Rural Internet Access

Rural Internet Access

Yes, I Am Speaking From Experience

So first of all, I am speaking from experience and how long it took to get acceptable modern-friendly internet access. Second of all, this is a bit of a rant. I spent years on kilobytes of internet speeds. Barely enough to stream decent quality YouTube videos. I wouldn't even dare try to watch a live stream video. Someone is going to try to tell me how difficult it is for companies to get to rural areas such as mine. I already know but they don't really try. I will mention the company that gave me the run-around for years, Frontier Communications. You can go on Facebook and find a group dedicated to the wrongs Frontier commits to their rural customers. They claimed to my face that we were getting 6 Mb/s. Yeah, not even close. More like 600 Kb/s, if that. You could also claim we have access to satellite connections, well guess what, that doesn't help the gaming community at all. Too much ping. So down to my point. Even though someone lives in a rural area doesn't mean they don't need the connection. Internet connection is almost a requirement in today's world, at least in 1st world societies. So it's time these ISP's (Internet Service Providers) tried a little harder to give equal connections. I will even give stats to prove they are not equal. 

Here's the link, straight from the FCC: https://www.fcc.gov/reports-research/reports/broadband-progress-reports/2018-broadband-deployment-report    

If you don't have time for the link I'll give a quote from it.
"Approximately 14 million rural Americans and 1.2 million Americans living on Tribal lands still lack mobile LTE broadband at speeds of 10 Mbps/3 Mbps. Approximately 92% of the population has access to both fixed terrestrial services at 25 Mbps/3 Mbps and mobile LTE at speeds of 5 Mbps/1 Mbps."

Not cool ISP's, not cool. I wonder what those numbers are in other countries. For the sake of time I don't have maybe this will spur you to look for yourself. Honestly the bare minimum 10 Mbps/3 Mbps barely cuts it anymore. 

My last piece is, no, I don't plan on living in a rural area forever. It just doesn't suit me. I care because I've lived with it and I have family who have built their lives here and couldn't move because of it. There will come a time where all Americans NEED the faster connection and it's coming soon. With 5G on the horizon companies will expect it. Jobs will be created everywhere that require it. Businesses already put their job applications on the internet even in my little rural area. The clock is ticking. Time is running out. My hope is someone important enough sees this and it strikes some sort of action. Rant over. Later guys and gals.