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>While it is true that the US is very sprawling, it is absolutely ridiculous that in 2019 internet giants haven't provided basic internet access to rural areas.

>While it is true that the US is very sprawling, it is absolutely ridiculous that in 2019 internet giants haven't provided basic internet access to rural areas. The contiguous United States is 3,119,884.69 square miles (the United States makes up a little less than 1/3 of North America). There are individual states larger than several European and Asian countries. Sure, there's not someone living in every single square mile but they are spread out. The fastest I can get at home, in a city fo nearly 900k people, is 75mbps down without going to a business line. Even delivering that speed to 80% of the population would probably require several billion in just equipment (lines included).

Wheaties466 7y ago
I think you're just making my point for me. The telco companies have made several times that in the past 10 years. There is simply not enough reinvested into the infrastructure.
- ryanmercer 7y ago
  Yes they've made profits, but as it stands now I can get in my car and drive 5 minutes and not be able to get AT&T Uverse but I"ll be able to get Comcast where at home I can get Uverse AND Comcast but can't get Spectrum. To go into a market, an ISP has to be able to reasonably recover their roll-out costs from that market. If they spend xxx dollars rolling out to a town, and then if they can hope to sell service to 75% of the homes, but are only going to make 0.5x or even xx of that back each year as profit, is it reasonable for them to spend xxx amount just to deploy when it might be a decade or more before they recover their initial investment? And what about the (likely) x to xx a year to maintain the equipment from squirrels/birds/storms/drunk drivers, and then upgrading the technology etc. It's great when you have a small country, that you can drive across in a day, but when you're talking about 1/3 of a continent everything is orders of magnitude more expensive and more difficult. I think people easily fall into the "well that country has it!" but they don't realize that "that" country is tiny. Let's take the country with the fastest internet [1], Taiwan, with an average speed of 85.02Mbps - it is 13,974 square miles, that's 0.44% (zero point four four) of the contiguous United States. 41 states are larger than Taiwan. [1] https://www.swedishnomad.com/fastest-internet-in-the-world/ https://www.swedishnomad.com/fastest-internet-in-the-world/
smacktoward 7y ago
This exact same issue prevented rural communities from getting access to electric power for many decades. It wasn't until the 1930s and the New Deal that it was solved, and that required the Federal government stepping in and building out power infrastructure, through programs like the Tennessee Valley Authority (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_Valley_Authority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_Valley_Authority) and the Rural Electrification Act (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_Electrification_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_Electrification_Act). Today we take it for granted that you can go anywhere in the United States and flip a light switch to turn on a light. But without that public investment, there would be big swathes of the country still living by the light of candles and oil lamps. These problems can be solved, but the private sector will never solve them, because the profit motive isn't there for them to do so. It requires public investment.

Wheaties466 7y ago

I think you're just making my point for me. The telco companies have made several times that in the past 10 years. There is simply not enough reinvested into the infrastructure.

ryanmercer 7y ago
Yes they've made profits, but as it stands now I can get in my car and drive 5 minutes and not be able to get AT&T Uverse but I"ll be able to get Comcast where at home I can get Uverse AND Comcast but can't get Spectrum. To go into a market, an ISP has to be able to reasonably recover their roll-out costs from that market. If they spend xxx dollars rolling out to a town, and then if they can hope to sell service to 75% of the homes, but are only going to make 0.5x or even xx of that back each year as profit, is it reasonable for them to spend xxx amount just to deploy when it might be a decade or more before they recover their initial investment? And what about the (likely) x to xx a year to maintain the equipment from squirrels/birds/storms/drunk drivers, and then upgrading the technology etc. It's great when you have a small country, that you can drive across in a day, but when you're talking about 1/3 of a continent everything is orders of magnitude more expensive and more difficult. I think people easily fall into the "well that country has it!" but they don't realize that "that" country is tiny. Let's take the country with the fastest internet [1], Taiwan, with an average speed of 85.02Mbps - it is 13,974 square miles, that's 0.44% (zero point four four) of the contiguous United States. 41 states are larger than Taiwan. [1] https://www.swedishnomad.com/fastest-internet-in-the-world/ https://www.swedishnomad.com/fastest-internet-in-the-world/

smacktoward 7y ago

This exact same issue prevented rural communities from getting access to electric power for many decades. It wasn't until the 1930s and the New Deal that it was solved, and that required the Federal government stepping in and building out power infrastructure, through programs like the Tennessee Valley Authority (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_Valley_Authority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_Valley_Authority) and the Rural Electrification Act (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_Electrification_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_Electrification_Act). Today we take it for granted that you can go anywhere in the United States and flip a light switch to turn on a light. But without that public investment, there would be big swathes of the country still living by the light of candles and oil lamps. These problems can be solved, but the private sector will never solve them, because the profit motive isn't there for them to do so. It requires public investment.