Rural Broadband Stimulus "Not Enough"

"Broadband is capital intensive, and the level of available (stimulus or other support) funding in the future will influence the ability to achieve big leaps in the level of broadband availability and the rate of upgrades," said Chris Campbell, director of the Vermont Telecommunications Authority.

He's absolutely right: the "broadband stimulus" always was too small to make much of a direct change in rural broadband adoption.

But that's only acknowledging the disparity between urban, suburban and rural communications infrastructure. The costs of deploying modern, up-to-date terrestrial infrastructure always are quite high in the most-rural areas.

In fact, in the most-rural areas, it is virtually impossible to create a self-funding business case, which is why we have subsidy programs of various types.

Of course the broadband stimulus was not enough. Nothing other than permanent subsidies will ever be enough if you are talking about terrestrial, fixed networks.

Stimulus to increase rural broadband may not be enough | The Burlington Free Press