Wednesday, August 07, 2013

The rural "digital divide" isn't the same in UK, US

Millions miss-out as Britain's broadband divide reaches record levels - Yahoo! Finance UK: Telecoms regulator Ofcom warned the difference between the 'haves' and 'have-nots' would also get worse before it gets better as telecom and pay-TV giants focus investment on next generation "superfast" fibre networks in Britain's biggest towns.

Figures revealed by Ofcom today showed the average internet connection speed in urban areas is now 26.4Mb per second. In rural areas it's just 9.9Mb. Rural speeds have more than doubled since 2011 but households in the countryside now trail city dwellers by an unprecedented 16.5Mb per second.
Americans living in rural, quasi-rural and exurban locales and stuck with dialup or satellite or forced to make do with costly, data capped mobile broadband for their premises Internet service would find this account puzzling. For them, having access to nearly 10Mbs throughput would hardly be considered deprivation at the present time.

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