Broadband In The Sticks: Tough Nut To CrackBroadband In The Sticks: Tough Nut To Crack

As a long-time home office employee living just outside a mid-size city, I've been spoiled with access to broadband, using it as my sole means of connectivity to my employer since 1995, when I was very early user of ISDN. Since 1999 or so, I've been using a cable modem, and am about 99% satisfied with how it's performed over that period. That's a pretty good track record.There's a good reminder that not everyone is so fortunate in Richard Hoffman's rural broadband progress report. Hoffman's analysis - a direct response to reader comments about the rural broadband struggle - finds there's progress being made to put rural users on the broadband map, but high-speed service availability is inconsistent at best. For those with access, limitations in how it's deployed, pricing considerations and other factors pose challenges that those in big cities have rarely had to think about.

The biggest problem, of course, is that the big telcos and cable companies - not exactly bastions of affordable, innovative solutions - are loathe to build broadband infrastructure in places where the population density won't yield an extremely quick payback.

Use our blog comments field to share your rural connectivity experiences. Or, hopefully, you've conquered some challenges and can enlighten some compatriots with your strategy, your technology of choice, your workarounds or any other insights that those in the "sticks" can learn from.