Darwin, CA, the town trapped by dialup internet.

[TheMightyFavog]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-17569954

Just to the west of California's Death Valley, residents of Darwin have been trying to get connected to the broadband internet age.

For some of the 35 residents in town, loading a regular web page at 28kb/s can take several minutes and is not always guaranteed to work out.

While others were able to upgrade to a government-funded satellite system that is much faster, it comes with strict data limits per day which make video streaming nearly impossible.

"We are not saying we want to be given anything," says resident Kathy Goss. "We found our own potential solutions and we are willing to pay what it takes to get the hardware installed."


It's not just here. Heck in my home county we have swaths of rural areas who are in the same pickle. Their only choice for internet is Dsialup or nothing. Broadband won't come out there. There's no money in it for the providers. What we need is a 21st century TVA/REA. Only instead of bringing electricity to rural areas, it would bring broadband internet to rural areas.

[Zalatix]

1. Rural areas are mainly Conservative bastions.

Do we really want them to add to the problems we already have with Freepers online?

[LiberalFighter]

3. No we don't but...

they might have the right critical thinking that can be encouraged with the internet.

[scarletwoman]

7. Thanks a bunch. I live in a rural area with only dial-up, and there are plenty of other lefties

around here. How about putting away your broad brush?

[marlakay]

17. I live in a rural area

And grateful for the cable Internet I have...

[The Straight Story]

49. Heck, probably a bunch of crackers out there anyway

Do we really need more privileged white people getting on the internet?

I lived way out in the country here in Ohio and in CA, most the folks there were white - and last I heard here, it is OK to use a broad brush when it comes to folks from the south or white folks in general.

[pacalo]

16. There are a lot of DUers who might take offense to that.

And rightfully so.

[Zalatix]

18. But it's true, a large portion of the Conservative vote comes from rural areas.

This is true, whether people take offense to it or not.

I did not say ALL rural people were Conservative.

[Posteritatis]

21. What a stupid post. (nt)

[Zalatix]

23. I CHALLENGE YOU to show that what I said was untrue.

[EOTE]

27. Nothing untrue, but incredibly stupid.

It's hard for a question to be untrue, but it is extremely stupid and offensive. Should we deny those rural areas movie theaters too? How about fast food restaurants? How about we go about making the lives of those who don't live like us as miserable as possible? That you can't see the stupidity of that comment speaks volumes.

[Javaman]

35. +1 nt

[Hugabear]

48. We should cordon off those rural areas, put them all in quarantine

We should seal off all these rural areas so they can't spread to other areas, communicate with each other, etc. We should also cut off all trade with them. Let them grow their own food, produce their own electricity, educate themselves, etc.

Goddamned conservatives. If you're a progressive and you live in a rural area, MOVE OUT. Move to a larger city.

[Posteritatis]

41. My previous post applies here, too. (nt)

[CBGLuthier]

24. That is NO way to run a country

Sounds like some of the shit rationales the other side uses. Thank you but no

[eShirl]

26. So fuck everyone living there because a slight majority might vote red?

Why would we want to be so petty?

[Brickbat]

37. What the hell is wrong with you?

Who has "problems" with Freepers online? While the Internet makes it easier for people to find viewpoints and "facts" that fortify their own beliefs, I would much rather make the Internet accessible to all in the hopes that people who are truly searching find what they're looking for. The rural young wife who thinks maybe she can find a way to escape her religious sect, the gay rural teen who wishes he could find just one person to connect with, the rural retiree who needs to access benefit information -- these are reasons to make the Internet accessible at high speeds to everyone.

It's like arguing against rural electrification because people might read their Bibles more. I know we're specializing in non-progressive thoughts on this board lately, but Jesus Christ are we really moving backwards too?

[KamaAina]

39. Could that maybe be why they're so conservative?

That they don't have access to any source of information besides Faux?

Hmmm?

[snooper2]

46. Holy shit that was a funny post

LOL

Absolutely perfect

[EmeraldCityGrl]

50. my side hurts...

thus entire thread is a Duzy...

[XemaSab]

2. Didn't Finland put forward some kind of initiative

to connect everyone via teh broadband?

