this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2023
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I gave old people the benefit of the doubt before. If you're not of working age you may have missed the internet transitioning from a novelty to an essential way of life over the last 20 years. But post-Covid it should be clear to everyone how essential it is.
My mom retired from teaching but her last year was spent teaching kids remotely. In a rural area it's tough to get an internet connection that can handle a video call, and for poor families it's a luxury they can't afford. Students without a good internet connection fell way behind. Is it even possible to find a job these days without using the internet? At least one that pays above poverty wages?
It definitely should be a utility. It's yet another way the government allows private companies to extract wealth for an essential service while ISP's spend their profits lobbying the government to ban municipal community owned fiber.
Is Internet access in the US this bad? I come from a very rural area in Germany and we got upgraded from 100KBit/s to 100MBit/s about a decade ago. Not that 100MBit/s is anything to write home about.
It truly, truly, truly depends where you live.
In my neck of the woods, I can get 1.5 gigs for $85usd a month. In the same state, in my "small" home town (population 10k), you'd be lucky to find 30mbs for less than $135 a month.
If you live in town, even in a very rural area you typically going to have at least one, maybe two options for decent internet even if the cost might be absurd compared to areas with more competition. The further you stray out of town though, your options might disappear entirely leaving you with options like satellite internet or mobile hotspots.
When my mom was teaching through Covid she had at least 2 or 3 students in class (class size varying between 15-25 students) that either had no internet at home or their internet was not sufficient to handle a video call.
Actually in cities, due to government-instituted monopolies on infrastructure, it can sometimes be worse. Until recently, in my city there was only one option for wired broadband.