Doug King publishes his keyboard music online and his wife, Marjorie, sells home-made pottery to customers in Iceland, China and New Zealand. But doing business from their rural Dane County house is virtually impossible without high-speed Internet.
"We got to the point where we’re simply unable to do business" using the dial-up Internet their phone company provides, King said. The couple finally signed up for a wireless modem from Verizon, which in the last year has sought to build nine cell towers in rural Dane County to keep up with growing demand...(more)
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I'm very intersted in this whole issue. My father lives in rural Pennsylvania and has the same access issues. Ironically, he's a retired computer science professor and he still just has dial-up internet at his house. He hasn't pushed too hard for anything else, because he just drives 20 minutes to his college and uses the internet there. He could probably get broadband if he was willing to pay more for it, I think, but he claims he's holding out until the phone company out there is willing to lay fiber optic to his house - which I think will be a long wait!
ReplyDeleteI'm interested in the survey of Wisconsin residents, cited in the WSJ article as having low citizen response rates, which will be used to advise the federal government. The article reports that "As of April 16, the Public Service Commission, which is conducting the survey, had heard from about 3,900 citizens and businesses representing 85,000 employees. Two-thirds of respondents reported not having access to high-speed Internet service." How is this survey being promoted to citizens? There was a link and a phone number in the article, but have you seen the survey promoted in other places? Like your local public library, or local radio/TV stations? Just curious.
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