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Last-mile rural connectivity will never reach everybody in the USA. It's just too many people to service. Obama's net "neutrality" which thankfully got shit can

Last-mile rural connectivity will never reach everybody in the USA. It's just too many people to service. Obama's net "neutrality" which thankfully got shit canned was going to mandate free service for the poor for all new startups, among other considerations which would have made making a new a rural ISP a complete non-starter. If you want Internet, you can pay for it.

ianlevesque 4y ago
Last-mile rural electrification will never reach everybody in the USA. It's just too many people to service. Roosevelt would've mandated free service for the poor for all new startups, among other considerations which would have made making a new a rural electrical utility a complete non-starter. If you want Electricity, you can pay for it.
- steponlego 4y ago
  Many rural areas do not have power and never will.
  - runarberg 4y ago
    But they still need internet?
    - crispinb 4y ago
      Internet without connected power is pretty common around here. Internet is obviously needed for those who work from home. And it's increasingly required for the needs of everyday life (government services moving online, bank branches closing). So, yes, absolutely - many people without connected power need the internet.
      - fsloth 4y ago
        "Internet without connected power is pretty common around here." Oh, that's interesting! I always thought this to be an outlier scenario. What is "here"? Can you estimate the size of population to this applies?
        michaelt 4y ago
        Even in the south east of the UK - compared to the US, an very densely populated area - there are some homes that have wired telephones, but rely on generators for power [1] Presumably because at some point, it was cheaper to buy 30 years of diesel than to run a power cable, and yet cell coverage wasn't widespread enough to replace a wired telephone. Of course, we can debate whether providing telephone service is us beneficent city dwellers generously subsidising our backwards rural cousins for the good of their children; or us being taken for fools and subsidising the rich's gigantic holiday homes and rental properties. [1] https://goo.gl/maps/M1f69iet5mcmKXTr8 https://goo.gl/maps/M1f69iet5mcmKXTr8
        crispinb 4y ago
        Fortunately here we have sun and don't need generators ;)
        crispinb 4y ago
        "Here" is Northern NSW, Australia. I have no idea of the numbers, but it's not uncommon in rural Australia.
        runarberg 4y ago
        This is HN, we should be able to find the numbers. How many people live in rural Australia and have no access to grid power? Of those how many could greatly benefit from a high speed low latency internet connection? I know Australia does keep population statistics, and surely if it is indeed not uncommon for people to do remote work from areas without connection to grid power, somebody must have done a survey, otherwise you’d just be guessing.
      - runarberg 4y ago
        The scenarios you’re describing don’t need fast and low latency connection. Banking and government function can easily be done using traditional satellite, 4G or even dial up modem. As for remote work, I have to question the decisions of someone that moves to an area without connection to the electricity grid and expects to do remote work from there. IMHO they are putting them self into an extreme scenario which shouldn’t be accommodated for, neither by government nor private enterprise. You may bring up rural communities that have been neglected for decades as a counterpoint here. To that, I go to ancestor post and state, that those communities deserve traditional infrastructure, paid for from our common funds, not to be forced into a magic solution from a startup looking to make money from them.
        crispinb 4y ago
        4g has very patchy coverage in rural Australia away from main roads. Satellite can be an OK option for some (we have a gov-subsidised option), but is unreliable and subject to lengthy outages and low monthly data caps. There are many other reasons to need decent connectivity - schooling and healthcare among them. > I have to question the decisions of someone that moves to an area without connection to the electricity grid and expects to do remote work from there. That's just silly, closed-minded, and ignorant. You must just have very limited experience of the world. I can off the top of my head list hundreds of scenarios where remote work might become the only option for someone already living in the bush. And many other reasons (which I know first hand from people living here) why people may be entirely unable to move from here. These are real facts on the ground, and not subject to your lack of imagination and propensity towards narrow-minded curtain-twitching judgements about whole classes of people you know zip about.
        runarberg 4y ago
        I’m gonna ignore your personal insult and answer the actual claims in your post. > 4g has very patchy coverage in rural Australia This goes back to the claim in the original post. Starlink is an excuse not to rollout proper infrastructure. > schooling and healthcare Really? Are there honestly scenarios in the real world where people don’t have power but need to do school and healthcare via the internet. I find that hard to believe. Honestly if there exist rural communities where this is a concern than they deserve infrastructure, which goes back to the original post which claims: > All these talks about Starlink -> Remember it's a bandaid solution to your governments poor planning and infrastructure rollout of a core utility / service. > I can off the top of my head list hundreds of scenarios where remote work might become the only option for someone already living in the bush. Do you mind listing some of them? It might be because of my lack of imagination, but I have a hard time seeing someone living in the bush, unable to relocate, suddenly finding a job that requires the need for high speed and low latency connection.
  - sliken 4y ago
    True, but those are typically rather low density/large plots, which makes them much easier to serve with a satellite based service.
- midasuni 4y ago
  Does last mile electrification serve every property in the US? Or even every road frontage?
rnk 4y ago
We are talking about America. We decided everybody should get electricity and they got it with rural electrification. Should everyone lose the right to have electricity connections because you think it's too hard? Somehow other countries can do this with the US can't? We could decide just like we did for electricity that everyone should have 100 meg internet to their house.
- notafraudster 4y ago
  Unfortunately there seems to be a bipartisan political consensus against the most profitable and useful elements of the New Deal (WPA, TVA, REA, CWA) which would be almost mandatory to go whole hog on this kind of infrastructure proposal, and as we've learned over the last 40 years public-private partnerships are thin gruel as a replacement.
  - thfuran 4y ago
    The US seems to have totally lost the ability to produce infrastructure at sane cost, which may be contributing to the decreased support for infrastructure projects.

