Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)

[Valdis.Kletnieks () vt edu]

On Tue, 13 Mar 2007 14:50:43 EDT, Joe Abley said:

> However, just because you're remote doesn't mean that there aren't  
> options in the last mile, so long as you're prepared to do something  
> rather than just complain about others not doing it. The island of  
> Niue in the South Pacific has had free, nation-wide wifi available  
> for all since 2003, for example, and you don't get much more remote  
> than Niue.

Keeping this in perspective, the CIA Factbook says that Niue had a population
of 2,166 in July 2006, an area of 100 square miles (1.5 times the size of Wash DC),
and a highest elevation of a whole whopping 250 feet.

Meanwhile, Montgomery County, Virginia has some 85K or so people, 393
square miles, and more ridgelines and hollows than you can shake a stick at
(elevations from 1,300 to 3,700 feet inclusive).

Probably 70K of those people are crowded into about 40 square miles in 2 main
plateaus - those are easy to cover.  The other 15K people scattered across
350 square miles of ridgelines and hollows are a lot harder to cover.

I posit that those 350 square miles are more remote, measured from "the point
the big fat cable lands at" (whatever landing station Niue has, and the 2 or 3
main telco CO's here), than any point on the island of Niue.  At least measured
by criteria that matter to the guy engineering the towers.

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