U.S. Broadband Access Falling Behind

No.

Internet access is a prerequisite to having a full and enriched life. There are those that can and do live without it. If it "grows" or not matters little.

For convenience, I would take the book. For searching and more detailed usage, I'd take the CD (actually it's faster if you can just D/L the CD).

Not all people keep their computer online 24/7, so the book would be quicker for many.

Actually, it sets limits on the level of interference. Still, inserting the signal closer to the customer pretty much solves the problem, and filters at each transformer further improve the problem. Like many other problems that seem impossible to solve, it will be overcome, just not in the next day or two. I expect to see it in a few years, for some areas. Wireless certainly has promise, but the speeds require higher frequencies, and then there are interference problems with that as well.

Faster than broadband? I doubt it for the purpose of local numbers, but how many CDs do you want to keep? Access via internet will make a number in New York as available to someone in Miami as to someone in New York. MUCH better. Still, if I were given a choice between the phone book on CD and paper, I would take the CD in a heartbeat!

Certainly quicker if you have dialup, not faster than broadband, with computers on 24/7. And if you happen to have trouble reading those tiny listings, the computer is vastly better. Worse, the fact that most phone books chop the listings up into some many different sections, it is almost impossible to find a number unless you know exactly what suburb the person you are looking lives in. Indexed lists are worth their weight in gold.

And what would be filtered. They've tried notch filters for preventing interference to amateur radio, with limited success. However, they're using the spectrum to beyond 100 MHz and there are a lot of services in that range, including FM broadcast, low TV channels, emergency and other mobile radio, aeronautical radio and beacons, short wave broadcast etc. If you filter them all, you won't have much signal left for the broadband customers.

As long as power lines are used, they will radiate the signal and potentially cause interference. There's no way around that, short of burying them.

You're right. It's not simple. I gave the simple answer. The complicated one has to do with wire standards used, when laid, CO design, etc... Your "near" downtown and old combined to give you a short dedicated pair as your wire was laid (if CA and the US did it the same way) when the phone company was expected to meet demand up to the LAST request at a flat rate. Thus the infrastructure was in reality overbuilt. In the "burbs" to save costs in the 80s they use multiplexed lines and ran the wire long distances. Or they ran fiber to remote mini type COs which couldn't initially support DSL. Plus a lot of other issues.

So old and close could trump 80s and far. And 00 and where ever usually worked as they had remote terminals which could handle DSL.

OLD cable was a mess for Internet. But the cable companies (with vastly different accounting rules being applied, at least in the US) rebuilt most of their networks in the late 90s and early 00 to support digital and Internet. So just now the cable companies have a big leg up. You can usually get full speed "all the way out". But they are charging a very pretty penny for that speed. Especially for businesses. Here in Raleigh,

In theory, would it help to string the power lines as twisted pairs? It's not likely to be practical, I wouldn't think.

David Ross :

I'm not sure the technological picture is quite that simple.

I live in one of Toronto's older residential neighborhoods, near downtown. (For locals: near Christie Pits.) My house was built about a hundred years ago, predating electricity--there are still a few gas-lighting pipes hidden in the walls. My telephone wiring has been around for more than a few decades too; it doesn't date from Alexander Graham Bell's lifetime, but until we had a second line put in our protector block was no earlier than 1950s vintage.

Nevertheless there was no trouble providing me with DSL service on my voice line (after which we cancelled the second line, which was used only for data) when I first signed up five and a half years ago, and although I've had occasional problems none has had anything to do with the age of the copper between me and the CO.

A friend lives in a much more recent suburb out on the periphery (in the south end of Markham). His house was built in the 1980s or early 1990s, much more recently than my phone wires were run. That his wiring was done more recently caused trouble when he wanted DSL service: his phone and a neighbor's shared the same copper pair through a digital multiplexer, and (as it would just about everywhere) it took a lot of arguing with the phone company to get a straight copper line. In fact Sympatico, the phone company's captive ISP, initially refused to serve him because the phone company would have to do some work. I forget just what ensued, but in the end Bell gave him straight copper for his regular phone line, and he ended up with third-party DSL on that wire.

So it's not clear that older phone wiring is of itself a broadband blocker. It may even be that newer wiring causes more trouble.

DSL and cable-modem service became available in Toronto at about the same time. As I remember it, DSL was available much sooner in older neighborhoods like mine, as if the phone wiring in newer neighborhoods (like my friend's) made it harder to provide the service. Cable worked the opposite way: newer neighborhoods got data service sooner, my neighborhood got it much later. (So why didn't my friend just use cable service? I don't know.)

Norman Wilson Toronto ON

You can't compare residential and business rates. As with the phone companies, businesses pay more. What does that company charge for a home user?

That's already done, with house connections. However, you'd have to replace the entire system to eliminate the problem. If you're going that far, you might as well run in fibre for data.

Home and HOSO users count. I work with both. Plus small businesses. With Bellsouth (or 3rd party DSL) you can get a static IP for $5 to $10 additional a month. Base rates range from $30 to $50 a month for Res. With Bellsouth Biz you can get a block of 8 static for $120 total. With cable you pay a min of about $40 to $45 a month. I don't know if static IPs are even offered yet to homes. They were not recently. Biz is $80 min for cable but with a static IP block it can get to over $200 quickly.

My point is that they have different accounting and technical limits. And what is a great deal for one type of user is a terrible choice for another.

Actually, phones WERE considered birthrights. That's why for years when I was in NYC, I had no other option than to pay 10.6 cents for a local call. That charge was a holdover from the days when that money went right into the universal service fund to pay for expanding phone service across the country. Now, God knows what they use it for. It's much like the various federal taxes that never go away.

I disagree.

Very true. If you have a $30 a month cell phone rate plan, you will pay

But why are they dying? Most all rural towns exist because they made economic sense when founded. Any many exist because they are a one day trip for someone on horseback or with a wagon to get to town, buy supplies, sell product, and get home in one day. Which is why so many rural towns are 20 to 40 miles apart. Phone companies in the early to mid 90s in the plains states faced CO updates to supply current services and new "dsl" which had paybacks of 20 to 50 years due to low subscriber density. They did it because they had to by law at the time but what if that money had gone into infrastructure with a profit potential?

Well first of all I wouldn't assume they are dying because it's their fault. There's quite a few that are dying because the principle business left town. Others when out of business. Sometimes because of competition with cheaper overseas goods. Or the primary business doesn't make as much as it use to.

That's assuming that if money doesn't go one way, it will go into another particular direction. That money could have gone to higher CEO salaries. Anyway that's why companies take long-term risks. It may payoff bigtime further down the line. 20-50 isn't unusual for infrastructure investments.

The thing to note that turned the car and phone from luxury to necessity is changing surrounding circimstances. The thing that may change broadband from luxury to necessity are several. From the governments move to doing most of it's business online, to businesses doing the same. Telecommuting may also play a role.