When we moved to this house 33 years ago, there was no cable (still isn't available), and wired POTS was it. About 12 wire miles from the CO, so 56K was just a dream. Maybe 15 years ago, I was approached by the local telco because they wanted to replaced deteriorating buried copper with fiber and needed some land for a terminal.
I sold them about 300 sq. ft. that I didn't even know that I owned. They poured a concrete pad and set up some boxes on it. Initially, connection was 5 Mbps; a few years ago, I was offered 20 for a lifetime rate of USD$40/month. It was gradually bumped up to about 55 Mbps. It works for me--if I wanted to pay more, I could get 100. This is a rural area. If I go a half-mile up the road, the people there are still 12-13 wire miles from the CO with no broadband at all. If that weren't enough, cell coverage there is maybe a bar-and-a-half of 2G. Some use satellite, but during windy or wet weather, I understand that their speed falls to nearly worthless. Lots of big evergreen (Doug-fir and Ponderosa pine) trees here to lay waste to comms. A utility from a county south of here has been stringing fiber along the road, which has promise--but no estimates of when connectivity will be available. People evidently don't recall the bad old days of POTS where calls outside of your calling area was billed as long-distance and reception was noisy and slow. Back then, a leased line connected to a 208 modem would run you about 5 kilobucks/month for 4800 bps, sync. --Chuck
