Roseboom resident Stephen Cobb was busy this past winter. Besides his day job working for a Philadelphia-based software company, Cobb was writing what he hopes will be ”the definitive report on satellite Internet service.”
Tired of hearing politicians and government bureacrats talk about satellite broadband, Cobb decided “to create a document that establishes the fact that satellite Internet, while it is a miracle of technology, is NOT broadband.”
An information technology professional with more than 30 years experience in computer audit and security, Cobb feels that rural communities are being “tricked” into thinking satellite Internet services lke HughesNet and WildBlue are their only option for broadband. “It is both disingenous and insulting to tell rural residents, particularly those who live right next to a fiber optic cable, that they should be happy with satellite Internet service,” says Cobb.
“Satellite will never offer the sort of bandwidth you can get with cable, fiber, DSL, or WiMax, and everyone knows that…if you can’t use it to host a website or watch Netflix movies, it’s not broadband.”
Cobb says communities like Roseboom should be wired to the Internet just like cities and suburbs. “Why should we settle for less, after all, we allow fiber to pass right through here?” Cobb believes that when the federal government gave $100 million worth of Recovery funds to satellite companies it made a mistake. ”That money would have been much better spent connecting places like Roseboom and Pleasant Brook with fiber or cable…there are people who would love to move here, work here, build businesses here, but cannot do so because we are not wired”
The 22-page report that Cobb put together was recently published as a white paper by the Rural Mobile and Broadband Alliance, a non-profit rural advocacy group that goes by the acronym “RuMBA.” Over 500 people have already downloaded the white paper and it has been featured on a wide range of websites, including the following:
- Ag Professional
- Western Farm Press
- Stop the Cap!
- Connected Planet
- Fierce Telecom
- TelecomLead
- The Street
- AgriMarketing
- Politic 365
Anyone who has enough bandwidth can download the whitepaper here (it is a 1.9 megabte PDF file)
