Rural broadband drought puts hurt on retailer

Agree on points that

Agree on points that enterprise-level broadband is necessary in today's business environment. But looking at it from a consumer's perspective what troubles me is that a large portion of US rural residents don't understand the capabilities they're missing out on via lack of broadband. I finally convinced my brother, a farmer, that he would get tangible business benefits by signing up for a relatively high-speed line-of-sight connection (high speed compared to his dial-up, that is). He told me that his judgement of the Internet was misconceived. Now that he has access, he sees its potential.

How many folks like that are out there? For those of us who already suffer from lack of economic opportunity, lack of broadband is one more stifling fact of life.

We need a policy that

We need a policy that promotes economic development in underserved areas of the Country. One that provides consumer and worker protections as well as establishing oversight and accountability. Check out the Communications Workers of America website at-www.speedmatters.org

T1 lines are more money in

T1 lines are more money in comparison to broadband and using overnight delivery via FedEx or UPS isn't what somebody is looking for as an alternative when broadband isn't available. Our country needs a natinal broadband policy to bring high speed Internet to rural areas and close the digital divide for those communities. Busineses in rural areas shouldn't have to scramble for alternatives when looking to conduct business with counterparts and rivals in major metropolitan areas.

So where have all the taxes

So where have all the taxes collected in our phone bills gone?

Sounds to me like time for a congressional audit. The phone companies have been given a blank check far too long!

I feel Hinkle's pain. At a

I feel Hinkle's pain. At a past employer it was my job to procure bandwidth for remote sites. The employer was a food manufacturer and the locations were basically "in the sticks", so far out there that only analog cellphone service was available.

Stating that this issue can easily be resolved by increasing pipe size is not feasible. You are restricted by your budget and the LEC's CO equipment. Some of these locations have CO's that cannot support full T1 so you run with 56K and cross your fingers. And you cannot spend 12K/yr/site for full T1 when your budget is $200/mo/site.

In closing, it is time to get rural phone companies the money to upgrade their equipment. That and only that will get the rest of America "fully" connected.

I with m00tpoint on this

I with m00tpoint on this one. If you're really concerned with having broadband access, T1 should be an option. Other corps go with T1s for their locations because DSL isn't available - they don't wine because they don't have the option they want.

If they're dealing with dial-up, forget the overnight push, just overnight data/content drives to the locations. Last time I checked, FedEx/UPS is available where there's no broadband.

This just shows that CIOs need to get a little creative and not just rely on what has worked at other locations. Could they use a 3G router for example? Or maybe just focus on having most data on the client side and not server side?

-Brian

Hinkle has a team of IT

Hinkle has a team of IT professionals that have done several acquisitions. I've talked to them at length and they know what they're doing. If they say it's not available in 17% of the store locations then I believe them.

The frame is an interim solution because they need the stores online quickly. They're still looking for something with higher bandwidth that's cost effective for those locations.

--Rob

Yeah, broadband availability

Yeah, broadband availability can be spotty, and sometimes it downright sucks. But this CIO is also rather whiny.

"Unfortunately, DSL isn't available everywhere yet, even in retail areas. Right now, about 17% [of store locations] can't get broadband," says CIO Robert Hinkle. Broadband != DSL. Broadband most certainly is available. It's just not available at the price he wants to pay. His sites are up on 256k frame relay, and if he wanted to pay more, he could get full T1's. Compared to the differences in wage scales and the lease for the store in the rural areas, the cost of the frame lines is peanuts.

If they have any brains, those on-demand multimedia clips are on a server in the store, downloaded across the network only once. Push those out overnight, and his bandwidth issue is much less pressing. The customers can on-demand things to their heart's content on the LAN.

m00tpoint