by Jason Snell
Broadband in the Boonies 2021
Longtime MacUser and Macworld contributor Chris Breen works at Apple these days, and so he can’t write about tech anymore. Mostly. But for years, first at Macworld and now on his own blog, he has been detailing the horror of trying to get fast Internet in the remote Bay Area location where he lives.
Things are getting worse, not better:
AT&T wants out of the DSL business. So. Badly. DSL is slow (though AT&T could make it faster), it’s outdated, and it’s creaky and requires routine servicing. You can see why the company wants to move its customers to fiber. That desire, however, doesn’t extend to actually providing fiber to the rural hayseeds.
And they’re doing it by revoking third-party access to their DSL circuits, forcing those customers into the AT&T family because they rarely have any other option, and then charging outrageous prices for lousy speeds.
A whole lot of people in the U.S. are not able to get good Internet connections. They remain invisible to most, because those of us who write about this stuff are rarely the ones affected. I always appreciate hearing from Chris, and while I hope he gets fast Internet someday, his posts are a good reminder that not everyone has gigabit fiber at the ready.