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There was a similar situation around my home town in rural western Ohio. The area served by large incumbent telcos (Ameritech nee Ohio Bell, AT&T, GTE) had crud

There was a similar situation around my home town in rural western Ohio. The area served by large incumbent telcos (Ameritech nee Ohio Bell, AT&T, GTE) had cruddy options for Internet service. Before 1995 there wasn't anything that wasn't a long distance call. A few miles up the road, where the incumbent telco was a consortium of old independent "farm" telephone companies, was flat rate local dialup. Not for us, though. Eventually the independents offered local service in the large incumbent territory too (presumably when it became cost-effective to drop in a T1 and run a modem pool). In that independent telco area xDSL became an option in the early 2000's. Fiber came shortly after. In the large incumbent's territory none of that magical high speed stuff was an option until the local cable monopoly started offering service in 2004. Even now if your wireline distance from the incumbent CO is too great and you live on a less-populous road (where it's not worth the cable company's cost to run cable) there are no wired high speed Internet options at all. (This is in the 25th most populous county of Ohio's 88 counties.)

walrus01 4y ago
One of the interesting things about rural USA telecom is that many states, as viewed at a whole-state map level, often do have a patchwork quilt of old rural coop phone companies and small ILECs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incumbent_local_exchange_carrier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incumbent_local_exchange_carri... In parts of rural western Canada it's very different, if you're in SK in you've got sasktel, if you're in AB you've got the former AGT (now Telus), if you're in BC you've got the former BCTel (also now Telus). Comparing WA and BC, in WA there's pockets of small ILECs all over the place which differ wildly in how much they've invested in overbuilding their old POTS wiring for real rural broadband, and different medium to huge sized ILEC entities covering different big population centers. Ziply (former GTE/Frontier), Centurylink, etc. In BC you've got... Telus. And that's it. And maybe shaw cable if you happen to live kind of near a medium sized city.

walrus01 4y ago

One of the interesting things about rural USA telecom is that many states, as viewed at a whole-state map level, often do have a patchwork quilt of old rural coop phone companies and small ILECs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incumbent_local_exchange_carrier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incumbent_local_exchange_carri... In parts of rural western Canada it's very different, if you're in SK in you've got sasktel, if you're in AB you've got the former AGT (now Telus), if you're in BC you've got the former BCTel (also now Telus). Comparing WA and BC, in WA there's pockets of small ILECs all over the place which differ wildly in how much they've invested in overbuilding their old POTS wiring for real rural broadband, and different medium to huge sized ILEC entities covering different big population centers. Ziply (former GTE/Frontier), Centurylink, etc. In BC you've got... Telus. And that's it. And maybe shaw cable if you happen to live kind of near a medium sized city.