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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 22 2018, @08:53AM (18 children)
Don't like it, leave.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Sunday April 22 2018, @08:56AM (12 children)
That's a shit attitude. As I mentioned above - the telcos took our tax money, and failed to deliver. We have a legitimate gripe. I have little problem with assholes, but at least try to be a constructive asshole.
(Score: 0, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 22 2018, @09:01AM (9 children)
You need to learn the fine art of the tl;dr cuz I ain't reading all that shit you wrote. That said, if they took your money and didn't put up the goods then by all means, go to town. But if you have your hand out for free gibs cuz you decided to live out in the boonies where the infrastructure doesn't reach then fuck off.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday April 22 2018, @11:00AM (7 children)
I certainly do NOT have my hand out for freebies. I pay my way. In fact, I pay more than most city dwellers. I pay about 50% more than gigabit fiber goes for in many cities. I checked Philadelphia, Dallas, Los Angeles, and several other cities. Each and every one has fiber available for $50 or less. I'm paying $75 for ADSL. Does that sound like freebies to you?
I only want what my government has already paid for - the last mile of BROADband internet.
If necessary, I would be willing to pay $100 for gigabit fiber. But, it's not available because some asswipe doesn't see the profit in it? He's a freaking MORON!
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 22 2018, @02:26PM (2 children)
If you live out in the boonies you do have your hand out. Electric and water infrastructure are paid for by the cities. And depending on how this goes it could be another handout.
To live out in the sticks you get your own Obama phone. Except you pretend you don’t.
Want quiet, clean air, lots of stars, hunting and fishing? I say you pay for it in full no subsidies.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by Runaway1956 on Sunday April 22 2018, @02:50PM (1 child)
Hmmm. No subsidies? That's really not a bad idea. So - you're willing to give up all those grants and subsidies that the feds give to the big cities every year? All that "pork" found in every budget? As far as I know, all those Obama phones went to the cities. I don't know anyone who got a free phone out here in the boonies.
Sounds to me like you're running at the mouth, but left your brain in park.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 22 2018, @05:29PM
Yep. I will one hundred take you up on that. Simple math. We need full visibility of these subsidies. Not the hidden shit politicians like. Full accounting and zero freeloaders.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Sunday April 22 2018, @02:58PM
I probably don't need to tell you this, but that's to be expected, if fact you're probably still getting a much better deal than the city dwellers. There's a lot lot more miles of infrastructure to be deployed and maintained per customer out where the population is sparse. If they maintained the same revenue-to-expense ratio as for the city dwellers you'd be paying a LOT more.
One of the beauties of wireless systems - they dramatically reduce the per-mile cost. But even there you still have to build a powerful/sensitive enough transceiver to cover a region, and you've got a lot fewer people per square mile to distribute the cost across. But at least you don't have to build and maintain infrastructure out to each customer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 22 2018, @03:42PM (2 children)
Well, yeah, it sure looks that way. But reality is that the "asswipe" is looking at the $278,000 of cost to build the wire out to your home, and the $100/month of returning billing, and doing the obvious math:
278,000/100 = 2,780 months just to pay back the capitol install costs
2,780 / 12 = 231 years (rounded down)
And deciding that yes, it is not at all profitable to wait 231 years just to recoup the cost of installing the wiring. Esp. when you look at it as 231 years for your house, and another 231 for your neighbor, and 174 years for the three folks a mile closer up the road, and adding it all up to a multi-billion dollar loss year over year for the next 150 years.
And of course this math above assumes that your $100/month goes 100% towards paying back the install cost. Reality is that only a fraction of it goes to that cost, other fractions go to keeping the line working, or repairing it when the ice storm tears a chunk down (or the squirrels chew the wire open, or the back-hoe driver cuts the cable, etc.) or just to the electricity to run the equipment to transmit data back and forth over the line, etc.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday April 22 2018, @03:58PM (1 child)
Except, I'm not THAT far out in the sticks. I did the math, some months ago, and posted it here on Soylent. If fiber were built out from New Boston, Texas, out past my house to the next two communities north of me, the fiber could pay for itself in less than a year.
I made a presumption in that post that all homes would subscribe to fiber if it were available, and I never went back to correct that presumption. Let's say that only half the homes subscribed, then return on investment time would double. That is, in two years, or less, the constructions costs would be recovered. So - sorry, your 231 years isn't cutting it.
There are several communities surrounding where I live. Having brought fiber to my town, it would become easier and cheaper to extend service to each of those communities. I suppose that some individuals at the end of the line might be as costly as you suggest, but I truly doubt that. It MIGHT take ten years for some of those furthest out to pay off. Then again - some of those individuals might be served more efficiently from different directions. Many people along the state line are actually closer to services in Oklahoma, than to anything in Arkansas.
(Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Monday April 23 2018, @10:38PM
That 231 year estimate used valid methodology, but different assumptions. Specifically, the total price of $278,000 is an assumption, $100 per month is another, and one singular subscriber is another. At least one of those is reasonable, and at least one is unreasonable.
The trick is to get people to focus on the math and not on the assumptions.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Sunday April 22 2018, @01:28PM
Well I can tell you did not receive much education since you can't read a few sentences.
Don't worry, we will make sure education and internet is available to all to make sure your children do not have to grow up as uneducated as you were.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 22 2018, @09:42AM
Amen, brother. Now, if you'd just practice what you preach.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 22 2018, @10:54AM
the telcos took our tax money, and failed to deliver
Yup. We paid $200B for 45Mbps, deliverable by Y2000.
We got screwed.[1] [archive.li]
Of course, the goddamned Congress didn't attach
any fucking strings or specify any milestones that had to be met for payments; they just handed over our cash.
[1] The original page is now 404. Imaginary property sucks.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Sunday April 22 2018, @05:07PM (4 children)
If all rural dwellers move to the city for usable Internet access, then who will grow the food that you eat?
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 23 2018, @02:32AM
Like they always do, import it from the 3rd world.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Goghit on Monday April 23 2018, @05:21PM (2 children)
Robots. Autonomous tractors are already a thing.
(Score: 1) by mmarujo on Tuesday April 24 2018, @11:48AM (1 child)
Ha!
And what would the robots use for connection? A Cristal Ball?
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Sunday May 06 2018, @11:07PM
Presumably the robots could work on a WLAN connection with slow or no Internet uplink. I don't know whether that's at all practical though.