Contriving

Broadband Crawling Its Way To Exurbs

This article in the Washington Post details the problems rural America is facing when it comes to Internet Access and hints at some things that St. Francois county needs to implement.

As it stands now, broadband access is limited to select residents of in-town Farmington, Bonne Terre, Desloge, Park Hills, etc. Basically if you set foot out of city limits, you’re up a creek without a way to access the Internet in any way but dial-up. While dial-up works per se, it pales in comparison to the internet experience over broadband. As Morpheus says in The Matrix: “Unfortunately no one can be told what the matrix is, you have to see it for yourself.” I can tell you that broadband internet access is dozens of times faster than what you’re currently experiencing over dial-up, but the profound effect that this has on the usefulness of the Internet has to be seen to be believed.

St. Francois county would be staking a claim for the future if it would implement a policy similar to the ideas laid out in the above-linked article. Appointing someone with a passion for enabling people and a mind for such technical matters to coordinate and plan methods for enabling widespread broadband availability would go a long way to ensuring that the residents of the County are fully-equipped to meet the demands of living in the 21st century.