Intellectual Property Law

No cell phone, barely any Internets?

By Ann Bartow

So I spent the past few days visiting family in rural parts of the Northeast, and though I visited four fairly widely dispersed residences, not a single one had cell phone access via either Verizon or AT&T. That’s all I could check, but I don’t think any other company facilitated service in any of these mountain towns either. Two of the four residences don’t even have computers. One had an old Dell computer (that I purchased myself five years ago in the hopes that I could check my e-mail when I visited!) and the only way to access the Internet there is via the slowest dial-up imaginable. Basically you could shower, dress and fix and east breakfast in the time it took to download a few messages and the inevitable porn spam that accompanies them.  Goddess help you if someone sends a photo, that would tie things up for a week! Why don’t we have universal Internet service yet? It worked really well at bringing telephone service to sparsely populated areas.  I have many family members anxiously awaiting DSL so they can actually benefit from the Internet. It’s true that there is a satellite option, but it’s incredibly costly and undependable as well. I know Obama’s got a lot on his plate already, but bringing online capability to rural areas sure would be appreciated by my extended family!

No Tags

Full post as published by Madisonian.net on November 30, 2008 (boomark / email).