[ydb]

This is a great idea!! We need to give these poor and low-income urban and rural students as much opportunity to "get connected" as we can. There are many thousands of gifted students out there whose potential is untapped, and I think this is a great opportunity to accelerate education and foster growth.

This, too, would help with the learn-to-code movement (a skills gap that I consider essential to close). This could have far-reaching effects and do wonders to lift the next generation of poor out of poverty and into more lucrative white collar jobs.

[_bxg1]

It is a great idea, but it's also a testament to the sorry state of our nation's internet infrastructure caused by telecoms that are free both from competition and from being regulated as the essential utilities they are (the latter thanks to Ajit Pai's cronyist FCC).

[luckylion]

Maybe you can find solace in the fact that Germany, which allegedly breathes engineering, suffers from much the same fate. The internet in the large cities is good (not great, but good), in the smaller cities it's a mixed bag, but largely okay, and in the rural parts it's usually a joke.

It appears that it is not an issue that's unique to the US, but common in the "old" Western democracies. Friends tell me it's not much different in rural Spain and France.

[hocuspocus]

Rural Spain and France are a lot less dense than rural Germany though.

There's really no excuse for the state of broadband and cell coverage in your country. I lived two years in Mitte in Berlin, and I couldn't even make a phone call from my place! To add insult to the injury the BMVI was just around the corner; billboards about Gigabit broadband by 2025 reminded me everyday the country is 10 years behind where it could afford to be.

[luckylion]

Yeah, it's a shame. There's lots of hope that mobile internet will fix it, but we've had the same hope with 3G and 4G.

[ghaff]

Part of the problem is the goalposts move. The cellular data connection you can get in many places (though, of course, not everywhere) is probably a lot faster than back when WiMAX was being promoted as the fix for the last mile problem. And typical cellular data caps today would mostly look like all the bandwidth in the world going back 15 years or whatever.

Now, a lot of people don't think they have "real" broadband if everyone in the household can't be streaming Netflix at 4K simultaneously without any meaningful caps or throttling.

[luckylion]

The issue in Germany is that we're somewhat behind on mobile traffic caps as well. It's gotten a lot better recently, but it's still on the high end in Europe on traffic/cost.

[_bxg1]

That's surprising to me; I've always heard that it's better in Europe.

It's possible that our definitions of "great", "good", "okay", and "a joke" are different. "Good" in the US is 50mbps. "Okay" is 20mbps. "A joke" often means there's no actual hard line, and you have to use a satellite-based ISP instead.

[luckylion]

Those definitions work here as well. There's the occasional outlier where you'll get fiber for a competitive price, but 50mbps is usually what you'll be able to get in a large city. Next up is 16/2.4, which most Germans can get. In rural areas, it's 6 or 3mbps, but if you're unlucky, you can also be stuck on that speed in a major city.

This has been getting somewhat better by cable providers getting in on the action, but they have their own sets of challenges, like CGNAT, shared bandwidth and generally problematic contracts & customer service.

[nicoburns]

Seems like it would be a better idea just to subsidise these homes with a regular wired connection...

[zrail]

Lots of areas are unable to get any sort of wired connection for any amount of money.

[nradov]

My parents live in a rural area just outside of Silicon Valley and there is no fiber, cable, or DSL Internet service available at any price. The only options are satellite and Verizon cellular.

[zrail]

Yep. That’s most of the country by land area. Someone I follow on twitter just started construction on a licensed wireless backhaul to his house. Took months to even get the time of day from the ISP and it’s costing thousands of dollars to install.

[nicoburns]

Ah, WiFi trucks make more sense in that case. I was assuming that wired connections were available, just not affordable.

[sidpatil]

From what I understand, wired infrastructure is really expensive to roll out, due to all the property rights that need to be negotiated.