Badsinger @ Mon May 01, 2006 1:38 am wrote:
It surprised me that there are places in the US that still have nothing better than dial up.
Well, don't be surprised. I live in San Jose, the heart of Silicon Valley, the tech center of the world. I had no broadband connection for number of years because I was too far from the Central Office of the phone company. No DSL possible except for IDSL, which is business level broadband that peaks out at 128kbp. I had that for years paying $120 per month. This is in heart of the Silicon Valley mind you.
About 3 years go, they finally agreed to terms with Comcast, our local cable provider to provide broadband. I finally got my broadband that was 10x faster at less than half the price. This was about 2003/2004.
This country is way too big and spreadout to have broadband coverage everywhere. In contrast, Korea, the highest percentage of Internet users in the world has it much easier. A full one quarter of the country's population is in the capital city of Seoul. The housing density is so high, it was easy for the government to lay out fiber to the entire city and served millions of people. It's not uncommon for people to get 20mbps broadband for less than $20 US.
They are trying to do similar thing in the US but to a much lesser success. The latest is the city of San Francisco wants to install wireless Internet access to the entire city. The population of San Francisco is less than a million. I hope they succeed so other cities can do the similar thing. I think the wireless will be the only way to go here in the US based on the poplulation density but it's still going to cost a lot of $$$$.
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