
How to Give Rural America Broadband? Look to the Early 1900s - dredmorbius
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/08/technology/how-to-give-rural-america-broadband-look-to-the-early-1900s.html?_r=0
======
NelsonMinar
I live in one of those unserved rural areas. Both AT&T and Comcast refuse to
run a wire another mile down the road, and since they are the duopoly, tough
luck. Fortunately we have a local wireless ISP and I get 12Mbps via a 2.4GHz
radio link. It's nowhere near as good as wired, but I'm grateful. Another
local ISP is working on laying fiber with federal grants but it will take many
years.

The best analysis I've ever read on why US broadband sucks comes from the CEO
of Sonic, a Bay Area independent ISP which is awesome. tl;dr: Michael Powell
sold Americans out on false promises of 5 different media for broadband. Turns
out only 2 really work.

[https://corp.sonic.net/ceo/2011/09/02/americas-
intentional-b...](https://corp.sonic.net/ceo/2011/09/02/americas-intentional-
broadband-duopoly/)

~~~
amalag
If you have line of site you AND you can cut some deal with a person within
line of site you can easily do a nice wireless connection with high bandwidth
with 5Ghz. Ubiquiti products are nice and can do very high bandwidth. The key
is line of site.

~~~
john_reel
Even in poor weather?

~~~
dvtv75
I've got a 6km link (about 4 miles). Just had some snow, and have had some
really bad weather, link has been nice and stable.

I'm using Nanobeam M5 16, they aren't installed properly so the link could be
a lot better, but that's my fault and not the equipment.

Check out their forum at [http://forum.ubnt.com](http://forum.ubnt.com) and
you'll see all sorts of situations, long, short, and mid-range.

------
mgarfias
I live in rural Oregon. I have fiber to the house delivering gigabit speeds.

The local co-op exists because the phone companies didn't want to wire the
area so the farmers did it.

Then they put conduit in the ground and started putting fiber in everywhere.

Oh, and when I have a problem they come out the same day. Once was a bad
switch, once was a bad termination both on my end, but no run around.

~~~
beachstartup
how/where does one find potential areas they could move to with these types of
facilities?

~~~
amazon_not
[https://muninetworks.org/communitymap](https://muninetworks.org/communitymap)

[http://www.ntca.org/awards-recognition-programs/certified-
gi...](http://www.ntca.org/awards-recognition-programs/certified-gig-capable-
providers.html)

[http://highspeedgeek.com/america-gigabit-
internet/](http://highspeedgeek.com/america-gigabit-internet/)

[http://www.broadbandmap.gov/analyze](http://www.broadbandmap.gov/analyze)

~~~
amazon_not
[http://www.bbpmag.com/search-5411.php](http://www.bbpmag.com/search-5411.php)

------
x0x0
I wish there where a high-speed coop in the bay area. Comcast is ass. They
managed to knock my 25 Mbits down to about 0.5Mbits yesterday, and when I
complained, were like what? Did this bug you? You still have internet access!
Works just fine! All for the low price of $70/mo with $5/mo annual increases.
Unfortunately, my only alternative is AT&T and they're even slower.

