Rose Cottage Ltd

I read two articles on the CNN web site this morning concerning the lack of internet access in rural areas. It was quickly apparent that those who “have” had little understanding and no sympathy for those who don’t.

A company like Sprint, who was given the monopoly on phone service years ago, never made sure ALL their area customers were given access to the internet – and the FCC, who is now out trying to solve this mistake in planning, actually helped cause the problem by allowing it – with the assistance of local “officials” who were either too dumb to read the fine print or just didn’t care.

Second…actually read the “3G” commercials – particularly the small print that says, “Not available in all areas.” You can buy the service, but you’ll find in these same rural areas, in most cases, you have approximately one-fourth the advertised speed. At $60+ per month – another totally useless “solution” given by readers who are not dealing with the actual problem.

Third, “Get satellite,” is the next helpful solution provided through comments to the article. Well, I have satellite. It was and is the only option where I live. It is slow – although usually more than 56k, inconsistent, and severely limited re: bandwidth. I’d hate to hear the whining from those who suggested I use satellite if THEY had to rely on it for their internet service. No streaming movies, no YouTube, pages that NEVER load, email that is constantly down, no clicking on news or weather embedded videos, no “chatting”, and on and on. But this is suggested as being “fine” for rural areas. What snobs people can be.

Fourth. There is some misunderstanding that tax dollars are going to be spent in order for me to ever have anything close to the access most suburbs and cities have now. Even if this were true…my tax dollars have been spent to get YOU broadband so it would be time to get some use out of them myself. However, the real problem is that companies given licenses by the FCC to provide service, did not. Money was made, and off they went to greener pastures, pun intended – leaving many customers without internet and in my own instance, with degraded and not properly maintained PHONE lines!

It is extremely disappointing to find that my fellow citizens and taxpayers are so willing to thumb their noses while sitting in front of computers with high-speed broadband and high levels of bandwidth, and basically tell me and my fellow residents to “get a life” or “just move.” Maybe if I was an illegal immigrant there would be some grant I could be given to put in fiber optics so I won’t be left behind….