ianlevesque 4y ago

Last-mile rural electrification will never reach everybody in the USA. It's just too many people to service. Roosevelt would've mandated free service for the poor for all new startups, among other considerations which would have made making a new a rural electrical utility a complete non-starter. If you want Electricity, you can pay for it.

steponlego 4y ago
Many rural areas do not have power and never will.
- runarberg 4y ago
  But they still need internet?
  - crispinb 4y ago
    Internet without connected power is pretty common around here. Internet is obviously needed for those who work from home. And it's increasingly required for the needs of everyday life (government services moving online, bank branches closing). So, yes, absolutely - many people without connected power need the internet.
    - fsloth 4y ago
      "Internet without connected power is pretty common around here." Oh, that's interesting! I always thought this to be an outlier scenario. What is "here"? Can you estimate the size of population to this applies?
      - michaelt 4y ago
        Even in the south east of the UK - compared to the US, an very densely populated area - there are some homes that have wired telephones, but rely on generators for power [1] Presumably because at some point, it was cheaper to buy 30 years of diesel than to run a power cable, and yet cell coverage wasn't widespread enough to replace a wired telephone. Of course, we can debate whether providing telephone service is us beneficent city dwellers generously subsidising our backwards rural cousins for the good of their children; or us being taken for fools and subsidising the rich's gigantic holiday homes and rental properties. [1] https://goo.gl/maps/M1f69iet5mcmKXTr8 https://goo.gl/maps/M1f69iet5mcmKXTr8
        crispinb 4y ago
        Fortunately here we have sun and don't need generators ;)
      - crispinb 4y ago
        "Here" is Northern NSW, Australia. I have no idea of the numbers, but it's not uncommon in rural Australia.
        runarberg 4y ago
        This is HN, we should be able to find the numbers. How many people live in rural Australia and have no access to grid power? Of those how many could greatly benefit from a high speed low latency internet connection? I know Australia does keep population statistics, and surely if it is indeed not uncommon for people to do remote work from areas without connection to grid power, somebody must have done a survey, otherwise you’d just be guessing.
    - runarberg 4y ago
      The scenarios you’re describing don’t need fast and low latency connection. Banking and government function can easily be done using traditional satellite, 4G or even dial up modem. As for remote work, I have to question the decisions of someone that moves to an area without connection to the electricity grid and expects to do remote work from there. IMHO they are putting them self into an extreme scenario which shouldn’t be accommodated for, neither by government nor private enterprise. You may bring up rural communities that have been neglected for decades as a counterpoint here. To that, I go to ancestor post and state, that those communities deserve traditional infrastructure, paid for from our common funds, not to be forced into a magic solution from a startup looking to make money from them.
      - crispinb 4y ago
        4g has very patchy coverage in rural Australia away from main roads. Satellite can be an OK option for some (we have a gov-subsidised option), but is unreliable and subject to lengthy outages and low monthly data caps. There are many other reasons to need decent connectivity - schooling and healthcare among them. > I have to question the decisions of someone that moves to an area without connection to the electricity grid and expects to do remote work from there. That's just silly, closed-minded, and ignorant. You must just have very limited experience of the world. I can off the top of my head list hundreds of scenarios where remote work might become the only option for someone already living in the bush. And many other reasons (which I know first hand from people living here) why people may be entirely unable to move from here. These are real facts on the ground, and not subject to your lack of imagination and propensity towards narrow-minded curtain-twitching judgements about whole classes of people you know zip about.
        runarberg 4y ago
        I’m gonna ignore your personal insult and answer the actual claims in your post. > 4g has very patchy coverage in rural Australia This goes back to the claim in the original post. Starlink is an excuse not to rollout proper infrastructure. > schooling and healthcare Really? Are there honestly scenarios in the real world where people don’t have power but need to do school and healthcare via the internet. I find that hard to believe. Honestly if there exist rural communities where this is a concern than they deserve infrastructure, which goes back to the original post which claims: > All these talks about Starlink -> Remember it's a bandaid solution to your governments poor planning and infrastructure rollout of a core utility / service. > I can off the top of my head list hundreds of scenarios where remote work might become the only option for someone already living in the bush. Do you mind listing some of them? It might be because of my lack of imagination, but I have a hard time seeing someone living in the bush, unable to relocate, suddenly finding a job that requires the need for high speed and low latency connection.
- sliken 4y ago
  True, but those are typically rather low density/large plots, which makes them much easier to serve with a satellite based service.
midasuni 4y ago
Does last mile electrification serve every property in the US? Or even every road frontage?

rnk 4y ago

We are talking about America. We decided everybody should get electricity and they got it with rural electrification. Should everyone lose the right to have electricity connections because you think it's too hard? Somehow other countries can do this with the US can't? We could decide just like we did for electricity that everyone should have 100 meg internet to their house.

notafraudster 4y ago
Unfortunately there seems to be a bipartisan political consensus against the most profitable and useful elements of the New Deal (WPA, TVA, REA, CWA) which would be almost mandatory to go whole hog on this kind of infrastructure proposal, and as we've learned over the last 40 years public-private partnerships are thin gruel as a replacement.
- thfuran 4y ago
  The US seems to have totally lost the ability to produce infrastructure at sane cost, which may be contributing to the decreased support for infrastructure projects.