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Across the Fence:  The digital divide - urban vs. rural  |
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brightmeadow
True Blue Farmgirl
2045 Posts
Brenda
Lucas
Ohio
USA
2045 Posts |
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ThymeForEweFarm
True Blue Farmgirl
705 Posts
Robin
An organic farm in the forest in
Maine
USA
705 Posts |
 Posted - Sep 29 2006 : 03:27:09 AM
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Maine is working at bringing high speed access to rural areas. I have a wireless connection. It's faster than cable and doesn't have the lag of satellite. It makes working online a lot less frustrating.
This is the main road through the area I live in. It's very rural, and all forest and lakes. It's like this for thousands and thousands of acres. There's a wireless tower on a mountain two miles as the crow flies from my home. I have to have an antenna on my roof to get up over the trees to the signal. Verizon won't upgrade our phone lines because there are so few people on our road. Dial up is 28.8 on good days. Satellite would have been expensive to set up. Wireless was $100 for the installation, $69 for the antenna and is $40 a month. The cost of equipment rental is included in the $40.
If you can find wireless in your rural area grab it! And if not, you can talk with legislators to let them know you'd like your state to work toward giving everyone good access to information highway.
Robin
www.thymeforewe.com
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verbina
True Blue Farmgirl
231 Posts
randi
n.j
USA
231 Posts |
Posted - Sep 29 2006 : 3:33:47 PM
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| sure is pretty there. how are real estate prices? thanks randi |
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Aunt Jenny
True Blue Farmgirl
11381 Posts
Jenny
middle of
Utah
USA
11381 Posts |
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zilzirk
Farmgirl in Training
30 Posts
Liz
Fort Mill
South Carolina
USA
30 Posts |
Posted - Sep 29 2006 : 8:02:46 PM
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We have awireless set up too! We are only 1/4 mile away from cable connection, but the cable co won't send the wire to just our house!!! So we looked around and thought about satelite for 5 minutes and moved along!!! We have too many trees too for it to be any good and the upload time just sucks! We could DSL, but I think the wireless speed is better and more reliable at this time. Our costs were about the same as yours, Robin. Did you notice a slow-down in speed when the trees leafed out? HAHA - one reason to look forward to winter! Better internet speeds and connection, lol!
Thanks for the article - I am planning on starting a petition from another 'nearish' neighbors so we can lean on the cable co to bring the wires down the street!
a city girl with farm roots
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brightmeadow
True Blue Farmgirl
2045 Posts
Brenda
Lucas
Ohio
USA
2045 Posts |
Posted - Sep 29 2006 : 9:37:12 PM
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What a gorgeous picture, Robin! I am glad you have wireless - I have wireless inside my house and support a wireless system at work (802.11b) but we have cable modem into the house. At our farm in Michigan though we have the same situation as Liz - the cable stops 1/4 mile away - not sure I'd want to pay for full-time cable when we are only there one weekend a month, though. I had hopes that maybe we could pay one satellite bill and have two earth locations but found out that there would be two different ISP's to pay- no advantage there.
I had read some info on metropolitan-area wireless a year or so back, I will go back and look at some of those articles again. I broached the subject with a local IT entrepreneur working out of an office at the local county small business incubator - he acted like I was looking for a handout because I would dare to suggest that local government ought to look at public-access internet! Funny- he's the one taking advantage of the government programs and I'm the one paying taxes, but he was a Republican (he invited me to a fund-raiser for his candidate) and I'm not...lol
You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands - You shall be happy and it shall be well with you. -Psalm 128.2
Visit my blog at http://brightmeadowfarms.blogspot.com ,web site store at http://www.watkinsonline.com/fish or my homepage at http://home.earthlink.net/~brightmeadow |
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ThymeForEweFarm
True Blue Farmgirl
705 Posts
Robin
An organic farm in the forest in
Maine
USA
705 Posts |
Posted - Sep 30 2006 : 03:22:17 AM
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I didn't notice a slow down in speed when the leaves came out. It was still so new then that I might have thought "slow" now was lightening fast. There's never a problem with losing the connection when the weather is bad. There have been a couple of equipment failures on the tower though.
quote:
I had read some info on metropolitan-area wireless a year or so back, I will go back and look at some of those articles again. I broached the subject with a local IT entrepreneur working out of an office at the local county small business incubator - he acted like I was looking for a handout because I would dare to suggest that local government ought to look at public-access internet! Funny- he's the one taking advantage of the government programs and I'm the one paying taxes, but he was a Republican (he invited me to a fund-raiser for his candidate) and I'm not...lol
That's a shame. Since gaining reliable, reasonable internet access out here a lot of people have been able to take college classes online and/or take jobs online. I already had the job. High speed makes my job a lot more efficient. Tax payers remember things like this.
Randi, property out here is inexpensive. The catch is that we're 90 miles from a city, there's very little out here, and jobs above minimum wage can be hard to find. There are opportunities but they're not usually ones people are looking for.
Robin
www.thymeforewe.com
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Across the Fence: The digital divide - urban vs. rural |
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The digital divide - urban vs. rural
