Most people don’t consider the availability of broadband because they live in or are near an urban area. Most people have options from various broadband providers. The diverse population of rural areas is not different than urban areas. Both include a variety of race, gender, marital status, occupational and economic variety.
Broadband should be an option for all Americans. Today, the internet is available to every American as long as there is a telephone line. However, the quality of the individual internet experience varies immeasurably. In some rural communities, the options of cable television and broadband still don’t exist except through satellite access. The overlooked requirements for satellite access include a local provider and an unobstructed view of the southern sky. When either requirement is unavailable, satellite access is unavailable.
Parts of Europe and Asia have available broadband connections to the general public that are twenty times faster at half the cost. The average download speed in the USA is 8.9 mbps. Japan’s average download speed is 93.7 mbps. With cell phone networks, Australia has 3G network speeds to 21 mbps versus USA speeds of 2-3 mbps.
Local American phone companies are required to provide a steady 9 kbps for data transmission at a physical residence. This has been the standard for many years. Everyone who can remember when Microsoft’s Windows 3.1 operating system first came out, should remember the 28 kbps and 56 kbps revolutionary-at-that-time modems. The 9 kbps requirement of telecoms for data transmission is now a little out-dated. There isn't a requirement for local phone companies to upgrade basic services to all customers.
Lawmakers and politicians seem to be missing the point. It is true that in some areas people can’t afford broadband. But, that isn’t the only contributing problem in providing broadband to everyone all over the country. If you can’t afford something, that means it is available to you if you had the money or if it is provided to you. There are rural areas in the USA where broadband isn’t an option because the necessary infrastructure simply doesn’t exist. Even if someone had a zillion dollars they couldn’t buy broadband in some rural locations. The basic physical hardware (telephone lines, transmission towers) must be improved to an acceptable standard across the country that allows every American the option to experience the internet through broadband. For example, for someone in a rural area where the only option to the internet is a POTS line, they can’t experience news through streaming video unless they listen and watch a few words at a time. They can’t watch an excerpt from YouTube the way it was intended. They can’t complete online classes. They can’t download files without perhaps allowing 10-30 minutes for 1 mb of data depending on their phone line. There are many dial-up users who don’t install the most recent security patches for their operating system and installed programs because the downloads can take a few hours. There are even instances where the dial-up user can’t maintain a phone line connection long enough to complete a download of more than 3-4 mb. So, please, lawmakers and politicians, recognize the need for a national standard of basic infrastructure for broadband telecommunications.