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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

Yeah this is wonderful. Some of the original data just didn’t make sense. For example, London County, which is home to the Dulles technology corridor and has the highest median income of any county in the US, with a 3.5% poverty rate, has only 50% home broadband uptake?

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I live a few miles outside of Loudoun County, still in DC metro, and I have NO terrestrial internet access beyond dialup. It is quite possible that large sections of Loudoun don't have real broadband, just DSL. The county doesn't even have 100% cell phone coverage. There's Dulles/Leesburg, and everywhere else.

most people don't realize how dismal even cellular coverage is in many parts of the country. they worry about broad band yet we cannot even guarantee you have coverage with any mobile device. worse people fight against it too

Why is DSL not "real broadband"?

Because the current US govt definition of "broadband" is a minimum of 25mbps down, and most DSL can't achieve those speeds.

According to footnote 11, the FCC data set uses 10/1 as the definition of "broadband"

That's a recent change, broadband used to be defined as 25mbps, and that definition was recently lowered to 10mbps.

But for what it's worth, a lot of US DSL still wouldn't meet broadband definition, even using your lower speed definition. AT&T DSL (the non-FTTN version) in Michigan maxes out around 6mbps down for most people.

I have two DSL lines, one 1 Mbps, the other 2 Mbps thanks to a patented range extender is no longer manufactured because the patent holder got acquired.

Where is a few miles outside of Loudon? Clarke County? That’s closer to WV than DC. And incredibly sparsely populated. Clarke is 85 people per square mile and Fauquier is 105. Fairfax County is 2,800.

Parts of Loudoun are very sparsely populated; indeed, it has the most unpaved roads of any county in VA. But since 1980, the population has grown from 60,000 to 385,000. Almost all of that growth has been in Dulles/Leesburg/Ashburn, etc. So in terms of percentage of households who have broadband access, the other parts of the county doesn’t have much of an impact on the overall number.

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