What has the Internet meant to you?

[sw363535]

I totally agree giolucas,  I think (if you knew how to do it) you could plug in an address and bring up street view to possibly inspect, appraise, and know where your going well in advance.  its amazing..... in a limited way.  It struggles as much as i do with dirt roads.

I am notorious for (like every other farmer) heading out the driveway just after the rain stops falling.  Thus not much planning on this trip(those first few miles together is when my wife likes me the most.....she loves going and people.... I love solitude).  I can't count the number of times I have used a phone APP to search availability of a hotel room at the last minute.  Or check closing times for cafe's or other businesses.  I still hate the advertising that follows the use of internet, like the SF ads that are still biting your ankles when you get to work, or the ones that remind you what you viewed on the internet last week(someone is always watching, good to know) ----- at our house those reminders keep a couple of newspapers in "print".  But Mike started a great thread, we're getting far enough along with internet and cell data that the list is longer than we think.

[k-289]

Reading  an  article  of  ground  works,  install  rate  of  new  fiber @   $25 K  /  mile  ,  meanwhile ,  of  course  ''  grant  funding '' appropriations  for  this  rural  project  -  -  -  

[k-289]

Iowan  -  Rick  Friday  ''  print article ''  had  to  many '' barbs ''  on  the  wire , evidently  -   -   -   

[sw363535]

Google Texas county Oklahoma......... A private company there is installing fiber optic to every address in the county..... note the population is not large....... but the county is 60 miles wide and 40 miles tall.  At $25,000 per mile of government money and a population of less than 9 per square mile.....    This one might be approaching $25k per mile with @9000 miles of road and less than 2.5 residents per mile of road.

They been at it for 2 years with several crews.......  No one around them is even started on this project

Bringing up the real issue and the question every one should be asking........ can we afford the internet?  The climate farce seems to be a distraction for this real movement that will bankrupt us.  The internet financially and mentally.   I am excessively ambivalent.

If we can condense human history and Government documentation to the size of a pin head in virtual storage (a "cloud" so to speak), ............... like standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon and grasping for stability.  I feel vulnerable.

Yet this week we got notice that our cell provider will no longer be supporting email accounts........ This all seems like a very unstable platform we are building on.  Technology will always have an answer................ at a cost.

[k-289]

Sending  pin  point , drone  strikes , 7000+  miles,  away  from  home  base  =  fiber  what -  ?    

[sw363535]

That is the point isn't it..????    

If we needed it 3 years ago,   and congress took the time to decide something... :),   and money got appropriated throught that condecending bureaucracy,  Whatever is going on in Texas County Oklahoma is probably as obsolete as some of the shacks it is providing service for.  

So much of what goes on around us just looks like a con for taxpayer grant $$.  Won't be worth anything as soon as a satalite service is set up.  We don't need cost share funds, we need a grant to provide rural citizens with a staff to create and write federal grants ------ and the same tax free exemptions that give a university elite status.

[k-289]

I   asked  an  expert,  Do  you  drag  a  fiber  line  around,  with  the  combine , when  harvest  yields  are  recorded - ? 

[WCMO]

Rural area here, most people have internet in some form, though many just on their cellphone. Have local private phone company, very few of those left in America, yet they provide phone, TV and internet via their buried lines.  Can't just get 1 service, either or both TV and internet, and either way a landline phone service is required, probably because that's where they make their money.  Unlimited internet data on the local phone company line would cost about same as my cell phone bill, then another unneeded $40/mo for the required landline phone, and cheapest TV package is around $50 for whatever programming they can afford.

I have internet via my AT&T cell service on my phone (unlimited talk, text and data), and also use it as a hotspot for my computers, for about same price as just the internet service would be from local phone company.  Internet service used to be great (cell tower just past end of my driveway), yet past few years AT&T throttles the hotspot service (which has to be AT&T programming on my phone since data service for my phone without using hotspot is always fast).  No landline service bought, though the local line is here.  Just use antenna TV.  Not missing enough to matter.

Running buried lines all over the countryside is probably a waste of money.

[sw363535]

thanks wcmo --- this is a big discussion around our house....same in several ways..

we have dropped land line ATT.. poor service and constant roto calls.

We have att wifi .. $60/mo

Had att.com TV on phone and iPad.  Using google chrome cast to big tv.  Att Tv went up twice in last 6 months from $45-58-68.  Now wanting us to choose a base package of $85  (I call it the bottom 5+60 package,  -- the 5 we watch and 60 we won't)  If we could pick each channel, I would Pay $60 for our choice of 12.  --------------the wifi cuts out and the service is poorly managed.... typical att.  Complicated to reconnect.   we dropped it .

I get mlb for baseball on phone and iPad  --- casts to tv pretty good...  I won't go back to $150 dish for the 5+110.  There are a lot of other streaming sources for TV, but out at the farm everything is through a cell phone tower.  We get by there because of the remote location and low use tower. Thinking about moving out there again-- a remote sell tower is better than this small town where the old copper att line is used for wifi.  Still get att advertising for fiber optic wifi they refuse to install.  Came within 2 miles and stopped. We're 1/2 mile in att's area yet they won't supply service or release us.  Without the cell tower we got nothing.

So we're thinking about looking at other streaming services for a simple but reasonably priced plan--- or just buying hallmark and gunsmoke reruns.... and trusting cell service for weather and news.

[rayjenkins]

when pondering the $25K/mile for fiber

I wonder what the economics of putting in electricity to rural areas looked like back in the 30's and 40's??