4 ms·

It's becoming harder and harder to arrange for power and water (and jobs to pay for them) without the Internet. Sure, looking at cat pictures or whatever isn't

It's becoming harder and harder to arrange for power and water (and jobs to pay for them) without the Internet. Sure, looking at cat pictures or whatever isn't that important, but as things continue to become online only, your argument becomes less and less valid. Imagine how you'd move to a new town across the country in 2023: how do you find real estate without the Internet? How do you know who to call to set up power and water, how do you find thier number? Most of the ways i can think of involve someone looking up stuff on the Internet for you... Half the time when I call any of these places, trying to make use of some drive time, they just tell me to go do ot on the website since the csr can't do it for me anyway. The only time I've been able to reach a human at the mortgage servicing company is when I switched banks and flu bed the new account number... they were sure to call to let me know the payment failed, but the csr couldn't help me fix that problem, just tale the corrected info for the one payment. It's utterly absurd to think that something so important to the function of our society is subject to the whims of scumbags at Comcast and att. If the Internet broke for more than a day or two, I'm pretty sure it would be catastrophic at levels similar to the power grid going down for more than a day or two.

pierat 3y ago
> Imagine how you'd move to a new town across the country in 2023: how do you find real estate without the Internet? Worse yet, is how realtors are NOT equipped to even say "what internet services are available at this place". Recently, our realtor has been in business, and was stunning on everything other than "what internet providers service this address". She would have to submit a query to the seller. I showed her the FCC broadband dashboard, which has its own fraudulent data issue (not directly their fault, but their fault for not forcing ISPs who lie to follow through). We turned down a really nice place that only had DSL that may be reconnected... we couldn't confirm since the Telco was actively spinning down DSLAM circuits in the whole area. The place we're at now has FTTH and is served by a local ISP, not crapcast (the ones who lied the most in the FCC dashboard). But again, your point is well made -much of our communication was split between online and seeing houses. About 1/2 each. The bright side: she listened to my comments about how to determine broadband and is now incorporating that with buyers agent with others. (She told me recently she knows no other realtors who do that locally).

pierat 3y ago

> Imagine how you'd move to a new town across the country in 2023: how do you find real estate without the Internet? Worse yet, is how realtors are NOT equipped to even say "what internet services are available at this place". Recently, our realtor has been in business, and was stunning on everything other than "what internet providers service this address". She would have to submit a query to the seller. I showed her the FCC broadband dashboard, which has its own fraudulent data issue (not directly their fault, but their fault for not forcing ISPs who lie to follow through). We turned down a really nice place that only had DSL that may be reconnected... we couldn't confirm since the Telco was actively spinning down DSLAM circuits in the whole area. The place we're at now has FTTH and is served by a local ISP, not crapcast (the ones who lied the most in the FCC dashboard). But again, your point is well made -much of our communication was split between online and seeing houses. About 1/2 each. The bright side: she listened to my comments about how to determine broadband and is now incorporating that with buyers agent with others. (She told me recently she knows no other realtors who do that locally).