It's a wonderfully well-written and calm piece. Kudos to the author for choosing to let their piece rest on its argument rather than shock and awe to rile up a

It's a wonderfully well-written and calm piece. Kudos to the author for choosing to let their piece rest on its argument rather than shock and awe to rile up a group of people. However, there is one thing lacking: how we should pay for it. Should urbanites subsidize internet for the rural? Should rural folk subsidize rent for urbanites? More importantly, what is broadband? Does 768k DSL count? It's definitely way above dial-up. Part of it isn't even a last mile issue. Part of it is that many people don't live within 100 miles of an internet backbone. It's physically impossible to get that far from a backbone in places like South Korea or Japan and a lot of Western Eruope. It means that you have to draw fiber a lot further in terms of distance and that costs a lot more. That's partly why I think wireless will be the savior here. It isn't as fast as hard lines, but it can cover big distances (especially fixed wireless where you have a stable antenna on your roof which is what you can install for homes) and current technology could probably provide 1.5Mbps to rural areas today with increases coming at a decent clip. It's no 20Mbps cable modem, but it will allow them to use VoIP, video, etc. And it would be a lot cheaper than running so much fiber to rural areas. I have a love/hate relationship with "great projects" and I think the internet is a wonderful thing and would love to see more have access to it, but I don't think rural areas can see parity. Likewise, I think we can work to close the gap. If we moved the USF (http://www.fcc.gov/wcb/tapd/universal_service/ http://www.fcc.gov/wcb/tapd/universal_service/) to focus on broadband we could get the ball rolling and it's something that already exists for a similar purpose. Give the telecoms a little incentive to push 3G into more rural areas and offer fixed wireless (basically, the same as a data card only with a nice antenna since it's fixed). Verizon Wireless is already pushing into areas unserved by DSL and the like with EV-DO. It's tough, but I think that wireless, especially with LTE, HSPA+, and WiMAX in the very near future (Verizon has said they're going to have LTE in a few cities within a year and AT&T is going to be aggressive about HSPA+) is going to allow us to light up the rural areas in a way that allows them to participate in the online community nicely.