calima wrote:
If you live in the middle of nowhere, by definition there's not many people -> you can easily get on the city/county council/board/whatever political thing you have there. Once there, you start pressing for good internet, it improves the place in the eyes of anyone looking to move there afterall, improves business, etc etc.
Hi, I work at one of the first ISPs to be established in California and I'd like to chime in here.
In rural California (most of California, a gigantic state), we have no DSL/cable access in many areas. This is compounded in my particular area, because redwood trees mean no satellite access. We have a disturbing amount of dialup customers here. I mean we sell more dialup than we sell DSL.
What's even worse is the politics here. My city is in the extremely fortunate position of owning the poles here, and all the conduit with few exceptions. We could very easily get fiber optics here, and it's a motion that's brought up at every meeting. And it gets
backlash.
The council members here are old as shit. They don't know what a modem is and they think the future of the internet is 'wireless', whatever that means to them. The vast majority of people here have no concept of internet access, and they argue against it for a lot of reasons. When the subject of how much business it would bring comes up, that gets
more backlash. Many people here don't actually want the city (capitol of our county) to attract any business, which to me is mind boggling. Then again, this is the same group of idiots that decided that stripping the main drag here down to a two lane road from a four lane road was the best way to make more people shop locally.
/rant