
A quarter of Alabamians live in homes without internet access - SQL2219
https://www.al.com/news/2019/12/rural-disconnect-majority-in-some-alabama-counties-dont-have-internet-access.html
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rubidium
The article is unclear about mobile phone internet use. Most poor people I
know have (at most times) cell phones with a data plan. This is sufficient for
most basic internet needs (eg billing, applying for jobs, gov’t assistance).

Whether or not a wire goes to the house is less important.

~~~
kageneko
I wouldn't bet on the availability of a data plan.

I regularly drive through Alabama on the way to Florida (from Atlanta). One
time, I took a wrong turn and ended up in a small town with absolutely no cell
signal and closed roads everywhere. We stopped and asked a local for
directions. This was SE of Dothan, AL, I think.

And several times, Google Maps has routed me through areas where I no longer
have a signal (south-central AL). Once when this happened, the road it wanted
me to go on was closed and it couldn't download an update. I handled this one
by just driving northish, knowing that I'd hit Montgomery eventually.

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JustSomeNobody
Given that the majority of the people they’re talking about are poor or in
poverty and most services they need, if not require it, at least are easier to
obtain with internet access, this is tragic.

This is a very wealthy nation. We must do better.

~~~
huffmsa
Okay, as part of we, what are you going to do to help get these people
internet?

Are you starting a charity or an LLC to build the infrastructure?

Are you going to invest in a company working to expand access?

Or so you just mean that someone else in the "we" collective needs to do
something?

~~~
JustSomeNobody
We should hold companies like AT&T accountable for the billions they have
given to investors that was supposed to supply internet to rural areas for a
start.

And why are you attacking me? I vote for candidates who I think will help. I
am a foster parent so I have opened my home to the children displaced. Sure I
could do more. But some don’t do anything. At all.

~~~
huffmsa
Your anecdotes don't mean much to me other than that you can take action on
things you care about. Which is good.

I simply dislike vacuous "someone, somewhere should do something" statements.
Be they from you or anyone else.

And yes, we should hold at&t and other who were granted monopoly power and
government mandates accountable for their failures. No disagreement

~~~
CPLX
> I simply dislike vacuous "someone, somewhere should do something"
> statements.

Indeed. People should stop doing that.

~~~
huffmsa
Cheeky, but respectable.

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uzzgx
Why is exactly Internet access a "human right" (whatever that term means) more
than television or going to a football match?

~~~
Broken_Hippo
Because watching television or going to a football match is clearly
entertainment.

But you get a discount on electric installation if you sign up for your new
service online.

Internet service isn't just entertainment: It is communication, banking, and
lots of very basic things folks need in life. It just happens to be multi-
purpose, so you get the entertainment value as well.

Many jobs require internet access to apply: Fewer and fewer take any sort of
paper applications and not everywhere has kiosks to apply and test at (low
paying jobs, at least). Heck, game disks are getting rarer, so you sometimes
need to be online to use a PC game. Lots of research for school papers is done
online.

Also, communication. Few folks send snail mail letters anymore due to email.
Chat programs work well too.

If you aren't connected to the internet, you are at a disadvantage. I cannot
say that about television in general or a football match - going without those
_sometimes_ means you don't have as much to talk about with folks that consume
those.

~~~
uzzgx
>But you get a discount on electric installation if you sign up for your new
service online.

That should be illegal. It's discrimination for a basic service.

>Internet service isn't just entertainment: It is communication, banking, and
lots of very basic things folks need in life.

You can still walk into the bank. Checking your account from home is cool, but
hardly a vital thing.

>Many jobs require internet access to apply: Fewer and fewer take any sort of
paper applications and not everywhere has kiosks to apply and test at (low
paying jobs, at least). Heck, game disks are getting rarer, so you sometimes
need to be online to use a PC game. Lots of research for school papers is done
online.

I doubt they can pull this shit off in a place where 25% of people have no
access to the Internet. Otherwise they wouldn't find applicants.

>Also, communication. Few folks send snail mail letters anymore due to email.
Chat programs work well too.

A bummer. Hardly a "human rights" issue.

~~~
thebooktocome
> You can still walk into the bank. Checking your account from home is cool,
> but hardly a vital thing.

What are you talking about? A lot of Alabama (and the US generally) is
unbanked specifically because there's no bank in walking distance.

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sokoloff
Ctrl-F phone. 0 results.

I suspect most of those 25% who lack wired broadband internet have
smartphones, most of which support tethering, but even without it, your
smartphone is an internet-connected computer, fairly suitable for most
consumption related activities.

I suspect the omission of phone stats was not an innocent oversight.

~~~
astura
These two lines:

>The majority of households in four rural counties - Perry, Monroe, Conecuh
and Greene - don’t have any sort of internet access

> Mississippi has the worst mark in the country. Thirty percent of households
> there don’t have any access to the World Wide Web.

make it clear they are talking about "ability to access the internet from
their house by any means" not just a dedicated broadband connection at home.
So that would also include people who don't own smartphones and/or tablets and
people who have no cell phone service at home.

~~~
sokoloff
That’s the clear _implication_ of the words in the article. I’m not convinced
it’s accurate, given that over 81% of adult Americans (not households) own a
smartphone and if they had data which included they were considering
smartphones as excluded, I’d expect them to specify that for clarity.

I find many instances where a journalist reads a finding of “no internet” and
interprets it for readers to say “no access to World Wide Web” and in the
process making it wrong.

In a Census survey format, people who don’t have wired internet but do have a
smartphone are very much liable to answer that they “don’t have internet at
home”. I’m 95% sure my quite well educated parents would answer that way in
that circumstance. A possible control question on the survey would be “how
many smartphones are owned by your household?”

The finding is based on data from 2017 and reported on (in headline form at
least) as “news”.

I’m not disputing what the text says. If it’s 100% accurate, that’s appalling,
of course.

