Originally Posted by
lsquare
A decade ago, 100/100 was considered to be fast and acted like some sort of benchmark where we needed to be. Now, in my opinion, it has to be at least gigabit. I think we should strive to get as many households with a gigabit connection as soon as possible.
Yeah, I'm still not sure I buy the "everyone needs gigabit" argument. I would ordinarily be first in line for the fastest speed available but 100/10 has proven to be just fine 98% of the time. If anything I would just rather have faster upload speeds. We actually get around 15Mbps up, and I'd like to see at least 50. Our download is perfectly fine for multiple 4K streams and whatever we're doing on the phone/tablet/computer.
The FCC's official definition of broadband is still 25/3 as far as I know, which is laughably not enough.
Originally Posted by
lsquare
And I agree with you. There's just no way the digital divide can be solved without government subsidies. If Google can't make it work, I don't think anyone else can. So the government needs to continue to pony up. With each passing year, it's becoming quite apparent how important internet access is. If the federal government invest in internet infrastructure at the same scale as it does with the military, I'm fairly confident the problem will be solved pretty soon.
The thing with telecom infrastructure is that, mile for mile, it's one of the cheapest kinds of infrastructure. Roads are 15x more expensive per mile, for example. We just don't have the political will to do anything about it. Cable companies usually won't build out in areas with fewer than 20ish premises per mile. The only reason the phone company provides universal service is because they are required to.