It's ridiculous my first broadband connection 15 years ago in the midwest was
faster than my $70/mo comcast connection. Plus it was symmetric!

~~~
jasonkester
Looxury! At this very moment I'm tethered to my phone for the 4th day in as
many weeks because British Telecom is incapable of supplying DSL to the
country for which they're the monopoly provider.

I'd be all about a fibre-optic cable on telephone poles, since they don't seem
to be able to keep the existing copper ones under the ground connected to
anything.

------
kalleboo
In Sweden back when DSL was new, local cooperatives were instrumental in
raising the funds and proving the market to get the POTS copper monopoly[0] to
upgrade phone exchanges to install DSLAMs.

In the US I see the biggest threat are communities where companies like
Comcast have been granted exclusive rights to high speed communications
infrastructure, and legislation that prohibits municipal efforts

[0] Which the government telecoms regular convinced the former phone monopoly
to spin off into an independent company to encourage competition

------
merlincorey
Since the reclassification of broadband internet as a utility, "electric
cooperatives" are able to use federal funds to get broadband out to rural and
remote locations big companies won't go to because the setup costs outweigh
their potential profits (in theory).

Early 1900s was more like the 1930s, when part of "The New Deal" allowed for
electric cooperatives to exist.

------
michaelbuddy
I work in gov't as a contractor, where the USDA does large scale loans for of
course the well known providers as well as smaller ones who apply. We're
talking huge loans, great interest rates and their main requirements are, is
it rural, is it unserved, census projections of populations to show there that
will in fact be paying customers so the provider can earn money and pay back
the loan.

So when the companies give the run around to unserved areas, it may be smoke
and mirrors, it may be that they have applications in the hopper and are
waiting, or were rejected.

And I'm just speculating (I'm thinking out loud here that's all) but I would
NOT be surprised if a bigger company has as service area on lock down with
their loan applications, who knows that might be a prohibitive measure that a
smaller company couldn't jump in and get that area served with a similar loan.

If that were the case, that would annoy me because I like to hear when the
smaller companies are providing fantastic service and being good competition
for the conglomerates. It's getting to the point where a small number of
companies own the pipes and now even content networks. Now I'm going to have
to go research this and find out if that strategy is there to benefit the big
Telcos.

Media and utility consolidation is nearly always a bad sign to me.

------
jerelunruh
I live in a rural area and have fiber to the home from our electric co-op.
It's amazing: $99 symmetric gigabit and rock solid service.

On the other hand AT&T is the phone provider here and selling DSL is the least
of their worries. One of my clients (a block from the phone switch office)
needed DSL as a backup to their fiber connection and AT&T can't provide it
because their "equipment is already full". As I see it that's the damage of a
monopoly; luckily for us we have proactive co-ops that can compete on projects
of that size or we'd have no wired internet.

~~~
logfromblammo
A monopoly must necessarily limit supply to increase profit. That means that
turning away potential customers--even customers that spontaneously appear
without advertising or recruitment--is an essential part of the business
model.

Refusing to install another DSLAM means they can sell space on the existing
ones at a higher price.

~~~
amazon_not
I don't get this argument. Why would a monopoly turn away customers? More
customers mean more fat margins.

I do get why a monopoly would not want to invest more in capacity (for example
DSLAMs). A dollar may have higher returns for the monopoly somewhere else,
especially if the monopoly can't (immediately) sell all ports on the new
DSLAM.

However, if there is free capacity (for example DSLAM ports), why would a
monopoly turn away paying customers?

~~~
logfromblammo
A perfectly competitive business operates such that price equals marginal
cost.

A monopoly operates such that marginal revenue equals marginal cost.

This usually works out such that the quantity supplied is lower and price is
higher than the market-clearing quantity and price under perfect competition.

This is an unstable point, because a competitor _could_ enter, and capture
some of the unrealized benefit of trade in the triangular area between the
monopoly quantity and the competitive equilibrium quantity. If the business is
a natural monopoly, and the incumbent does not act quickly to drive the
competitor out, they could flip the market and drive out the incumbent
instead. A natural monopoly under normal circumstances should occasionally see
brief bouts of competition that are essentially deathmatches between
businesses. Customers get greater supply and lower prices during these bouts.

So many businesses that are the incumbent in a natural monopoly market try to
solidify their position with an enforced monopoly, making competition illegal.
This is usually sold as protecting consumers from market disruptions, but that
is _always_ a lie. It only protects the incumbent and their guaranteed
economic profits from an intentionally underserved market.

~~~
amazon_not
I get the economic theory, but I don't get how it would result in the actions
prescribed in your example.

> Refusing to install another DSLAM means they can sell space on the existing
> ones at a higher price.

As customers as either on fixed term contracts or grandfathered in on existing
plans, I don't quite get how ports on the DSLAM could be sold for a higher
price.

I suppose prices could be raised as contracts run out and old plans are
sunset, or when an existing user cancels and a new one seeks service. Is this
what you mean?

> A monopoly must necessarily limit supply to increase profit. That means that
> turning away potential customers--even customers that spontaneously appear
> without advertising or recruitment--is an essential part of the business
> model

I get that the monopoly would limit supply by not installing new DSLAMs, but
turning away customers? Why would a monopoly do that if there were free ports
on the DSLAM?

Possibly raise prices yes, but refuse to sell no.

------
dugmartin
My dad worked for the phone company for his entire career (late 1950's to
early 1990's). He had some interesting stories about going into rural areas in
the early 1960's and seeing how "universal service" was implemented in the
1940's and 1950's. The most common way when there were only a few service
users down a side road was to hook the phone wire up to a barbed wire fence
heading that way and use the earth for neutral. It worked but it meant if a
farmer closer to the road picked up the phone the line past their house went
dead.

I wonder what kind of bitrate you could get nowadays with barbed wire?

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
A 99% Invisible podcast, _The Devil 's Rope_, discusses this. As a result of
already having barbed wire run all over the West to control Texas Longhorn
cattle, it was far easier to provide phone service using it, than it was to
run new cable. So farmers ended up being the most wired group of people in the
late 19th, early 20th century.

------
karma_vaccum123
Electrification of rural areas is well documented and was as painful to
complete as broadband. Robert Caro writes on the topic in his biography of
Lyndon Johnson. Note the extensive political wrangling and haggling that came
down to individual land parcels

