During the last two years of Bush Junior's Presidency there was this mad rush to move most if not all rural TV stations, off of analog signals to digital.. Why? The promise was to allow the creation of a government provided broadband hyper speed Internet that would be available on a sliding scale, and supported by tax dollars. What happened was A.T.&.T, Verizon and Sprint jumped in and bought that white space, but only expanded Cell phone ability, not computer internet ability. Sure Google and a few others have barked about 1 gig, service in say Salt Lake City, but it'll be a long time coming if ever that the same ability will be attained in say Twin Falls Idaho, Evanston Wyoming, or Wells Nevada. Just wont happen. Obviously there is the market observation by these big telecom giants even CenturyLink, that these communities do not deserve or can't support these telecom or Internet giants like the metro areas. Yet its our rural people that supply the one thing all humans and even animals require, that is food. Should not our farmers and ranchers deserve the same fiber optic capability that our city counterparts get? What about our smaller rural towns. And why say something is available or could be available when in fact telecom giants like CenturyLink, and such say they can provide. Example, Our first shop, damn near in the middle of town , could have fiber optic. Said I could get the same bandwidth as the middle of town. So I hooked up. Since AllWest our local cable company said would cost $12,000.00 to run a cable wire down not even a quarter of a mile from Bear River Drive to our shop. So I signed up with CenturyLink. Best it could do was maybe 2 up and at best 4mbps down. Even then the idiots at CenturyLink never could send the bill to our command office. They mailed it to the address of the shop, that nobody could find a key for , for that mailbox. Really? When I had em hook up to the house, I said this is what I need, they said yes, same story; 2 up, maybe 3mbps down, called CenturyLink up 3 times, on my AllWest phone said take this damn thing out of here. They didn't listen. So now CenturyLink wants $1,500.00 for a service that repeatedly I told them did not work, and I will not pay for. Hell even their local field tech said it'd not work or work well. Big companies though need to look at these albeit slowly growing, communities. Now I am not the biggest defender of Evanston, Wyoming here. But dig this Evanston is within a 100 mile radius of metro Salt Lake City, business's are coming back to this area again albeit slowly. Just at our original shop, there are about 25 individual shops of various forms there. All would rapdly go CenturyLink or for that matter AllWest or whoever that would invest in the infrastructure to germinate faster speed and bigger bandwidth. Even considering Twin Falls Idaho. When I drifted from there mainly due to the inability of CenturyLink to provide the horsepower to upload our constant flow to our network, there was maybe 44,000 people there. Today with Twin Falls Idaho, has nearly 75,000 people and I can't count how many new big factories there, yet companies like CenturyLink, Cable-One, and others have not increased the internet horsepower that these business's need. Except 2. A wireless company called SpeedConnect, and one called Project Mutual. Project Mutual is a co-op telecom, based in Rupert Idaho. They put fiber optic from Malta Idaho a town of 150 or so, to Burley, and all over Mini Cassia Idaho. Granted its not 1 gig, but you get dependable horsepower over both of them. What I say to people at CenturyLink and others. Get out of your cubicles take a road trip, and see with your eyes what's going on here. Its easy to sit in Las Vegas Nevada or Denver Colorado, and say these areas are too small, but the wise say invest while costs are low, and you'll reap big from what thereupon sow.
Now let's turn to Television.
Cable is great if your in town or near town where you can get it. But our rural counterparts on the farm that like good TV are dependent on such services as DirecTV as well as Dish Network. Dish Network launched a few months ago a over the top service called SlingTV. Trouble is that's dependent on bandwidth of the Internet, which is super slow and SlingTV don't work too good. You need cable to get it, so if you sign up for Internet through a cable TV provider, why not just get cable? Dish has shot themselves in the foot here. Dish is having a penius waving contest with KSLTV and threatens to pull KSL -5 from their usable channels. Bad move here for Dish. Many here are not keen on NBC, I haven't found anything on NBC to watch for at least the time of the screen writers strike of 2007. But I do watch KSL-5 news. Over top of that, KSL is owned by majority by the LDS(Mormon) Church. Which broadcasts LDS Conference each October and April. With the mutimillion members of the Church being squeezed out of being able to watch Conference, by Dish Network for blocking KSL, watch how many subscribers of Dish look elsewhere.
Time for a overhaul of mass media. If you think that the Don, is going to do it, think again. If the Don, was intelligent, as he proclaims. He'd privatize mass communications and flat get rid of or drastically reduce the authority of this thing called the Federal Communications Commission, or FCC. Let the National Association of Broadcasters or even an independent group police the airwaves. At least you'd get someone local who could decide if an area deserved another radio and or TV station over the air. Without just looking at some topic map, and saying this is too close to another station or area, of a media giant that really doesn't care, but yet doesn't want to loose territory. Last year and I have heard many gripe about Pirate or OutLaw stations. Thing is, many of these small 50 to 100 watt Pirate stations provide news and all to areas that wouldn't have any radio and or Tv if they didn't. In mid 2012 it was announced that a filing window for the FCC for Low Power FM stations would open in mid July of 2013. However the FCC was more in favor of Native American tribes and religious groups obtaining air space. Not that I have anything against our Native American brothers and sisters, nor religious groups, but how about those wanting to provide service to the highway to keep truckers informed as to weather and news as well as entertained. We here at HazzardAyre were lucky as we squeeked by the deadline and got our license, but what about others? The town of Bliss Idaho, population 280 people. As far as TV there was once albeit snowy, but an analog translator TV station on Bell Rapids peak. Cable One is to cheap to run a extra wire into town yet the main line for Cable One from Hazzard to Gooding runs just outside of Bliss. Leaving Bliss without a local station. Hello, did the giants miss this? If you like your Internet, like your TV and love your radio, the time is now to bark at the big Don, to fix the FCC or get rid of it, more over call reps of your local telecom, beit, CenturyLink, PacificBell, whom ever and say I want better than your giving. Tell Satellite providers, quit fussing over programming costs and focus on the product and service, then the programming costs will be covered by increased subscriptions for service. Even invite the ones making the decisions on this to lunch. There's one rep I know who resides in Las Vegas. I have repeatably invited her to come up here to Evanston so she could look at what's here as far as population, residential complexes and such. In hopes of getting better services. I even through the Knytes was willing to pick up the tab room and transportation for her to visit. Answer? "We'll see". Real reason? Not enough carrots for her to worry about.
See you on the air later, I'm headed for a nap.
TTYLY
