[HN Gopher] The PC and Internet Revolution in Rural America
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The PC and Internet Revolution in Rural America
Author : reidrac
Score : 42 points
Date : 2022-08-30 18:13 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (changelog.complete.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (changelog.complete.org)
| walrus01 wrote:
| this article very slightly mentions the concept of a local
| calling area (unlimited POTS calling for voice calls, which meant
| it worked also for dialup modems) within a metro area. the size
| of such an area could vary widely.
|
| there were some large cities and metro areas such as the seattle
| calling area which had a HUGE number of BBSes at one point in
| time, prior to the popularity of the initial dialup ISPs around
| 1993-1994, because the local calling area was huge.
|
| conversely, if you happened to live in a small town in rural
| america you'd be paying long distance rates, or maybe waiting
| until after 10pm for better long distance rates, to call any
| BBSes.
|
| the market feasibility of the first dialup based ISPs in the era
| when a 28.8 modem was HIGH SPEED was also very much dependent on
| the possible customer base in the no-charge local calling area.
| themadturk wrote:
| I went through a lot of this as an adult, though in a metro area
| (yeah, Seattle did have a lot of BBSs...but not all of those area
| code 206 numbers were local calls from 253!).
|
| At one point, I set up UUCP on a Kaypro 10 CP/M box with a built-
| in 300 bps modem and exchanged email that way for a few months.
| It was the only way to get Internet, even in the Seattle area,
| back in those years.
|
| The key to connectivity on Novell networks was their groupware
| product, GroupWise. The law firm I worked for had three offices,
| and for several years we used it to exchange interoffice email
| powered by a gang of modems (starting at 1200bps and eventually
| topping out at 9600 before we decided we could make use of a T1).
| The main office would connect with the branches once an hour. It
| was life-changing for us in the early 90s.
| aaron695 wrote:
| zwieback wrote:
| I went through all the same phases but in Germany. Luckily my dad
| decided to spring for a floppy for our Apple ][ right from the
| start, never had to mess with cassette tapes.
|
| Nice to see Watcom C++ mentioned in there. Was far and away my
| fave in the 90s.
| rmason wrote:
| As someone who lived in the country during both the beginning of
| the PC revolution as well as the start of the commercial Internet
| this really resonates with me.
|
| I remember paying an obscene amount of money to access dialup
| Internet which was always a long distance call. I lobbied AT&T
| for an ISDN line and literally was laughed at by the tech who
| said it would be 25 years before they'd install it.
|
| Two years later I got cable Internet at a whopping speed of 5 mb
| and it opened up the entire world to me. People in Lansing and
| Grand Rapids only had the option of buying their own T-1 if they
| wanted broadband at the time.
|
| I tried to convince the city fathers of the small town I lived in
| to invest a little in an empty storefront and build out offices
| for startups with broadband as the lure. I told them they should
| exploit the small window that existed before everyone in the
| state had broadband. Sadly they looked at me like I was
| absolutely stark raving mad.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| There was a similar situation around my home town in rural
| western Ohio. The area served by large incumbent telcos
| (Ameritech nee Ohio Bell, AT&T, GTE) had cruddy options for
| Internet service. Before 1995 there wasn't anything that wasn't
| a long distance call.
|
| A few miles up the road, where the incumbent telco was a
| consortium of old independent "farm" telephone companies, was
| flat rate local dialup. Not for us, though. Eventually the
| independents offered local service in the large incumbent
| territory too (presumably when it became cost-effective to drop
| in a T1 and run a modem pool).
|
| In that independent telco area xDSL became an option in the
| early 2000's. Fiber came shortly after.
|
| In the large incumbent's territory none of that magical high
| speed stuff was an option until the local cable monopoly
| started offering service in 2004.
|
| Even now if your wireline distance from the incumbent CO is too
| great and you live on a less-populous road (where it's not
| worth the cable company's cost to run cable) there are no wired
| high speed Internet options at all. (This is in the 25th most
| populous county of Ohio's 88 counties.)
| walrus01 wrote:
| One of the interesting things about rural USA telecom is that
| many states, as viewed at a whole-state map level, often do
| have a patchwork quilt of old rural coop phone companies and
| small ILECs.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incumbent_local_exchange_carri.
| ..
|
| In parts of rural western Canada it's very different, if
| you're in SK in you've got sasktel, if you're in AB you've
| got the former AGT (now Telus), if you're in BC you've got
| the former BCTel (also now Telus).
|
| Comparing WA and BC, in WA there's pockets of small ILECs all
| over the place which differ wildly in how much they've
| invested in overbuilding their old POTS wiring for real rural
| broadband, and different medium to huge sized ILEC entities
| covering different big population centers. Ziply (former
| GTE/Frontier), Centurylink, etc.
|
| In BC you've got... _Telus_. And that 's it. And maybe shaw
| cable if you happen to live kind of near a medium sized city.
| bergenty wrote:
| I live in a rural place and messed around with satellite and
| starlink for a while. Finally just buy the bullet and shelled
| out $25k to get a dedicated fiber line to the house. Now I have
| 1Gbps down and all I can say is that it was worth every penny.
| paulmd wrote:
| where do you go for a quote on that? I have charter/spectrum
| and I suspect they'll just laugh at me. They did offer me
| cable when I moved in, but I wasn't ready to pay $200 a month
| at that point. Still probably not.
|
| If I wanted to go down that route I'd probably try to set up
| a subdivision ISP.
| strict9 wrote:
| This article is interesting as a lesson, and resonates with the
| ways I learned about computers and technology in a rural area.
|
| But something else is happening now which is also interesting:
| rural broadband. As a result of actions taken by President Obama
| many years ago--according to my family at least--the area where I
| grew up will be getting broadband internet very soon.
|
| This particular remote area will likely never get mapped on
| Google Street View, but people who live there will soon be able
| to watch netflix and do other things we often take for granted
| online.
| ghaff wrote:
| Where Starlink is available that helps a lot too. My brother
| has it up on coastal Maine and I could definitely work up there
| now--as well as stream videos. That certainly wasn't possible
| on the old 1Mbps down (on a good day) ADSL that used to be
| there. AT&T cell is marginal at best too although Verizon is a
| little better.
| walrus01 wrote:
| incumbent regional ISPs (primarily the historical local phone
| company and whoever built the first cable TV franchise starting
| from the 1980s) serving rural areas could do a whole lot more
| if they didn't waste or outright commit fraud with RDOF, RDOF2,
| USF, BTOP and other federal subsidy broadband construction
| funds.
|
| It's a travesty that there are some places that are not very
| rural at all in the US48 states where the best possible option
| is a starlink terminal right now. Something like starlink
| should be used for the REALLY remote and hard to reach places.
| lawrenceyan wrote:
| What area? I think you'd be surprised to see what areas are
| imaged on Google Maps (more than you'd expect).
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