Slashdot reports on "Outsourcing To Rural America."I will fess up that I helped with the first wave of this in the early 80s moving call center operations to the Dakotas for New York banks.
As rural networks are deployed, this finally gets back to a rant of mine from 1993 on In-Situ Ville in a presentation on "The Information Superhighway". The concept: ubiquitous networks can drive *smaller* business and social structures as well as Big Boxes. Think new corner groceries and local manufacturing - village smithys.
More applications of rural wireless broadband at "WiFi Cloud Covers Rural Oregon" in Wired.
Interesting piece in the New York Times on "Rural Living" up in Maine, with quotes from carriers.
Summing it up: population density drives wires only so far.
The other trend? Wireless Broadband will begin to resemble component stereo systems. Network suppored services and customer care will differentiate, but the bandwidth per se will become a commodity.
Update on 23 December 2005:
Wonderful interview "Widening the Internet Highway to Rural America" on NPR, covering the work done by West Virginia Broadband on a shoestring budget.
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