On Tue, 13 Mar 2007 14:50:43 EDT, Joe Abley said:
However, just because you're remote doesn't mean that there aren't options in the last mile, so long as you're prepared to do something rather than just complain about others not doing it. The island of Niue in the South Pacific has had free, nation-wide wifi available for all since 2003, for example, and you don't get much more remote than Niue.
Keeping this in perspective, the CIA Factbook says that Niue had a population of 2,166 in July 2006, an area of 100 square miles (1.5 times the size of Wash DC), and a highest elevation of a whole whopping 250 feet. Meanwhile, Montgomery County, Virginia has some 85K or so people, 393 square miles, and more ridgelines and hollows than you can shake a stick at (elevations from 1,300 to 3,700 feet inclusive). Probably 70K of those people are crowded into about 40 square miles in 2 main plateaus - those are easy to cover. The other 15K people scattered across 350 square miles of ridgelines and hollows are a lot harder to cover. I posit that those 350 square miles are more remote, measured from "the point the big fat cable lands at" (whatever landing station Niue has, and the 2 or 3 main telco CO's here), than any point on the island of Niue. At least measured by criteria that matter to the guy engineering the towers.