
Rural America Is Building Its Own Internet Because No One Else Will - leotravis10
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/paax9n/rural-america-is-building-its-own-internet-because-no-one-else-will
======
INTPenis
Speaking from a strange perspective perhaps but here in Sweden (the land of
broadband) there was a little rural town in the south that couldn't wait to
get fibre so the locals organized all the necessary things to start a town
fibre grid themselves.

And now every house has 10Gbps with free choice of operator.

Normally what most communities do is wait for one of the big fibre operators
to reach them and start digging. But these locals did all the practical stuff
like digging, laying fibre and building the actual grid themselves by hiring
their own contractors.

Larger communities, towns and cities, usually have a city wide fibre grid
managed perhaps by the local energy company or by the municipality. They in
turn might out-source the fibre digging but they still manage the grid and
determine what operators are offered to the citizens.

In big cities (we have three of those) you can find multiple city wide fibre
grids. One managed by the municipality/city and some y large property owners
that take it upon themselves to equip their buildings with fibre.

Regarding the wireless setups in the article I am very skeptical because this
was a trend 10 years back in Sweden and a lot of people lost money by
investing in it when they could have just waited a few years and had real
fibre.

But the US is special because of its size. So wireless might be all they can
get for many years.

~~~
legulere
> But the US is special because of its size.

The US has a population density of 35.0/km², while Sweden has one of 22.0/km².
So it shouldn't really be bigger problem in the US because of geography.

~~~
propelol
Doesn't the population density vary a lot from state to state, especially in
the rural parts.

~~~
BrandonMarc
Exactly. Exclude the counties with NYC, LA, Chicago, Houston, etc, and it's a
very different story. What works in Manhattan could never work in Wyoming or
even Wisconsin.

~~~
legulere
Exclude the kommuner with Stockholm, Göteborg, Malmö etc. and it's a complete
very different story

------
kevin_b_er
Frankly, what this article tells me is that the ISP conglomerates haven't yet
bribed the state officials of Kentucky or Ohio to ban or minefield local
governments from being involved in broadband initiatives.

~~~
bsder
What this article tells me is that these areas are _so_ unprofitable that the
telcos don't actually care.

I can tell you that they know _exactly_ which areas can be profitable, and if
one of _those_ areas suddenly decides to try to do something on their own, all
of a sudden lots of obstacles magically appear.

~~~
PaulHoule
Actually, Frontier charges $90 a month for 1 Mbps DSL.

The problem is not that they could not afford to offer me a gigabit at $120 a
month, but that they can't afford to give up $90 a month that they get without
investing in their networks.

In the case of Frontier, it pays a dividend greater than earnings. It even
pays a dividend in quarters where earnings are negative! It is not a
"profitable" phone company, it is a company that is bleeding a copper network
dry.

------
justinmk
That is how things are supposed to work. Communities and individuals should
not expect "someone else" to manage their affairs.

~~~
denzil_correa
I'd like to understand more. Are you saying that communities and individuals
should also manage communication platforms, public transport, law and order
themselves?

~~~
prophesi
Those services turn out better when managed by the city compared to when it's
managed at the state or federal level. The problem is that rural towns usually
don't have the resources to pull it off.

~~~
rayiner
They don't. Federal regulation is vastly superior to state and local
regulation of utilities. Remember, it's local governments that created telco
and electric monopolies in the first place, a mess which Congress has spent
decades trying to clean up.

~~~
summer_steven
Then by your logic, is global regulation superior to Federal regulation?

~~~
btian
ISO standards are pretty good I would say.

~~~
tedunangst
But much less fun than going into the basement of the hall of records to see
how long a foot is in this county.

------
esaym
Sadly I've never had a good experience with "wireless" internet. I've looked
into building a WISP a few times but the cost of hardware and no guarantee of
actual data throughput or quality keeps me away.

Most hardware for WISPs have back haul throughput rates advertised at 100-400
mbs, yet most end points at the customer premise will see data rates of 6 -
20mbs. Including the bad jitter, packet loss, and burstyness, and you've got
something that is only good for browsing facebook.

