As I write this I’m sitting in a house we own in Vermont. It is at the end of a dirt road, just down the road from the piece of land Michael Douglas owns, which explains why on some maps this road, properly known as Ethan Allen Road, is misnomered Michael Douglas Road. Even Garmin uses the name, though it is not official by any means.
But this post is not about Michael Douglas or the road. It’s about infrastructure, in this case broadband.Apparently the state of Vermont did something very smart some time ago, and required internet providers to actually provide high speed internet. You know-the kind of internet the providers in Connecticut all promise (they’re each and everyone the fastest you can get) but never deliver. Here in the middle of nowhere my Speedtest App tells me I’m getting 72.3 Mgbs download speed and 84.9 Mgbs upload speed. That’s right, I can upload faster than I can download. And I know that the app is not leading me wrong, because when I’m up here, I can upload pictures to Flickr or another cloud service I have for photos in a fraction of the time it takes in Connecticut.
Which leads to the point of this post. We would get the same type of service in Connecticut if we demanded it, and by “we” I mean the government of the state of Connecticut and the relevant regulatory agencies. We’re not paying any more for internet here in Vermont than we are in Connecticut, but we’re getting a whole lot more. The internet truly is a vital part of our infrastructure, and it’s about time that those we allow to bleed us dry to provide that infrastructure at least deliver a quality product.
I should add that all is not perfect here in the Green Mountain State. Cell phone service is horrible. Apparently whoever made sure that Vermonters got good internet dropped the ball when it comes to cell service.
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