Americans commuting farther, longer than ever

Another story on Census Bureau research that points up the need for modernized telecommunications in outlying residential areas to allow people telecommute to their jobs.

Presently, however, too many can't get on the information highway from home, trapped on the wrong side of the digital divide and relegated to sluggish and outdated dial up connections to the Internet.

Population shift to exurbs has major implications for telecoms

Northeasterners are moving South and West. West Coast residents are moving inland. Midwesterners are chasing better job markets. And just about everywhere, people are escaping to the outer suburbs, also known as exurbs.

This story has huge implications for telecommunications companies that serve outlying areas who should be putting in place updated networks now to serve the growing population.

Think tank: Rural U.S. faces potential loss of telecom infrastructure

“If changes are not made soon, then the universal service system as we have known it will suffer irreparable damage. Consumers in the most rural and high-cost areas of the nation will face the very real possibility of having no telecommunications carrier capable of connecting them to the telephone and information networks,” the firm concludes in “Universal Service: Rural Infrastructure at Risk, Release 2.0,” a white paper published earlier this month.

Article at NRTC Update

Broadband in Iceland, but not El Dorado County

U.S. government officials have noted that the low population density of the U.S. makes it difficult to deploy broadband over large areas of the country, but the advance of other low population density countries like Iceland, Norway, Finland, and Sweden seems to indicate that broadband can be deployed in rural and remote areas if there is a will.

Article in Internet News by TechWeb News

Sacramento Bee: Rain exposes problems with AT&T's aging infrastructure

Phone service rained out for many in region
By Clint Swett -- Bee Staff Writer

Published 2:15 am PDT Friday, April 14, 2006

Carl Wood, a former commissioner at the California Public Utilities Commission and now a labor union consultant in Southern California, said AT&T may be more vulnerable because it serves a large geographic area and much of its infrastructure is aging.

Senate hearing on wireless broadband set

MONDAY, APRIL 17, 2006

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SELECT COMMITTEE ON
E-COMMERCE, WIRELESS TECHNOLOGY AND
CONSUMER DRIVEN PROGRAMMING
         
FLOREZ, Chair
10 a.m. to 1 p.m. - Room 3191
SUBJECT: Wireless Communities:
Connecting Communities
Rural and Urban Broadband Possibilities
Wi-Fi vs. Wi-Max

Frustrated with long phone outages? Tell the Sacramento Bee

From the Sacramento Bee Business section:

Published 5:55 pm PDT Monday, April 10, 2006

Some Sacramento-area residents are complaining of lengthy outages and of waiting more than a week to get service restored to their landlines.

If this has happened to you, Bee reporter Clint Swett would like to hear your story. E-mail him at cswett@sacbee.com with a daytime phone number.

Pipes? What pipes?

AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre recently proclaimed that businesses like Google and others who reach their consumers over the Internet should pay for the right to use AT&T's system. "Why should they be allowed to use my pipes?" Whitacre told Business Week Online.

The inhabitants of El Dorado County must be collectively scratching their heads at Whitacre's remark. For most of them, their sluggish dial up Internet experience courtesy of AT&T is like sipping through a cocktail straw. Pipes? What pipes?