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from the pretty-much-like-everywhere-else-without-broadband-internet dept.
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On Thursday mornings, locals from Sharon Township, Michigan, can drive to the 100-year-old town hall and meet with their local government. The supervisor, planning chair, and zoning administrator all gather at a long wooden table, where they share a box of doughnuts and wait for the heat to kick on. On these days, the township clerk dutifully saws open envelopes containing tax payments from residents and—if it's anything like the frigid February Thursday when I visited—has to take a break to thaw her fingers, numb from the frozen mail.
The digital divide is perhaps more starkly illustrated here, in Washtenaw County, than anywhere else in the US. Sharon Township is just 30 minutes outside of Ann Arbor, and a little over an hour from Detroit, in the next county over. Its 1,700-odd residents are spitting-distance from some of the most technologically advanced areas of the state, including the University of Michigan. Yet when it comes to internet access, Sharon Township may as well be in the mountains of West Virginia.
On a map showing Michigan's internet access at the county level, the square representing Washtenaw looks like one of the best-served regions in the state. Fewer than 10 percent of residents don't have access to broadband internet. But the fact that the city centers are so well-served only makes it more difficult for communities like Sharon Township to get access. Telecom companies aren't expanding their land-based networks to reach these relatively small markets, and money for rural broadband get earmarked for areas farther away.
"It looks like we're covered," said Kathy Spiegel, the Sharon Township Planning Commission Chair. "When Peter [Psarouthakis, the township supervisor] first started going to meetings at the state level, they said Washtenaw County had full coverage and he just kept laughing."
[...] "The issue is very much like rural electrification," said Spiegel, referring to the federal subsidization of electric infrastructure in the 1930s that ensured all Americans had power. "Areas will die if they don't get internet. It's become essential, and if we want to keep a community here, you've got to have something."
Before the Rural Electrification Act was passed in 1936, many Americans were on the far side of a different technological divide. Though we take for granted the ubiquity of electricity now, for a long time many Americans were left behind by electric companies that didn't want to spend the money to power remote, rural, poor, and less-populated areas. Senator George Norris, who represented Nebraska from 1913 until 1943, later recalled in his autobiography that at the time rural Americans had become sharply "conscious of the great gap between their lives and the lives of those whom the accident of birth or choice placed in towns and cities."
It's difficult not to draw similarities between that "great gap" and the digital divide holding so much of America back today. Many solutions have been proposed, and successfully executed in specific areas, but a widespread, ambitious solution like the Rural Electrification Act is little more than a dream at this point.
Instead, as the internet continues to become more and more vital to daily life, the areas without access drift further away from the rest of the country.
"Our world is a little bit different than everybody else's," said Ruth Bland, the school technology coordinator in West Virginia. "We can't just sit in this county and let the rest of the world go by."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by julian on Sunday April 22 2018, @08:34AM (12 children)
It took money to electrify areas that weren't profitable. It takes money to enervate uncultured areas with Internet access. I'm a conservative, interventionist, Democrat; I'm more than willing to raise (through taxes) enough money to accomplish this. Every American citizen should have gigabit Internet access. We can do it. It'll be enormously profitable for our nation as a whole over the next several decades. It's not immediately profitable for the telecom companies that are operating today. Market solutions have failed, like they failed delivering electricity to everyone. We can do better, it means direct involvement in the delivery of the service.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 22 2018, @09:24AM (4 children)
Enervate, you keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means [merriam-webster.com].
I think the word you are looking for is "energize".
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 22 2018, @09:37AM
Energize? Clearly the OP meant to use "invertebrate"
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 22 2018, @01:30PM (1 child)
Innervate.
(Score: 3, Funny) by aristarchus on Sunday April 22 2018, @06:35PM
Inculcate? Irrigate? Invigorate? Exfoliate? MAGAate?
(Score: 2) by julian on Wednesday April 25 2018, @03:21AM
Should have been "innervate." Thank you.
(Score: 2) by fliptop on Sunday April 22 2018, @11:55AM (4 children)
Exactly, how?
Don't get me wrong, I live in the heart of Appalachia where my only options are 3-up 5-down via wireless broadband or DSL over twisted pair. But you make that statement as if it's just a given.
That's not true, many millions of dollars were granted to local companies who have built and are still building the wireless connectivity that will probably be the most cost-effective solution to the poorly served, sparsely populated area I live in where unforgiving topography makes the effort even more difficult. We may not have gigabit speeds but it's better than DSL and dialup.
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Shinobi on Sunday April 22 2018, @02:03PM
It's profitable in the sense that it prevents depopulation, and in many cases actually attracts people, to rural areas. It increases the ability to do business with fewer middle hands, if you're doing crafts for example.
Also, the whole "topography" whine is silly. The only US state that has a valid complaint about geography is Alaska. but Alaska is not the only state in the US. The northern counties and municipalities in Sweden are quite rugged, heavily forested, and frequently large bogs, yet fibre has been built out, and is still being expanded, because it's much better than wireless. What's lacking is the will to actually build proper infrastructure, both among the people and among the corporations: The corporations want to keep milking every little bit they can out of current systems, with the least effort possible, and the people are hoping for a magic market fix that will suddenly sprout a decent solution(and wireless is not a decent solution).
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 22 2018, @02:27PM (1 child)
yes people from Applachia, never loose faith that whatever crap you learned when you were stupid kids is true.
The market never fails, we just need more coal, and if our life is shit, that's because we are the chosen faithful.
Let's keep giving dollars to the great corporations that have made so much for our region. The market is always right and our local industry proves that. Its only THOSE OTHER lazy bastards that complain.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Sunday April 22 2018, @08:54PM
Our Energy Grid is so important for our national security. But it's in danger, folks. From hurricanes -- so many hurricanes last year! And from Russian hackers -- I put "sanctions" on the Russians, I moved very strongly. But the biggest dangers to our Grid are solar & wind. They go on, they go off. On, off, on, off, on, off. Very bad for our Grid. Coal & nuclear stay on for a long time. They just go and go. But we've been losing our coal & nuclear, right & left. So many shutting down. It's a disaster for our Grid, folks. I want a SUBSIDY for our coal & nuclear. Secretary Perry went to our FERC. And he asked for the subsidy. For any place that can store 3 months of fuel. Which they can do with coal. They can do with nuclear. But our FERC guys told him "no," they all voted "no." Very sad. We need that subsidy!
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 22 2018, @06:01PM
Wireless is not always the solution. IT may appear as one by saiding the last mile is "to expensive". I lived on farm in California as kid. To install power on the farm, did not occur until 1940's and only because our neighbour built a house 200 ft from ours. Our phone was a "party" line. 7 families shared the physical line w/ different ring patterns. We got our own line in 1968 when big tractors with a hallow ripping blade inserted a 100 pair phone line into the ground.
Here is story from Vermont in 2011 using a 1-horse power(ed) fibre puller to get that last mile... [reuters.com]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Revek on Sunday April 22 2018, @05:51PM
The money keeps being made available but it comes with ridiculous restrictions making it virtually impossible for a small ISP or telco to get any of it. Its usually managed by USDA and they require all recipients to give them the first lean. Since all of the small operators will have loans at banks and the banks won't surrender their first lean the money never gets to where its needed. Instead it goes to larger ISP's who use it to improve places they already cover. How do I know this? I'm the one man sysadmin for a small cable ISP. We have received no money despite having tried a number of times. To us the talks government money for last mile internet expansion are a joke.
This page was generated by a Swarm of Roaming Elephants
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday April 22 2018, @08:33PM
Ah, I see you're Jewish. *A-hem,* yes, I too support the destruction of America's enemies!