On 12/30/2015 11:59 AM, Geoffrey Oltmans wrote:
On Wed, Dec 30, 2015 at 1:24 PM, Jim Brain <br...@jbrain.com> wrote:
We were spoiled in South Dakota, as somehow (and I am sure someone
knows and will enlighten us/me) the rural telcos (LECs?) tapped
into lots of funds from somewhere to drop fiber to all of the rural
homes. 50Mb was the slowest speed, as I recall, for data. The
catch was that you had to buy a telephone service with your
Internet, probably for some legal/regulatory reason. But, it was
cheap, and we bought just the basics, and 50Mb was more than one
could expect when you are 8 miles from the nearest town and on a
large acreage. So, in markets where this type of service is
offered, I think telcos will thrive.
Probably the FCC's Connect America Fund. This is meant to do for
broadband what the REA did for electrical power.
Probably because we're served here by one of the big outfits
(CenturyLink), that sort of money isn't available for us. So we rural
folk still suffer--because it doesn't pay to deploy service to
low-density areas.
It really is amazing that I've been living with internet service that
wouldn't even tax a 10base2 "thinnet" LAN connection. In the meantime,
CL still pays an annual dividend of something like 8% to its stockholders.
--Chuck
