[1]24 Million Americans Don't Have Access to Broadband-Why Isn't It an

[1]24 Million Americans Don't Have Access to Broadband-Why Isn't It an
Election Issue? - Motherboard

Yet few candidates, from local mayoral races all the way up to the
Senate, provide lip service to the fact that millions of Americans
still lack access to broadband, and even fewer flesh out a robust
policy to address it. At a time when politics is more divisive than
ever, basic issues such as access to the internet are being
overshadowed by the massive ideological clashes happening across the
country.

"If you were to ask people what issues they're voting on, first and
foremost they would say 'pro-Trump or anti-Trump,'" said Susan
Boser, the Democratic candidate seeking to replace Republican House
Member Glenn Thompson in Pennsylvania. "Next would be guns and
abortion, then the needs of the area, which are jobs and the opioid
epidemic."

Boser told me a lack of access to broadband is a huge problem in her
district, which is a large, predominantly rural swath along the
northwestern edge of the state; its largest town, Indiana, has a
population of less than 15,000.

(Via Motherboard)

This is not an insignificant number of people even as a percentage of
the population. And this issue has the added advantages of:
* No political polarization
* No impact on either moral, ethical, or religious issues
* Good for the economy
* Relatively easy to address and can be done relatively quickly, if
the community will is there

And yet …

In Tennessee, broadband access has faced progress and setbacks.
[2]Chattanooga found economic revival after building city-owned
gigabit internet, but was quickly prohibited from expanding the
network to surrounding communities [3]because of a Telecom-backed
state law. Efforts to fight those limits have failed, making it
difficult for municipal internet providers to expand and offer
services to smaller communities.

A Tennessee Democratic Party spokesperson told me the broadband
battle is being drowned out by more contentious rhetoric.

"We've got a governor race with a highly contested Republican
primary, so you've got all those candidates out there with
television ads focused on immigration and other issues," he told me
over the phone. "That's where voter attention is at the moment."

So many people get wrapped up in causes they can't hope to impact to
the exclusion of local issue they can impact.

BTW, I've used the Chattanooga broadband many times. It is awesome and
puts [4]Comcast's bizarrely named product to shame. The cynic in me
sees why Telecom companies fear such implementations and thus oppose
them.
__________________________________________________________________

My original entry is here: [5]6%, a.k.a. 24M people, in the U.S. lack
broadband. It posted Tue, 05 Jun 2018 11:27:49 +0000.
Filed under: personal, tech,

References

1. https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/d3kdmx/is-access-to-broadband-an-election-issue
2. https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ezpk77/chattanooga-gigabit-fiber-network
3. https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/tenneesee-municipal-broadband-bills
4. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xfinity
5. https://www.prjorgensen.com/?p=1185