Bringing broadband to the backcountry Is it possible to have high-speed Internet in places that are far away from the city?
最後一哩的難題
讓高速網路直通偏遠地區，能否克服重重難關？
by Vance Fry
Sometimes we have to turn around and look behind us in order to see how far we’ve come. For me, it happened on a recent visit to a friend who lives on a farm some thirty minutes from town. I wanted to show him a video on YouTube that I liked, so we tried watching it over his dial-up Internet connection. The operative word here is tried. The video skipped and hiccupped. It stuttered and sputtered. It. Was. Agonizing. Most of us are accustomed to a broadband Internet connection to the point of taking it for granted. Whether cable, DSL or mobile broadband, today’s connections are many times faster than those in the days of the poky dial-up modem. Videos play smoothly, complex websites load quickly, and files download in a fraction of the time it would have taken ten years ago. (And the files are much bigger too.)
