Too Poor to Afford the Internet

Another huge aspect of poverty and internet access is the increasing number of households who don't have wifi but use only their phones for internet access. ("one-quarter of those earning below the median income and one-third of those living below poverty level accessed the Internet only through their mobile devices." https://theconversation.com/many-low-income-students-use-onl... and if you want more http://qz.com/580024/more-americans-are-relying-exclusively-... )

The world really looks different if you only have a handheld device -- it's more read-only and because of caps and expensive mobile plans, you will use it less.

In cities there's a chance that libraries can help, but with rural poverty it's really a trap!

> I want it deregulated and opened up to very serious competition. I also want our government to build reliable infrastructure (fiber) as much as is possible.

I'm not surprised that you feel torn. Those desires are in direct contradiction with each other.

Even if you're referring to splitting infra from service, there will still be regulation. You'll also see law enforcement becoming very interested in the fact that interconnects and the last mile are now government property.

Yes, I discovered this myself far later than I should have!

The SF central branch has a really good selection of programming/tech books. Also, having a library card enables access (as you note) to a wide selection of ebooks[1].

(I note, however, that the interface that you can use them through could use some redesign.)

[1] http://sfpl.org/index.php?pg=2000005001

The vast majority of the cost of any kind of infrastructure is labor, which scales with local wages.[1] A New York subway ticket is about $2.75. That's about 11x more than the cost of a ticket on the Kiev Metro. And it's not like the New York subway makes a profit--fares cover only about half the system's operating costs.[2]

In Baltimore, I paid about $50 for a 50mbps connection, or about 20x more than a subway ticket. Sounds like the ratio is about the same order of magnitude in Ukraine.

[1] A telecom field technican in the U.S. makes about $6,000-$7,000 per month, plus benefits. That's about 20x what the average Ukrainian in Kiev makes (according to the Internet).

[2] Fares on D.C.'s metro, which similarly cover only about 50% of costs, range from $1.75 to $5.90(!).

You need water to be a productive member of society. (Or to survive at all, but that's a prerequisite.) You need food to be a productive member of society. (Or to survive at all, but that's a prerequisite.) You need shelter to be a productive member of society. More often that not, you need electricity to be a productive member of society. Increasingly so, you need internet to be a productive member of society.

In every case, the person consuming these resources either:

[a] pays for them on their own

[b] is provided them but paid by someone else, possibly in aggregate (family, government services, charity)

[c] not provided them at all, in which case they are no longer a productive member of society (or worse, near-starving, starving, or dead)

Ethics and economic systems notwithstanding, the first few are 'hard problems' that humanity has struggled with for millennia. Internet access is comparatively easy, because the marginal costs of distribution are low, but just like other 'utilities' and 'necessities', the capital cost is high.

One way to offset this is to create a market like for electricity, where multiple players, some private, some government-owned, compete at the supply-side and distribution-side, to provide capacity at prices that are close to the cost of (production+transmission) for the area.

Luckily, unlike electricity, water, food, or shelter, information can be duplicated, format-shifted, batched, compressed, time-delayed, and the like. If fixed-fiber-based Internet to arbitrary endpoints is too expensive despite the presence of a market, cache or store more content closer to the consumer on CDNs. If last-mile distribution is too expensive, switch to a different last-mile distribution paradigm -- this latter one is what public libraries (and public hotspots) currently accomplish. If bi-directional communication is desired, investigate peer-to-peer solutions. There's so much potential in LANs, WANs, sneakernet, (TV/radio/data) broadcast that goes untapped.

We're stuck here because right now telcos are a terrible market and the monopolies are granted at the wrong level; but also because we're assuming that getting direct, end-to-end connection from one of the big telcos is the only way to digitally communicate.