All the hardware I am aware of still uses the old RTS/CTS methods for media
access borrowed from the wifi protocol. Which works fine for 100 end points
all within 100ft of each other... But stick 100 end points in a 5 miles radius
all trying to get a "clear to send" ack and your in a world of hurt.

Yes I know... some tuning will go along way, but at least with the Motorola
canopy family, they defaulted to supporting a 15 mile (or was it 20?) radius.
And with the WISP's network admin (which is normally always the CEO's young
nephew) never changing the defaults because it "just works". This puts a ton
of latency on the network since everything is assuming to be waiting on
hearing from the node 15 miles away (that may or may not be there). There are
some newer systems out now that use TDMA for media access, but from the
reviews I see, still getting more than 20mbs to a CPE is unlikely.

You best bet would be a gigabit back haul with some p2p access points covering
no more than a mile or 2 each, but that means many more antennas and no place
to put them. I've seen many WISPs "cover" 100+ square miles with just two
access points. It just doesn't work.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
My parents have two ISP options and they're on the east coast (like literally,
the town has waterfront on the Atlantic and all the BS that goes with it).
They are by no means rural. They have two ISP options. One offers 1mb down.
The other is Comcast.

6-20mbps with terrible quality would be a godsend for them and everyone else
in the area.

~~~
chinathrow
> and all the BS that goes with it

And all the beautiful scenery that goes with it? Or...?

~~~
dsfyu404ed
They're fine places to vacation. They're terrible places to live.

Everyone is out to screw everyone else in order to make a buck. Shady used car
salesman is a level of ethics and honesty that's about median when it comes to
any sort of business (and it's more of a bell curve than bi-model IMO). The
quaintness that makes the place marketable breeds busybodyism. There's a sense
of community in the same way that companies that don't care about their
employees loudly preach that they do. The roads are clogged with tourists from
memorial day through labor day. From labor day until memorial day hospitals
and holding cells are clogged with drug users and dealers. You get to watch
the corrupt town government pour tons of money into special interest projects.

------
sunflowerfly
I am not old enough to know the history of electrification, but it was
completed thoughouly into rural America. Other utilities did not. Here in
rural Kansas many households were still using wells or hauling water from
cities, until they banded together and laid their own water pipes.

~~~
MaysonL
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_Electrification_Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_Electrification_Act)

------
derwiki
Back in 2002 when I was in high school in Coshocton I worked for the local
internet service provider, CloverNet. It was mainly mundane tech support and
computer repair, but every now and then I got to help with an AirClover
installation. AirClover was the medium-distance (3-5mi?) broadband solution
that we set up with on-the-roof directional antennas and Cisco 802.11b cards.
Really excited to hear that Coshocton is still working on solutions like this.

------
client4
Per usual on ISP topics popping into hacker news, I implore anyone considering
starting an ISP to jump into the ISPSchool Slack channel. PM me or send an
email to staff@tsi.io and we will add you.

TL;DNR Montana probably has faster internet than you.
[http://tsi.io](http://tsi.io)

~~~
20after4
email sent :)

------
rootsudo
If you search HN, you'll see successful ISP stories.

Essentially being a rural ISP/WISP is no easy task.

------
X86BSD
I was just this evening going through the "what if I started a wisp? How many
pops? How much bandwidth? What would it take?" I've done this off and on since
1990 when breezecom was around.

Getting access to rooftops is infinitely easier than trenching fiber.

Can you scale wireless in a modest city like KC? At what CIR? You would have
to make use of extensive caching. Even the best hardware like ubiquity tops
out for backhaul at 2Gb. That's always been the problem is wireless can't
scale with speed. At least not in any spectrum us mortals can use.

------
vinayan3
In the UK farmers are laying their own fiber.
[http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-37974267](http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-37974267)

~~~
goodcanadian
To be fair, distances in rural Britain are much shorter than distances in
rural America. That said, I applaud them for doing it, and I have occasionally
thought about pursuing a project like that myself.

