Reply to post: Re: Distance

Trump backs push for bumpkin broadband with presidential orders

kierenmccarthy

Re: Distance

You're right of course.

This isn't a black and white issue (what is?) and the issue of getting people in rural areas online is affecting every country for exactly the reasons you outline.

In a lot of countries, the government has decided that a federal/national program paid for by the government is the best solution (and there has been a wide range of stories from success to failure - just ask Australia about its NGN program).

In the US, the pendulum falls, inevitably, toward private companies doing the digging and owning the lines. And that has created an uneasy situation because Big Cable simply hasn't bothered to expand networks to anywhere where it can't make a healthy profit.

The dark side to this - as someone has pointed out above - is that those same companies have gone to enormous lengths to block efforts by others to build out networks where they have failed or refused to do so.

And, as this article points out in some length, the other big problem is that the federal government is effectively doing what Big Cable wants rather than using its power to pressure it to look past short-term profits and look toward long-term national interests.

In short, it is a failing of federal government to do its job properly.

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