I live only 100 miles north of Boston, in a fairly "wealthy" state (New Hampshire) and my only option is satellite. That's just a sad state of the infrastructure.
Furthermore, broadband speeds vary from country to country:
Doesn't exactly bode well for the area up here. Though I'm not sure sticking with Verizon would have been any better. They pretty much had given up on expanding the infrastructure in northern New England.
That's why government intervention is being discussed. It may not be economically feasible for everyone to be connected to the internet at affordable prices. But there is a big public benefit to be gained if everyone is connected and online.
Now die-hard "anarcho-capitalists" will say that government has no role in the economy whatsoever, but the history of most of the technological systems that make our society what it is say otherwise. Postal Service, Railroads, mapping, electricity and telephones were all limited in functionality and restricted in geographical reach until government intervention supported near-universal adoption.
eh, there's something to be said for near universal participation; I mean think of the problems we would have if only 90% of doctors went to medical school; or if only 90% of drivers licensed their motor vehicles.
In this case the difference between being able to assume with near certainty that someone you need to do business has at least potential access, versus a 9 in 10 chance that the person whose attention you need for your business to survive is online.
Of course if your business doesn't depend on people who use the internet, you're fine with less than full participation, and it being a second class mode of business for another decade or three...
> In this case the difference between being able to assume with near certainty that someone you need to do business has at least potential access, versus a 9 in 10 chance that the person whose attention you need for your business to survive is online.
You're assuming that lack of internet access is randomly distributed, that 90% internet access means that Donald Trump is 90% likely to have internet access. It isn't. 10% internet access is more than enough for some biz. 90% is more than enough for most biz.
To put it another way/use your own example, the fact that less than 100% of people go to medical school doesn't imply that there aren't enough doctors.
Note that "access" isn't enough - they have to be willing to use it AND willing to let you get to them via the internet. I have access yet often refuse to tell biz how to reach me.
The way I see it we're talking about two different things; you're talking about the quantitative difference between say 90-92% of people have access if they want it. Whereas I'm talking about the qualitative difference between even a large percentage of the population having some degree of access and 100% of competent adults having at least a minimal level of access.
Obama is not the only politician pushing for universal access, if local governments could act with confidence that moving basic tasks like title transactions, judicial proceedings, public records, etc. to a completely electronic format would not create a vast set of support issues coming from the 8% or so of people who have no access; they could streamline operations and save taxpayer money. The point I'm trying to get at is that Universal Broadband may be one of those rare government initiatives that does pay for itself. And as an infrastructure investment, it makes for a better environment for any company reliant on the internet.
> The way I see it we're talking about two different things; you're talking about the quantitative difference between say 90-92% of people have access if they want it.
No, I'm not. There are many biz that work if only 10% of the population has broadband, as long as it's the right 10%.
> Whereas I'm talking about the qualitative difference between even a large percentage of the population having some degree of access and 100% of competent adults having at least a minimal level of access.
You're assuming that the 10% who don't have broadband access would be a significant difference to an interesting fraction of biz. That's unlikely. Heck - it's unlikely that the 30% who have access but choose not to particpate would make a difference. (If someone is unwilling to spend $30/month on broadband, how much money do you think that they'll spend if they had broadband for less?)
> Obama is not the only politician pushing for universal access
That's not exactly an argument that suggests confidence. After all, these are the same folks who thought that 0 down mortgages were a good idea.
> if local governments could act with confidence that moving basic tasks like title transactions, judicial proceedings, public records, etc. to a completely electronic format would not create a vast set of support issues coming from the 8% or so of people who have no access; they could streamline operations and save taxpayer money.
You're significantly overstating the number of transactions.
I use such services about once/year but that's only because I'm somewhat of a nut about verifying that my property tax was properly credited - the vast majority of people don't bother. Not many people have "judicial" proceedings to observe and most of them are served by lawyers. As far as the rest, how often do you check that your house/car title is correct? (I've never checked either one.)
Yearly car registration payment is about the only common transaction that can be done online but it only costs about $1-3 to do by USPS. (Shipping stickers costs about the same but the reasons for having such stickers are not affected by on-line payment.) Even if payment costs were free online, that "savings" doesn't buy much infrastructure. It can be done by dial-up and a significant number of people already do it online, so the generous assumption is that at most 30% of the population could be moved to use on-line registration and they don't have that many cars.
And then there's the "I didn't get the e-mail telling me to renew my license" problem....
Roads are an order of magnitude more expensive than high speed internet and we still ran them to just about every home in the US. As to sewers a septic field works but a local LAN is just not the Internet.
> Roads are an order of magnitude more expensive than high speed internet and we still ran them to just about every home in the US.
What kind of roads are we talking about? I know lots of folks whose home is served by a gravel or dirt road. And the "we" that ran them is often the folks whose houses they run by.
Should have said too that some folks in Newbury have cable. We're literally one mile off the main road, and five miles from I-89 (a major highway). and don't.
Furthermore, broadband speeds vary from country to country:
http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/Images/commentarynews/bro...
It's not just penetration that we lag behind. It's speed too.
As for density, Canada's a fairly big place, and they have a bigger, faster broadband (see my link and yours) even as their GDP is 10% of ours: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)