Broadband adoption
Yesterday’s FCC report estimates that at least 80 million Americans don’t have high-speed Internet access - defined as download speeds of at least 4 Mbps and upload 1 Mbps - at home. (Soon the Commission will release another report comparing these results to those in other countries.)
This service is completely unavailable to at least 14 million Americans - the FCC estimates that “1,024 out of 3,230 counties in the United States and its territories are unserved by broadband[, and t]hese unserved areas are home to 24 million Americans living in 8.9 million households.” Particularly for Americans in poorer areas, more rural counties, and tribal lands, adequate connectivity isn’t even a possibility currently. The Commission has now said that those Americans will not gain such access in the near future absent changes in policy.
While not downplaying what the carriers in America have already done, the FCC is making clear that much more needs to happen. In a heavily footnoted report, the Commission is saying what most Americans already know: “Given the ever-growing importance of broadband to our society, we are unable to conclude that broadband is being reasonably and timely deployed to all Americans in this situation.”
That seems like a reasonable and data-driven statement.
Comments
4 Responses to “Broadband adoption”
Got something to say?
Our Virginia home is within an hour of the White House — just one stop sign between us and the District of Columbia (we are in The Plains, Virginia 20198).
Verizon barely meets their service obligation as regards telephone wireline access — it is terrible service, and they have an aged switch at the CO that apparently cannot be programmed to so much as roll one phone line over to another when ibusy. A lightning storm often leaves us without phones for days.
Neither do we have an option for DSL or cable or any form of wired internet access other than Satellite (HughesNet or Wild Blue), which is extremely expensive, highly latent (can’t do VoIP), subject to brutal hardcaps, and is simply inadequate as regards raising our son or otherwise participating in the on-going “digital revolution.”
We should force those providers that attain monopoly status over our geographic area to fully deliver the now-primary data services we need, not to mention the secondarily-important voice services we ought to get under current policy. If they cannot or will not then they should relinquish any monopoly claim to the wire infrastructure and turn it over to someone who will.
Satellite access does NOT count. It is inadequate to bridge the gap, and in many ways accentuates the gap: Prohibitively expensive and inadequate to the task.
Jim
But there’s been lots of study of the obvious to all but those that cultivate ignorance for a paid living. And in the meantime tens of thousands of jobs are waiting and the carriers have locked themselves into uneconomic business cases that deprive shareholders of their value. Where’s a REAL plan to open this sector up for entry and investment and that unlocks the true value of networks? Time’s a-wastin’…an’ a wastin’, and a wastin’….
I’ve as critical as the next guy about retrograde carrier behavior, but it’s getting clearer every day that the rate of elimination of “old order” industrial jobs is exceeding our capacity to find new careers for those who are displaced, not to mention the young people trying to fight their way into good “new order” jobs. A big part of the current ten million jobless number is due to this process. There are serious social justice issues embedded in these difficult transition problems. So perhaps we need to back off bit, while keeping ourselves focused forward, and give the system some space and time to accommodate to all the “creative destruction” going on.
I know a number of people who live in rural townships in Michigan who don’t have high speed Internet access at home. Their coping strategy is to take a laptop to the cafe down the road that has free wireless Internet for the price of your cup of coffee and do their online time there.
Do these people count as being “unserved by broadband”? Certainly they have access to the Internet, in much the same way that people who come to town to pick up their mail at the post office have access to the postal system.