Comments on: Slow road to rural broadband

By: Om Malik

Om Malik — Tue, 24 May 2005 03:17:41 +0000

You know i would gladly pay 25 cents a month if they can make that happen – broadband for every one. every single home in the country. not sure if there are others who would.

By: docwho76

docwho76 — Tue, 24 May 2005 01:49:44 +0000

What is to stop us from having Congress tack on legislation to the Universal Access Fund laws to also ensure a minimum level of broadband is deployed to the far edge as well?

By: Om Malik

Om Malik — Mon, 23 May 2005 19:40:44 +0000

oh… you are in a bit of a pickle then ..

By: Dustin Wyatt

Dustin Wyatt — Mon, 23 May 2005 18:00:11 +0000

The problem with wi-fi links in my area of the country (60 miles south of St. Louis), is the terrain is just hilly and “treey” enough that even when placing access points on hills, you don’t get a lot of coverage.

A 5-miles WiFi link should normally be no problem, but after doing a GPS-assisted survey I’d need about 5 repeater points between me and somwhere in town because of the lack of line-of-sight.

By: Om Malik

Om Malik — Mon, 23 May 2005 16:46:34 +0000

i think that is going to be an issue for everyone. if that town where you live in is close enough, you can set up your own direction wifi system – beaming broadband from the town to your home?

By: Dustin Wyatt

Dustin Wyatt — Mon, 23 May 2005 16:30:02 +0000

One day I’ll learn to finish my thinking before I submit my comments….

Anyways, It’s hard to get any sort of community backing for rural broadband-ification projects because of the fact that if Farmer Joe doesn’t have broadband it’s going to be hard to convince him what it will do for him.

By: Dustin Wyatt

Dustin Wyatt — Mon, 23 May 2005 16:27:48 +0000

I feel the pain. I live in a rural area about 5 miles from a town of 5000 people. The town does have cable and dsl net access, but I see no hope for me or any of the farms that surround me getting broadband access.

I currently pay around $150/month for dual-channel ISDN access which equates to 128kbits/sec up and down…