~~~
tbihl
The thing I find interesting about the connection of rural homes was how much
it set back the alternative energy field. Windmills had just started replacing
gas generators (with the generators as backups) when rural electrification
happened. 90 years later, and that same question has become relevant in a lot
of developing areas.

------
peter303
Aspen and its upriver neighbors have proposed a $6M fiber to bring its
broadband over a megabit. Aspen is 40 miles from I-70 which is a fiber
corridor. I a common fantasy to move to the mountains, become a freelancer and
hiking & ski bum. But if you are still getting AOL dialup speeds, it doesnt
quite work. In Denver we are spoiled by 50+ mbs offered by multiple carriers.

~~~
ghaff
Although I do know tech people who work from home in rural areas with just
satellite. It's expensive and not ideal--and you give up things like Netflix--
but it apparently can be done for a lot of circumstances.

~~~
vvanders
No need to satellite, there's quite a few microwave point-to-point internet
services depending on where you are.

I know someone living on the mountain above me who gets reasonable internet
speeds from a link down in Portland.

~~~
rabble
If you can get line of sight, microwave works well.

------
pjc50
Co-operatives are great for bringing services to the underserved, but they
require the input of a particular kind and level of political engagement from
the public that seems to be rare.

Other examples: [http://b4rn.org.uk/](http://b4rn.org.uk/) , various community
buyouts of Scottish islands like Eigg.

~~~
arethuza
We've been looking at house in rural Scotland and the situation with broadband
is, in general, pretty bad - even with new houses it's not unusual for them to
have poor (1Mbps) or non-existent broadband.

It's also completely unpredictable - one house we looked at gets 8Mbps and
another 1km away (both in a rural area near to Auchterarder) gets 400Mbps! NB
That latter one appears to be the one house in Scotland that can get BT
Infinity 4.

------
shmerl
_> With high-speed internet, there are similar dynamics. Last year, the
federal government declared that broadband should be treated like a utility,
as essential as electricity or the phone._

That's incorrect. Net neutrality rules don't treat Internet like electrical or
phone utility literally. There are many differences in practice. For instance
utility rates can be regulated. Prices on Internet access aren't. It doesn't
need to be regulated as much as other utilities, but some things certainly
could be regulated, like for example when preventing anti-competitive abuse.
If anything, FCC abysmally failed to outright ban data caps.

------
rabble
I've got a place in rural northern california and we don't get cell phone
coverage, no where within a 20 miles, and of course there is no broadband. The
forest service doesn't help put in towers, the rural telephony program only
supports landlines, which don't reach out here. Easy process of putting up
both cell phone towers and microwave repeaters would be huge. What's now is
that the government makes it very hard to do, but it should subsidize it
instead.

------
chiph
If you still have a copper land-line, there's a line-item on your bill for the
Universal Service Fund. Originally, it paid for rural telecom (phones for
farms), but there's been a lot of debate recently on whether the money should
be used for bringing internet access to remote areas.

From a technology standpoint, fiber would be the only option. The distances
involved are too long for DSL and coax cable.

~~~
rabble
They only use it for fixed line systems, not cell phones or microwave. Those
are the ways people actually want to get connected in rural areas.

