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Not only is there no particular reason to believe anything you are saying, but even if it were true, it would still represent a meaningful investment. Fixed wi

Not only is there no particular reason to believe anything you are saying, but even if it were true, it would still represent a meaningful investment. Fixed wireless will fail to reach some people, but would represent a big step up for a lot of other people. Don't let perfect be the enemy of the good and don't let cynicism be the enemy of getting anything done.

robcohen 5y ago
Fiber is the only thing that any money should be going to. It it isn't even expensive. Just require all road construction to also install fiber. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/03/nationwide-fiber-proposed-law-could-add-broadband-to-road-projects/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/03/natio...
- maztaim 5y ago
  Should, but won’t. History tends to repeat itself. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-book-of-broken-promis_b_5839394 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-book-of-broken-promis_b_5...
- lokar 5y ago
  Fiber can't be approved, built out, and provisioned inside one election cycle
  - LinuxBender 5y ago
    It was in my area as part of the CARES act. The entire valley has fiber in front of every home and most homes/businesses were connected with the digging costs refunded. I missed out on the refund but still benefit from the fiber.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
PaulHoule 5y ago
Once you get 200 or so miles from the East Coast you encounter the "Appalachian Mountains" which are mostly a set of dissected plateaus. It is a place where radio goes to die. In my area there are ridges that are consistently about 2000 feet above sea level, and none of them stick up above the others. If you build a tower at a reasonable height on top of one it can sorta kinda see into the valleys on both sides and maybe VHF waves can propagate a little into the next valley. The ridge on top might be roadless so you have to build a road, power lines, optic fiber, etc. You probably have to run at least 1/3 the length of optic fiber to serve the towers that you'd have to run to serve the roads. Wireless base stations are crazy expensive and the cost is only justified by the astronomical cost of wireless plans (compared to how much bandwidth you actually get.) Fiber optic has potential performance that is 1000s of times great than the alternatives and unlike DSL and Fixed Wireless it has the range to cover rural areas. Fixed Wireless vendors have a long history of coming into small towns like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Music_Man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Music_Man and only covering a small fraction of residents if any. If the market can support a scheme that's great, but the government has to stop paying for scams.
PaulHoule 5y ago
In some other country your thinking might be valid but here in the US our #1 problem is that we keep inventing expensive partial solutions that require more expensive partial solutions. For instance we not only have a dazzling array of private health plans that may or may not accept you but we also have a large number of government plans and public-private insurance plans. Someday we're going to realize that people still aren't covered under Obamacare and invent yet another new program. What I do know is that we'll never scrap something old or consolidate two programs into one. We got to the moon by making a realistic plan to get all the way there and get all the way back. We didn't create a "public-private partnership" that would get the astronauts 80% of the way there and hope they'd be able to ride the bus back. Any plan that serves a few people who are convenient to serve who aren't already served is just going to make the remaining unserved people harder to serve. A realistic plan is that you can wrap an optic fiber around power lines and old-school power lines at relatively low cost. --- It's a fairly big problem that industry focused on the west coast has a distorted idea of what you can do with radio. Several million people have a line-of-sight to the Hollywood sign. There are no "white spaces" in Southern California, instead you can tune in 100+ OTA channels. The "ring of fire" topography makes it easy to offer services. The 2 meter ham band is crazy crowded in So Cal and has driven people into the 1.2 GHz band. Even in NYC the 2 meter band is pretty dead in comparison. San Francisco startups keep piling devices into the 2.4 GHz band instead of the 900 MhZ band. They think 900 MhZ is crowded (it is in San Jose) but in most of the country 900 Mhz is all dead air. In most of the country about 10% of the possible TV channels are used.

robcohen 5y ago

Fiber is the only thing that any money should be going to. It it isn't even expensive. Just require all road construction to also install fiber. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/03/nationwide-fiber-proposed-law-could-add-broadband-to-road-projects/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/03/natio...

maztaim 5y ago
Should, but won’t. History tends to repeat itself. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-book-of-broken-promis_b_5839394 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-book-of-broken-promis_b_5...
lokar 5y ago
Fiber can't be approved, built out, and provisioned inside one election cycle
- LinuxBender 5y ago
  It was in my area as part of the CARES act. The entire valley has fiber in front of every home and most homes/businesses were connected with the digging costs refunded. I missed out on the refund but still benefit from the fiber.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

PaulHoule 5y ago

Once you get 200 or so miles from the East Coast you encounter the "Appalachian Mountains" which are mostly a set of dissected plateaus. It is a place where radio goes to die. In my area there are ridges that are consistently about 2000 feet above sea level, and none of them stick up above the others. If you build a tower at a reasonable height on top of one it can sorta kinda see into the valleys on both sides and maybe VHF waves can propagate a little into the next valley. The ridge on top might be roadless so you have to build a road, power lines, optic fiber, etc. You probably have to run at least 1/3 the length of optic fiber to serve the towers that you'd have to run to serve the roads. Wireless base stations are crazy expensive and the cost is only justified by the astronomical cost of wireless plans (compared to how much bandwidth you actually get.) Fiber optic has potential performance that is 1000s of times great than the alternatives and unlike DSL and Fixed Wireless it has the range to cover rural areas. Fixed Wireless vendors have a long history of coming into small towns like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Music_Man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Music_Man and only covering a small fraction of residents if any. If the market can support a scheme that's great, but the government has to stop paying for scams.

PaulHoule 5y ago

In some other country your thinking might be valid but here in the US our #1 problem is that we keep inventing expensive partial solutions that require more expensive partial solutions. For instance we not only have a dazzling array of private health plans that may or may not accept you but we also have a large number of government plans and public-private insurance plans. Someday we're going to realize that people still aren't covered under Obamacare and invent yet another new program. What I do know is that we'll never scrap something old or consolidate two programs into one. We got to the moon by making a realistic plan to get all the way there and get all the way back. We didn't create a "public-private partnership" that would get the astronauts 80% of the way there and hope they'd be able to ride the bus back. Any plan that serves a few people who are convenient to serve who aren't already served is just going to make the remaining unserved people harder to serve. A realistic plan is that you can wrap an optic fiber around power lines and old-school power lines at relatively low cost. --- It's a fairly big problem that industry focused on the west coast has a distorted idea of what you can do with radio. Several million people have a line-of-sight to the Hollywood sign. There are no "white spaces" in Southern California, instead you can tune in 100+ OTA channels. The "ring of fire" topography makes it easy to offer services. The 2 meter ham band is crazy crowded in So Cal and has driven people into the 1.2 GHz band. Even in NYC the 2 meter band is pretty dead in comparison. San Francisco startups keep piling devices into the 2.4 GHz band instead of the 900 MhZ band. They think 900 MhZ is crowded (it is in San Jose) but in most of the country 900 Mhz is all dead air. In most of the country about 10% of the possible TV channels are used.