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Comment by moorhosj | Hacker News Reader

Slow broadband, high poverty, poor education and high obesity are pretty universal “cons”..

And not all of those are represented in rural areas. And "slow broadband" feels hilariously out of place in that list.

Tell that to developers who would be able to get a better paying job working remotely if they had decent broadband.

I realize we're discussing this on HN but developers are a small microcosm of the communities being listed. Sure, there's examples that might combat the generality of my statement...but let's not be pedantic when that wasn't the subject to begin with.

I can work remotely with a very basic internet connection. So can others. And you can be a successful developer (in your country, let alone your county) without working remotely.

I stayed with my parents for a summer (long story) and worked remotely - it was painful. I could barely do video conferencing let alone upload and download large datasets fast over DSL. I ended up setting up a VM on AWS to work from.

But on a less anecdotal note, legitimate companies are doing “rural sourcing” of call centers where everyone works remotely and they give you a special boot disk that only runs thier software. They pay better than minimum wage and the requirement is a decent - above DSL internet connection.

My dad in Maine is the last house that can get DSL on a private road. Internet "works" but you can't do video or anything like that. One neighbor I know has a hot spot through Verizon though mobile signal isn't great either. I believe some others have satellite. If I had to work from there, I'd have to do something to supplement the DSL.

visiting in rural Alabama, up to last year AT&T DSL was the only option. The speed wasn't the problem so much as 2 simultaneous connections (ie browser and video conference) would kill the connection.

I've worked with people who didn't have broadband available. Basically, they got satellite and dealt with the outages due to weather and the costs. So you don't do much video streaming for entertainment and just dial in to calls unless there's some need to do video. It's a pain and you have to make compromises, but it can be done.

Or a non-developers use case for high speed broadband: a contract data entry job through Upwork is likely a much more sustainable job in Mississippi than it would be for someone in Brooklyn, but quality internet connections are required (minimum wage in Mississippi is $7.25…).

> And not all of those are represented in rural areas.

But all of them are representated in Mississippi, which (not “rural areas”) is what was being discussed.

> And "slow broadband" feels hilariously out of place in that list.

Both slow broadband as mentioned upthread, and even moreso low broadband subscription rates as actually covered in the source article, are opportunity-limiting.

I own a house in a rural area with no internet options other than cellular (not in Mississippi though) and gigabit up/down fiber is coming from my electricity company next year. I could do anything via internet then and the houses and cost of living are incredibly cheap.

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