~~~
vinayan3
It would be really fun digging up places to lay fiber. I've wired up 2 offices
for new networking equipment when the company moved. It's pretty satisfying
seeing the stuff you rigged up light up and actually function. It was pretty
fun but I can imagine doing digging with equipment would be even more fun.

~~~
chrisper
Until you severe a cable with said equipment and you make the news that AWS is
down because if you!

~~~
20after4
That's valuable publicity & infamy.

------
pls2halp
The most interesting part of the article for me was that it mentioned 5G
wireless signals. I was under the impression that the standard(is that the
right word?) was still being developed.

~~~
tpxl
I was under the impression that refers to the frequency, eg 5GHz as opposed to
2.4GHz

------
jraines
In the early days of the telegraph, farmers bootstrapped their own networks
with fence wire (source - James Gleik's excellent _The Information_ )

------
rayiner
> We view it as the next economic revolution for coal towns," said Harry
> Collins, the chairman of the Letcher County Broadband Board, which formed
> late last year. "The majority of our railroad tracks are ripped up now—that
> revolution has played out. We feel that this [digital] revolution is just as
> game changing and life changing as those railroad tracks were in the 20s and
> 30s."

It's sad, but this is wishful thinking. If anything, tech-related jobs are
more concentrated in urban areas than other service industries. These places
have no economic viability outside the specific circumstances (coal mining,
farming) that caused people to move there in the first place.

~~~
hayksaakian
The internet and tech related jobs are the best opportunity to work remotely
that anyone living in a dying coal town will have.

An online freelancer with a low cost of living can live decently.

~~~
Mediterraneo10
> An online freelancer with a low cost of living can live decently.

Eastern European and freelancer here. I can do all that freelance work for
much cheaper than any American from a dying coal town. Furthermore, we Eastern
European freelancers generally tend to be university educated, are used to
working in a global cross-cultural marketplace, and we have a large pool of
local talent we can subcontract work out to and thus grow our business. Anyone
in rural America who _now_ starts trying to make it in freelancing is likely
to lose out to us.

On the other hand, one thing we cannot do – due to our foreign passports – is
easily move to a large American city. So, I think moving to the cities is a
better option for someone in a dying coal town than staying there and hoping
for success in the digital economy.

~~~
pault
Are you sure your cost of living is much less than a small town in an
economically depressed rural area in the US?

~~~
Mediterraneo10
An average middle class salary in my country would be around 1000€/month. That
provides for a pretty good life in my country. In the USA, on the other hand,
that annual income would be below the poverty level. The cost of fiber
internet, electricity and gas is much cheaper in Eastern Europe than the
horrible prices I have seen quoted for North America.

For what it’s worth, I am now a digital nomad. I don’t stay in my country on
that salary, I travel among countries that are even cheaper. Someone who
intends on staying in their dying coal town in Appalachia does not have that
option.

------
jiggunjer
The title made me click because "wow, their _own_ __internet __". Oh, just
infrastructure, I should have known ;D

------
cmurf
Rural America votes red, which got them this kind of policy for broadband:
[https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/29/15106850/fcc-lifeline-
pro...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/29/15106850/fcc-lifeline-program-
reverse-federal-oversight-ajit-pai)

Instead of the kind of policy they had with telephones, with the Universal
Service Fund, and the like, to subsidize the massively higher deployment cost.
It's not just in the middle of nowhere, the run length are vastly longer. Of
course it's going to cost more money. Electrical lines, water and sewer do
too.

~~~
djrogers
I don' think you read that link you posted properly. The proposed expansion of
Lifeline to broadband was tied up in court because it was entirely Federally
decreed, whereas the actual law passed by congress said that it had to be
handled by the states. Pai pulled it back from the courts, and determined that
following the law as written was a better idea.

Go ahead and kick the FCC and Pai around for screwing up net neutrality, but
the Obama-era ULS expansion thing was never going to happen the way the FCC
had written those regulations.

