"Broadband in a box" is prime example of going backward on telecom infrastructure

Stories like this one in Telephony Online depict the U.S. headed backward in a race to the bottom rather than forward when it comes to deploying advanced telecommunications infrastructure. This so-called "Broadband in a Box" might make sense for some isolated part of the Third World. But what's sad is it's being deployed in the United States of America. West Virginia, to be exact.

"Broadband in a Box" combines two of the absolute worst forms of Internet Protocol-based connectivity: sucking a satellite on the downlink and dialugging for the uplink.

It's so pathetic that it rightfully doesn't even meet the U.S. government's definition of broadband -- already arguably obsolete at 768 Kbs down and 200 Kbs up -- for the purposes of broadband infrastructure subsidies in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.