Times Argus says nearly 75% of Vermont has access to broadband, and the state is going for 100% availability before the end of the decade. Perhaps now we can replace South Korea with Vermont in our broadband laments. On a serious note, this proves if the country/state is small enough, the high double digit penetration rates can be achieved. In Vermont, all 112,000 of Adelphia’s customers have broadband, and 57% of Verizon’s 260,000 have DSL. Nearly 90 percent of the state’s 100,000 customers of small independent telephone companies have broadband. But rural areas are still waiting for high speed networks.
Thanks, Howard Dean! 😉
The problem is that they are talking about 75% of the population, not the area. Getting that last 25% is going to cost 10 times what it did to get the first 75%. Hoping won’t make any difference.
interesting report seeing as how i wasnt aware of it although i live right here in Burlington, VT. I think they are going to have a hard time reaching the last 25%. i live right outside burlington (biggest city/town in vermont) and i had a hard time geting DSL (no provider had the ability) and i had to go with cable. Cable is pretty affordable by itself but if you opt to also get your cable TV as a package it is too expensive. The problem is that tehir signal has a hiccup at least once every 2 days, which is a pain cause then i cant rely on it to stay on all day. see my post on my blog.
Well, the problem with your argument that if “the country/state is small enough, the high double digit penetration rates can be achieved.” is that in South Korea, you can get up to 100 megabits symmetric broadband connection. While in Vermont, you would be lucky to get 5 megabits download, and not even 1 megabit upload. So if you use Korea’s standard for broadband, Vermont’s penetration is technically 0%.