[virgogal]

4. God,I'm an old lady and if I had to live with dial-up I'd go bonkers.

[madamesilverspurs]

10. I'm an old lady on dialup.

Options are available, but not within my budget.

And links within links just ruin my day, sometimes.

[msongs]

5. why not satellite? nt

[SWTORFanatic]

31. Can browse on satellite but can't do other things (such as online games)

[riderinthestorm]

34. Notoriously unreliable, even a light rain shower will shut down satellite service. And it's slow too

So why spend $800 for installation and $50 - 80/month for that kind of terrible service?

[Occulus]

38. A friend of mine has satellite internet and your post is truth

Any pages with embedded videos are to be avoided.

[hughee99]

6. They might want to look into internet over power lines

I'm assuming they're on the electrical grid.

"With broadband over power lines, or BPL, you can plug your computer into any electrical outlet in your home and instantly have access to high-speed Internet. By combining the technological principles of radio, wireless networking, and modems, developers have created a way to send data over power lines and into homes at speeds between 500 kilobits and 3 megabits per second (equivalent to DSL and cable). "

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/bpl.htm

[ohheckyeah]

9. If that's download speed it bites....

for upload it's pretty good.

[hughee99]

11. still beats dial up

and no added infrastructure.

This one says 100Mbps.
http://www.nextenergynews.com/news08-2/next-energy-news9.11.08a.html

I couldn't remember what the speeds were, but I remembered reading about the technology. It sounded like a good financial alternative for rural areas.

[bananas]

22. BPL RIP

http://gigaom.com/2010/04/08/finally-broadband-over-powerline-r-i-p/

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100409/0826178949.shtml

[bananas]

20. BPL has a lot of problems

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadband_over_power_lines

[SomethingFishy]

8. I guess they are still.... evolving.

[longship]

12. Try rural Newaygo County, MI!

A mere 40 miles N of Grand Rapids. No cable TV here (not that I'd want it, or could afford to pay for it). No broadband either. And if you think you can actually get 28K dial up here in the midst of the Manistee National Forest, you're delusional.

Luckily I have a sister who's willing to put me on her AT&T account and can use my iPhone to get a couple of bars on EDGE data network. It's about dialip speed, no better. But at least I can get DU, which has reasonable software which tolerates low bandwidth and supports iPhones. (Thank you Skinner et al)

I thought Obama was going to do the equivalent of FDR's rural electrification, only it was to be a rural broadband project, employing thousands. He talked about it after he took office. What happened to that? Does anybody know?

on edit: I hear that the most connected country is Suomi (Finland), which has a small population density in rural areas, but has managed to connect the whole country with broadband. Hell! The Netherlands is trying to go all fiber optic! What's wrong with this country? I know the US is big, but for Christ sakes, we put people on the moon in less than ten years.

[freshwest]

13. He tried it in his initial spat of all kinds of alternative energy programs. What happened? Repukes.

But he tried again over a year ago:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704132204576135753839131320.html

[pacalo]

19. I was thinking the same as you about why this country could put a man on the moon

yet it's not able to solve problems that could enhance its citizens' lives. Interesting to know about how advanced other countries are compared to the U.S. How depressing.

[AsahinaKimi]

14. I have a good friend who lives in North Carolina

Who told me she finally moved away from a small town that only had dial up. She said there was something faster but the waiting list was like five years. She was so happy to move, and get the much faster DSL.

[AnotherDreamWeaver]

15. I use WildBlue, when I tried to load the page I got this

http://www.viasatresidential.com/

which says they supply WildBlue. (were they bought out, or merged?) It was an upgrade from dialup, I can see video, most often broken, but once loaded I can replay it ok. Some come through fine, but not many.

Good luck.

[Ikonoklast]

25. I have a Verizon 4G aircard on this laptop.

$40 a month for blazing speed and unlimited data, and I really have to be in the boonies to not have a signal.

