You Can't Have It

Have you seen the new Verizon 5G, mmWave (the advert doesn't use that term) teeVee commercial? The key part of the advert, in vocal fine print, is that this superduper 5G is available in "some parts of select cities". And that's how it will always be. All those Real Americans in Dirty Boots counties will be lucky to still have garden variety DSL. And those folks don't fully pay for it; you do through the FCC's Connect America Fund and others.

Since 1995 the CAF (previously called the "High Cost Fund") has distributed more than $80 billion in real dollars, the Department of Agriculture's Rural Utility Service (RUS) has given out another $7 billion since 2009 in grants and loans for telecom programs, and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration gave away another $4 billion as part of the 2009 stimulus package.

All those real Americans who've made a sort of living by the dirt under their finger nails just won't have the chance to migrate to the information economy. If they ever might want to, of course.

mmWave is only feasible in urban, and well planned suburban, areas. It's effectively a line of sight, low power, signal. All so that you can download your porn in less than a minute. Worth having, eh?