I’ve been seeing billboards the last week or so that advertise broadband internet in some of the tiny towns surrounding the farmhouse. I took note, but what really caught my attention was noticing one of the billboards next to a cornfield in any area visibly as isolated as our new location. We contacted them, and it turns out that having expanded their wireless broadband service in northwest Indiana about two weeks ago, they’re already backed up a month on installation orders. I’ve got a date scheduled, and hopefully when their techs test they’ll discover that we can indeed get a signal sufficient for access.
But those billboards are their principal type of advertising, and the response has all but overwhelmed them. That’s what the demand for broadband is out a very short way from the cities. And I would think that would tell the big companies something. If they run their services out there, they will have customers and lots of them. People are willing to pay for the service, if only they have the option. Establishments such as Panera’s make a fortune on people who come in and get a meal there because they can get the broadband access that isn’t available at their homes. I lost count of laptops the last time I went in there, and once our son is in school, I suspect I’ll become a regular either there or at South Bend Chocolate Company, which offers both access and wonderful tea (and chocolate). When they run fiber-optic lines, the communication companies have to be right past all these farms and tiny towns. Why do they doubt their services will be used if they run the line two tenths of a mile to the side? That’s the distance between the nearest fiber optic line and the little town nearest us. But when asked, the company representative said they hadn’t had requests for service. I suspect more likely is that people like me got online, checked the availability of service and were informed there was none, and weren’t so much as offered the option of asking to be informed when service became available. That was not offered to me until I called on the phone.
The long and short of it is that I think that the big communication companies are making assumptions without accurate data, and making the lack of broadband demand in rural areas a self-fulfilling prophecy. And I hope those same patronizing executives find themselves with egg all over their faces as the little company that’s actually bringing broadband out here takes off and flies.
They’ll choke when they see the profits the little company makes off the rural areas. And I hope the big companies strangle. (bad tempered? ME?)