[EOTE]

28. If broadband isn't available, I'm guessing 4G isn't either. NT

[Ikonoklast]

29. Like I said, I really have to be in the boonies for no signal.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

32. I don't think they have cell service either

Been through there a few times on my touring bike. IIRC it is a wide spot in the road between the Indian Wells Valley and the Kern River Valley

[Ikonoklast]

33. Sooner or later, we'll have satellite broadband, nationwide, like satrad.

Wired landlines and cell towers are already ancient technology.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

36. The problem will be real time gaming

The latency is just too high via satellite

[spinbaby]

30. We have satellite Internet and it sucks

It's totally oversubscribed, so at busy times of day when lots of users are on, it goes from slow to slower. It's mostly faster than dialup, but sometimes is so slow as to be unusable. It also goes out whenever it rains. For this we pay $60 a month.

[Juneboarder]

40. The best thing about Darwin, CA???

There's good beef jerky just a mere 45 minutes down the road. I've drive up and down this valley so many times and often wonder why in the heck someone would want to live there. It's purely mining and military, and the land is extremely desolate.

As well, just up the road from Darwin (approx. 1 hour away) is beautiful Manzanar (the Japanese "Internment" Camp from WWII).

[quakerboy]

42. I have a hard time believing Kathy Goss

"we are not asking to be given anything", "we are willing to pay what it takes to get the hardware installed". Although, if they are already running a line nearby, that might make it a lot cheaper, and believable.

But usually when someone starts off with "we don't want anything", they are lying, because if it were true they've already made the arraignments, put up the cash, and the article title is "Darwin CA Gets Broadband Internet".

[derby378]

43. Pockets of East Texas are having the same problem

HughesNet is always available, but their rates are so damn high it's not even funny. When visiting Quitman (hometown of Sissy Spacek), I can always visit the local Dairy Queen where I can have all the WiFi I want if I'll just buy something from the counter now and then. It's a very nice arrangement.

[darwinupdate]

44. We in Darwin are the 99%

I am astounded by the narrow-minded knee-jerk notions of some of the posts in this thread. Yes, Darwin is in a rural area, but no, we are not "red." We are a mixed bag of political and social types, just like any community, but leaning decidedly to the left. We have Occupied our Post Office periodically since October 2011. It's one of the thousands that are up for closure if Congress doesn't get off its collective ass and do something about the phony "bankruptcy" of the U.S. Postal Service.

Some of us have satellite service, thanks in part to a Recovery Act program that subsidized HughesNet to provide free installation and reduced monthly fees. This has made a tremendous difference, but it isn't broadband, and we are on constant alert not to exceed our daily allowance of megabytes. We have no cell phone service in Darwin, and not even any radio except some AM skip at night. However, there's a project to install fiberoptic cable along the length of Highway 395, on the east side of the Sierra Nevada. This is some 40 miles away from Darwin, and since we're surrounded by mountains there is no direct line of sight to our community. However, we have identified affordable equipment that would enable us to bounce a signal from a backhaul along the fiber, with a couple of hops, ending up in Darwin with a signal that would be good enough to qualify as broadband. (The current definition of broadband, by the way, is 6.5Mbps down and 1.5Mbps up. That pretty much leaves those of us on satellite in the dust.) We are willing to purchase prototype equipment, demonstrate that it works, install and maintain it, once the Digital 395 fiberoptic project is completed. If we can do it in Darwin, many other remote communities can do it too.

[NRaleighLiberal]

45. welcome to DU!

[Hugabear]

51. Welcome to DU

Thanks for the post, and get used to some of what you see in this thread. There are those here who absolutely love to broad-brush entire regions of the country. At least you're not in the South, we are subjected to routine broad-brush attacks. In fact, we had one popular post not too long ago that basically said it was every progressive's duty to move out of the South, and to leave it to the rethugs.

[Canuckistanian]

47. Man, I can relate

I live in the country and only a few years ago could I get even slow-speed broadband. We're just a few miles past all the big-city networks, even for wireless.

So, I use my phone, which can do HSPA+ from our local phone provider.

But before that, it was all phone modem (shudder). Finding and keeping a provider with decent service, endless technical problems (I got to know the phone guy personally) and shitty consistency.

I'm not going back. Don't make me. I'm warning you.