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Comment by Vivtek | Hacker News Reader

My dad lives far enough out that even the cable companies fear to go there - there just plain isn't enough money to run all those miles of wire. (If it weren't for rural electrification and good ol' socialism, I would have grown up by candlelight.)

He's got Verizon GPRS broad(ish)band now. Pushing for broadband penetration is missing the point; it might have made sense fifteen years ago, but now, wireless has leapfrogged it - just as it did for voice throughout the Third World, and for the same reasons.

If you're not from a rural area, I think it's difficult to comprehend just how many miles there are out there, and how few paying customers to foot the bill.

A more realistic goal for rural communications would be to have Congress re-subsidize daily postal delivery, to be honest.

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I recently visited a farm in rural Saskatchewan, a province of vast areas of farmland and only one million people residing within. Broadband was readily available even way out on the farm. For comparison, the only US state with a lower population density is Alaska.

I hale from rural Ontario and while our density is greater, we are still a long way away from urban centres. Here, they are working on rolling out fibre right to the farms. High speed DSL has been available for over a decade.

It really is difficult to comprehend that people are still using dialup.

Saskatchewan is not only flat enough for you to watch your dog run away for three days, but also to have long-range wireless broadband. My high school in Florida had that around 2000, but it's not practical around hills (like much of the rural US) and it's lower bandwidth than 4G iirc.

Isn't DSL constrained by the distance to the CO?

We live inside Ottawa's city limits (the capital for non-Canadians!) so could scarely be considered the middle of nowhere and yet don't have a hardwired broadband connection option.

Yeah, but pssh, Canada! Economics works differently up there. I hear you even have workable health care and everything.

What gets broadband out that far, regulation or business motivation?

There is no regulation that I am aware of, though the government did provide some assistance dollars a few years back. What is regulated is the price of access, which does make rural access challenging – being forced to sell your services at the same rate as those in the city.

In Ontario we had DSL access on the farms before the government programs were created, so there is room for a business to make it work. What is different in my area is that the customers own the telephone company, so that provides a good motivator to provide the services that customers want, even if it means lower profits at the end of the year.

I think I agree with you. Ubiquitous broadband-speed capable technologies like 4G will be the way to go. It's too expensive for most rural parts (most parts, period) of America to be laying down lines.

Broadband over powerline? Do you each have your own step down transformers from a common high tension line in your community?

Would that work? It's still copper... If by "high tension" you mean normal pole voltage, then yes, each house has its own transformer. At the road. Which itself is a non-trivial distance from my dad's house.

I've never heard of broadband over powerline. I'll bet there'd be some interest.

Broadband over powerline is like cold fusion, except without the exciting real-world prospects for success. It has been bandied about for decades now, tried on small scales a few times, and is always a few decades away from real use unless it is finally dead at this point.

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