Constant Opinions

I love my broadband internet. I can’t imagine going online with dialup again. It’s amazing the difference a few years make, since there was a time when dialup seemed quite fast enough.

But I’m glad to see that the FCC is looking into whether or not broadband is being deployed fairly and quickly enough. The United States is behind 14 other countries in broadband penetration, which just amazes me. Seems like something has to be wrong with how it’s going.

I worked at Pacific Bell back when DSL was relatively new, but getting ready for the big expansion. Back then, exactly how DSL was deployed was a huge deal, as many areas didn’t have access to it. My bosses explained that it had to be deployed without regard to the income of the area, so even though we might get more request for DSL from areas that had more money, a poorer area could very well get it first.

Deployment wasn’t my area, of course. Taking customer orders over the phone and following up on them was my department. We had to check to see who qualified, as distance was a huge factor, even if DSL was available in the general area.

What has been hugely disappointing, however, is not the deployment of DSL, so far as I know. But there was all the talk about fiber optic services and so forth that just really haven’t come to anything. It seems quite clear that somewhere there’s a problem, especially considering that fees were charged to allow companies to cover the cost of improving the infrastructure.

What happened?

Technorati Tags: broadband deployment, fcc, high speed internet, dsl

Filed under: Technology