A recent post about the post office got me to thinking about the Internet and how it is not available, at least at a reasonable speed, to those of us in more rural areas. I am the last person on our county road who is allowed to have a DSL connection from the phone company. And even my connection is spotty at best. My router deems it necessary to reset itself at least a dozen time a day. Even when it is working it frequently freezes. There are at least two hundred homes beyond me where even having the luxury of freezing DSL is not an option.

Being a U.S. history buff I am well aware of the time when electricity was not commonly available to rural customers. That was during the early to mid parts of the last century. The electric companies just didn’t see the profit in stringing power lines through such sparsely populated areas. It took Franklin Roosevelt and a depression to start supplying that 20% of the population with electrical power. This didn’t happen because of some benevolence of power holder but through required regulations set up by the government.

President Obama, as part of the economic stimulus plan passed last year gave several billion dollars to the telephone companies to assist them in supply internet access to the U.S. population. It’s intent was to provide lines to rural America similar to what was done for electricity seventy or so years ago. But it seems that a good proportion of that money was to enhance the internet bandwidth in areas such as Manhattan!  It seems that they were responding to the outrage of the citizens in that area to having to wait for their movie downloads and such.  So instead of providing the very basic Internet connection to those currently without they chose a different route.

So here we are on the county roads depending on a connection that is 100 times slower than our urban neighbors. It is widely recognized that the internet is the pathway for the 21st century and a good percentage of the population is being left out because of a profit motive. At the same time as this is happening I hear word that the Republicans in congress are thinking of deregulation the telephone industry.  If that happens rural internet access will never be a reality. Do we really want yet another place where there are “Haves” and “Have Nots”?

Without access to information for all I am fearful for our democracy.

But what do I know……