Re:Suicides in Rural America Increased More Than 40% in 16 Y...
by ianai on Sunday March 19, 2017 @02:04PM
(#13908656)
Yep, it could also be a great way to lower the cost of living in already over populated cities. People living in smaller localities and close to work would also diminish commute times - lowering carbon emissions.
I wonder how costly a fiber "plant" is? What's stopping the US from a "roll out the fiber" New Deal-style project?
Re:Suicides in Rural America Increased More Than 40% in 16 Y...
by ChuckMcM on Sunday March 19, 2017 @03:42PM
(#13909190)
From an infrastructure improvement point of few, state funded fiber beats all other uses of infrastructure tax dollars (I've been doing research as part of my 'Sunnyvale Fiber' project). At the state level, legislative support for a 'digital' easement allows for emminent domain type land offset cases (where the state comes in and says "for this parcel we're going to require an underground easement for fiber transit". The good news is that you can (if you choose to) bury these things 50+ feet down which protects them from most threats. Horizontal drilling capacity (some sitting idle in fracking fields) can be employed to create the necessary conduit for generally long lengths (up to nearly 5 miles or 25,000' by some estimates)
Adding water, power, freeways, and airports all cost more, and generate fewer net commercial opportunities.
Re:Suicides in Rural America Increased More Than 40% in 16 Y...
by jpindar on Sunday March 19, 2017 @02:46PM
(#13908874)
For one thing, cable TV companies (who are the only practical ISP in many areas) don't want competition and have no reason to do it themselves.
Re:Suicides in Rural America Increased More Than 40% in 16 Y...
by gwright on Sunday March 19, 2017 @05:56PM
(#13909890)
It is worse than that. Of course they don't want competition but the the monopoly services areas are an artifact of legislative deal making. So the current situation is codified in law and would need to be changed.
Monopoly service areas for universal service offering was the deal.
As far back as the 1800's towns have "died" when the rail road went a different way. That isn't a new phenomena.
But looking at what works historically and what doesn't, the 'new' thing now is the Internet which makes a lot of things possible that weren't before. If you can get 40 gbits of capacity pulled into a 'rural town' then you can build an office building where everyone can connect pretty seemlessly to an office anywhere else. You can build customer support there, you can build logistics tracking systems, you can build R&D facilities. If you do this a there will be a complaint that you are 'ruining' the town.
A complaint I hear often is people want to work in tech but they want a place where they can buy a house and raise a family. That could be the lure of rural America if the state would fund fiber infrastructure to the town.