Im in Arkansas, with fiber, and paying $55....granted its not under $50 but its also not outrageous either.

Yeah this is wrong. Many fiber options in MS for $45-54.

This author must have never been outside of a major city.

Of course the most densely populated areas have the highest broadband penetration. And within bands of population density, investment in new infrastructure is going to where people who can pay for it live, rather than where people who can’t. But a poor person in a city will have an easier time than a rich person in a rural area.

It costs a lot of money to get rights of way and dig trenching for fiber. The further away from an interconnect, the more it costs. (I used to sell fiber backbone connections to companies that would install it for office buildings. Shit’s expensive, mostly because of the digging.)

And 100 years ago, access to electricity was limited in rural areas. They lit with kerosene lamps. They heated with wood. They cooked with wood.

Somehow electric service made it’s way out to the poor country homes and farms. It took time.

I would imagine that the same will happen broadband Internet. Perhaps some “TVA-like” authority needs to be formed to make internet access more affordable in rural areas.

The article is quoting data about the percentage of the populace with access to affordable high speed internet. It doesn't mean it doesn't exist in some places, but it's not largely available.

I'd say nearly every US state is "out of luck" on this. Where's my broadband for under $50? That shit doesn't seem to exist in New York.

Large ISP’s have been happily accepting government funding for “rural broadband” expansion for about the last 12 years and it has hardly made a dent. What they did instead was use that money to buy small, already established ISP’s in rural areas. Then they’d turn around and say “look at our rural footprint and how much it’s grown!”

It’s all a racket and they haven’t helped nearly as many people as they’ve presented like they have.

I pay more for 18 (arguably) Mbps in MS. When I’m home, I actually use my hotspot because the internet is trash when more than 2 people try to use it.

Keep em poor, and charge em more. The red state motto

It’s rapidly improving. 5g hotspot availability in rural Arkansas has increased competition to where even the cable company is having to offer decent service for the price now

They've already squandered billions of dollars away without results. Any future money they get should not be on the table in the first place, but if it does end up going to them, they should have to provide the results first. These are huge companies that can afford to wait for their money, so let's make them. If they try to complain, we can ask "what's the problem? You're going to do the work anyway, right?"

>I've already squandered billions of dollars away

And I thought my spending was out of control...

I hate that high speed Internet is so expensive and (somewhat) inaccessible in North America. Telecom oligopolies should be dissolved.

I get 600mbps (60 megabytes) for £42 for comparison.

1Gbps for ~€8 here

15 years ago we had 100 Mbps at the same price.. but competition forced everyone to increase bandwidth and reduce costs.

I agree. This is not something that can be addressed by the private sector because it is not profitable enough for them.

Look at the TVA. It is a quasi-government agency that brought power to a large area of the country that private enterprise would not serve. It worked.

We need rural TVA-like infrastructure built by quasi- government agency that is not just looking at profitability.

Honestly, I think satellite service makes sense for rural areas. But I’m open to anything that works well and can be deployed quickly.

Hey, careful there!! Keep thinking along those lines and you could end up with single payer healthcare.

This is also somewhat inaccurate.. There are 17 electric coops in MS alone covering the majority of the state, all providing reliable, synchronous, high-speed fiber to the home, among other services. Other carriers like ATT and CSpire have also vastly extended their networks to cover more areas. The one coop I am familiar with has 1900 miles of fiber covering 5+ counties, passing 30k members, and is one of the smaller ones. 3 years ago it wasn't largely available, but that has changed.