Thursday, February 17, 2011

Broadband Again

The NY Times had a piece today regarding the alleged lack of rural broadband. As usual the replies were almost all in favor of some magic hand delivering broadband to rural areas. As if there were no law of economics at play.

I was especially amazed at some alleged technical person who moved to Jaffrey, NH to be in the country and bemoaned the lack of broadband. The writer of the reply in Jaffrey states:

I live in southwestern New Hampshire. We built our home 6 years ago. Last month we finally got DSL. Before this we paid $70 a month for hughes net service which was terrible and incredibly weather dependent. Not having high speed internet made my job very difficult as I was a telecommuter for a long time. It also made the work of a non-profit I was involved with very hard. A small non-profit really benefits from on-line services since we don't have full time staff and office space. Cloud based technology is wonderful for organizations like this. But try managing your donor database on a slow dial up, or satellite connection. It's horrible.

 Now as anyone who has followed this Blog knows, I spent five years trying to get fiber to these towns. The problem, the town! Trying to get a franchise from a New Hampshire town i akin to pulling hen's teeth. Five years and zero franchise. Between town leaders who object to everything and Comcast and its ilk, you get no where. So to start this writer to the Times should get their facts straight. Take a look at our Jaffrey proposal from 2003, yes 2003, since we never managed a franchise. We battled in Hanover, Peterborough, and the list goes on. No luck.

Besides, where does this person think the money comes from, the current President, not really, it comes from taxing those who are already paying. One makes choices and those choices have benefits and costs. Pay the cost if you want it, and stop driving away those willing to solve your problem.