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Comment by ricw | Hacker News Reader

Why not? You get a better service and its likely going to be cheaper. I wouldn't see any advantage of having companies like AT&T neglect such areas. Get the real competition going.

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A lot of these services can be pretty laggy and at times unreliable. Good broadband ultimately needs fiber which requires capital and people who can dig up streets etc.

Most telcos will work on the basis of recouping this after X number of years, but can only do so because they have deep pockets. Putting fiber into west london is a no brainer, putting fiber into a village with ~300 residents , half of whom are over 65; not so much.

I don't know about the rest of the world, but often in the US the choice is between laggy, unreliable local services or no service at all. Much too often the company that is supposed to service rural areas can't be bothered because it isn't economically viable. Although, it doesn't stop them from suing the locals because it's an unfair economic advantage if the locals decide to build their own.

>putting fiber into a village with ~300 residents , half of whom are over 65

Actually, that's probably a no brainer as well. A village of 300 can't cost _that_ much, and improving network connectivity to a small town means that town becomes more attractive to the people who will be inheriting and buying the homes once the 65-year olds shuffle off this mortal coil.

Also, don't knock seniors. My 77-year old father blogs daily and my 71-year old mother spends a lot of her time playing with her new iPad mini. They live in a small town with new fiber.

It can cost a metric fuckton of money. When I worked up in scotland for BT the press officer for Scotland told me a story about how BT had miscalculated the cost of providing service to a very remote location and ended up having to pay around £200,000 to provide service to one property.

Actually, that's not a bad price, considering that they get to use the outlier every time they need to justify not providing service to remote customers.

Well it was over the max allowed for providing service - normally they hit the government up for subsidy to provide service to the highlands and islands.

My Grandmother (75) is the member of my family with the highest speed connection.

If national governments weren't thoroughly corrupted by the vested telecom interests, they would fund local-owned efforts to set their own baselines, allowing profit-driven enterprises to address sub-areas that are profitable within that area to deliver even better access.

The problem is that it's the opposite (at least in the USA) - state and national governments are lobbied by the telecom/cable industry to pass laws prohibiting local initiatives, so local governments have to give massive subsidies or concessions in order to get anything.

In the UK it's normally a few local individuals bonding ADSL lines together at point x where the service is an acceptable speed. A few microwave links later and it's ready to be consumed by 10-100 people. It's not real competition, it's not cheap, and it's not well support.

It's a poor replacement for fibre to the cabinet.

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