1 edit | Rural areas also have access to satellite, as little as $60/month. There are high speed caps on most satellite plans, but at least on Hugesnet, there's a late-night "unlimited" time block as well. On a SOHO plan, I'm getting 15GB/month during normal hours, before speed throttling sets in (though it's metered per day, not per month, and there's no penalty if you do get slowed down, other than being slowed down).
LTE has to be competitive with this, or it's no rural broadband solution. If they're talking $50/month for a 20GB plan and $100/month for a 40GB plan, I'm listening. If they can't even compete with satellite, they're not taking rural broadband seriously.
And "seriously" folks, if you're in a rural area, you know very well that neither Verizon nor AT&T are thinking of LTE as a rural broadband solution, except when it lets them grab some government money. Like every other broadband technology, they'll be rolling out LTE where it overlays the existing population areas already well served with other forms of broadband. Just like Clear's done... they have reasonable coverage in much of Philadelphia, for example, but step outside the city (much less drive to the country), and you're dropped back to Sprint's 3G network. LTE is just the next cellular service they're offering, and they always upgrade the population centers before the rural areas. AT&T's not even supporting 3G yet in some rural areas, while they're rolling out HSPA+ in cities, and LTE next year, same as Verizon.
In short, you probably will have WiMax, LTE, FiOS, and Cable as a choice, or none-of-the-above, if you're in the Philadelphia/South Jersey area. No one's doing a damn thing for rural internet access. I mean, I live in NJ, not Kansas or Iowa, but satellite is the only option, short of a T1 or Frame Relay, I suppose. There's a local node across the street that supports DSL, but every decision made by every telco is based on population density. |
