a new division of the state electic company. As to schooling, luckily here there's a national curriculum, so classes are also being broadcast on open television, as well as on-line (and in rural indigenous language communties, by AM radio as well).
In the capitalist USA, a tiny tax on phone services (like there is now to subsize phone providers in areas where it's unprofitable to run phone services) or network providers (or both) could make it a "market" solution that'd garner conservative support (or at least, tamp down conservative oppostion).
Take it a bit further... no reason to concentrate any large employer, including the federal government, in any particular place. Seems to me, with internet access, no reason for even cabinet departments to HAVE to be in the DC area.
Always been that way with NY politicians. There's a reason those of us from the Finger Lakes were known as "Appleknockers"... we knocked the Big Apple politicians.
It's not the best, or the fastest connectivity, but my TelMex service (500 pesos. about 25 US$) gives me 100 phone calls, 100 free minutes to the US and Canada, and basic internet connections (as well as a not-very-good Netflicks type service that I almost never use), The US phone companies just chose not to invest like they could, or should.
In northern Maine my landline had copper for 9 miles from the nearest town. Every time we had a hard rain reception was pure shit.
RURAL INTERNET? Be still, my heart (but not too still). My favorite ISP ever was a town ISP in Massachusetts, but my current state doesn't permit such a thing. But my current state wants us all to die, so why should they want us to be able to do our jobs or our kids to do their homework?
Which is why the Professional Liberals need to start doing Lincoln Project style commercials and putting the Republicans on BLAST every time they do some shit like that. Commercials, ads, whatever! They can start with dragging them for their resistance to the Covid Relief package.
https://media2.giphy.com/me...
wait a second why are we being nice to people in rural areas that don't vote blue while the GOP consistently shits on all those "democrat run" cities? oh that's right, because we're the good guys
Not to mention that Spectrum cut off my Internet for five straight days and then another two days and then, last week, another day, but still sends me hundreds of harassing phone calls if my payment is a day late. I wonder if the tech failures are due to not fucking paying their employees properly.
Yeah, switching to Fios is gonna be a headache, but I'm done with Time Warner.
Fios is Verizon, and they have been laying fiber optic lines steadily, though not in low-profit/low-density areas, from what I understand.
My exasperation is at the continued use of copper for last mile due to the precise limitations above.
Ah, yes, I conflated Verizon's lies https://arstechnica.com/tec... with Charter/Spectrum's lies https://www.techdirt.com/ar...TL:DR they're monopolies and need to be broken up.
This is such a no-brainer that of course Republicans will never let it happen.
Amen!
This is exactly why broadband needs to be treated as a public utility. We don't want or need competing interstate expressways, and we recognize that electricity providers may all use the same infrastructure and only compete for the final 50 feet delivering into homes. Etc.
We've already started working on that, south of the border, through a new division of the state electic company. As to schooling, luckily here there's a national curriculum, so classes are also being broadcast on open television, as well as on-line (and in rural indigenous language communties, by AM radio as well).
In the capitalist USA, a tiny tax on phone services (like there is now to subsize phone providers in areas where it's unprofitable to run phone services) or network providers (or both) could make it a "market" solution that'd garner conservative support (or at least, tamp down conservative oppostion).
Take it a bit further... no reason to concentrate any large employer, including the federal government, in any particular place. Seems to me, with internet access, no reason for even cabinet departments to HAVE to be in the DC area.
Always been that way with NY politicians. There's a reason those of us from the Finger Lakes were known as "Appleknockers"... we knocked the Big Apple politicians.
It's not the best, or the fastest connectivity, but my TelMex service (500 pesos. about 25 US$) gives me 100 phone calls, 100 free minutes to the US and Canada, and basic internet connections (as well as a not-very-good Netflicks type service that I almost never use), The US phone companies just chose not to invest like they could, or should.