[Wayne Luke]

Originally Posted by kevcj

When it comes to internet access, the USA is way, way, far, very far behind other developed nations. I live 4 - 5 miles from the center of town, only about 1 mile outside the city limits and I can not get DSL. The only high speed internet is cable modem and its slow.

DSL goes out 25 miles from the center of town locally. However the technology only allows it within 2 miles of a switching station whereas a POTS connection can be about 100 miles from the switching station. One of the liabilities of building digital communications on technology that is 130 years old. As copper is replaced with fiber optics this will change though. The issue in the United States is that there are several different companies that own interconnecting networks. There isn't a single large entity that owns it. It would cost 100s of billions of dollars to upgrade it. We could ask the taxpayers to foot the bill but it should be the rate subscribers to do so. I already pay for my access through Time Warner, I don't want to pay to improve service for Verizon customers locally.

You can probably get wireless internet if there is line of sight from the transceiver tower. This has a 50-75 mile range and can get decent speeds. Not comparable to cable, which is generally faster than copper line DSL, but comparable to DSL. This is what my ex-wife has. Since we live in a valley and the antennas are on the mountains, they have been able to get about a 90 mile range on this locally with speeds up to 5 megabyte downloads. There was a plan in the city that I live in to install these in every park and offer all residents 5 MB connections for $20.00/month. Then Time Warner bought out Adelphia and true internet was given to the community. Doesn't even compare to DSL locally that had about 60% uptime and most of the time wasn't faster than a standard modem.