Monday, October 15, 2018

"Factual" and "True" Observations about Internet Access Quality

Some statements are factual, but arguably not “true.” It is factual that fixed network or terrestrial network coverage gaps exist in rural and other “hard to reach” areas. In many rural areas, especially mountainous areas where few people live, there might be zero mobile network coverage, to say nothing of fixed network coverage.

The existence of such gaps might, or might not, bear much relationship to the state of service quality in dense, suburban and other areas with greater population density. In other words, it is not a “failure” of government or industry that some areas have poor to no terrestrial network coverage. Some areas simply have such low population density that only satellite service is commercially viable, even with deployment subsidies.

The simple reality is that coverage of the “last couple of percent” of people in most countries with rural, mountainous or island geographies is quite expensive. In the U.S. market, for example, it is coverage of the last one percent of people that is most tellingly expensive.

The point is that coverage gaps can exist without necessarily telling us very much about the state of internet access on a wider basis within any country.




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