Rural Internet is the access to the
InternetThe Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standardized Internet Protocol Suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
from
ruralRural areas are large and isolated areas of a country, often with low population density.About 91 percent of the rural population now earn salaried incomes, often in urban areas...
areas (also referred to as "the country" or "countryside"), which are settled places outside towns and cities. Inhabitants live in
villageA village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet, but smaller than a town or city. Though often located in rural areas, the term urban village is also applied to certain urban neighbourhoods, such as the West Village in Manhattan, New York City and the Saifi Village in...
s,
hamletA hamlet is usually a rural settlement which is too small to be considered a village, though sometimes the word is used for a different sort of community...
s, on
farmA farm is an area of land, including various structures, devoted primarily to the practice of producing and managing food , fibers and, increasingly, fuel. It is the basic production facility in food production. Farms may be owned and operated by a single individual, family, community, corporation...
s and in other isolated
houseA house is generally a shelter, building or structure that is a dwelling or place for habitation by human beings. The term includes many kinds of dwellings ranging from rudimentary huts of nomadic tribes to high-rise apartment buildings...
s.
MountainA mountain is a large landform that stretches above the surrounding land in a limited area usually in the form of a peak. A mountain is generally steeper than a hill. The adjective montane is used to describe mountainous areas and things associated with them...
s and other
terrainTerrain, or relief, is the third or vertical dimension of land surface. When relief is described underwater, the term bathymetry is used...
can impede rural Internet access.
Most rural access to Internet is
voicebandIn electronics, voiceband means the typical human hearing frequency range that is from 20 Hz to 20 kHz. In telephony, it means the frequency range normally transmitted by a telephone line, generally about 200–3600 Hz. Frequency-division multiplexing in telephony normally uses 4 kHz carrier spacing...
by
56k modem56k modems are voiceband modems nominally capable of download speeds up to 56 kbit/s . At the beginning of the 21st Century, most personal computers contained one, their use is declining as broadband technologies such as DSL gain wider availability.-Speed:The 56 kbit/s theoretical speed is only...
but poor phone lines in many rural areas, many of them installed or last upgraded between 1930s and the 1960s, may limit actual download speeds to 23-26K or less.
Rural Internet is the access to the
InternetThe Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standardized Internet Protocol Suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
from
ruralRural areas are large and isolated areas of a country, often with low population density.About 91 percent of the rural population now earn salaried incomes, often in urban areas...
areas (also referred to as "the country" or "countryside"), which are settled places outside towns and cities. Inhabitants live in
villageA village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet, but smaller than a town or city. Though often located in rural areas, the term urban village is also applied to certain urban neighbourhoods, such as the West Village in Manhattan, New York City and the Saifi Village in...
s,
hamletA hamlet is usually a rural settlement which is too small to be considered a village, though sometimes the word is used for a different sort of community...
s, on
farmA farm is an area of land, including various structures, devoted primarily to the practice of producing and managing food , fibers and, increasingly, fuel. It is the basic production facility in food production. Farms may be owned and operated by a single individual, family, community, corporation...
s and in other isolated
houseA house is generally a shelter, building or structure that is a dwelling or place for habitation by human beings. The term includes many kinds of dwellings ranging from rudimentary huts of nomadic tribes to high-rise apartment buildings...
s.
MountainA mountain is a large landform that stretches above the surrounding land in a limited area usually in the form of a peak. A mountain is generally steeper than a hill. The adjective montane is used to describe mountainous areas and things associated with them...
s and other
terrainTerrain, or relief, is the third or vertical dimension of land surface. When relief is described underwater, the term bathymetry is used...
can impede rural Internet access.
Most rural access to Internet is
voicebandIn electronics, voiceband means the typical human hearing frequency range that is from 20 Hz to 20 kHz. In telephony, it means the frequency range normally transmitted by a telephone line, generally about 200–3600 Hz. Frequency-division multiplexing in telephony normally uses 4 kHz carrier spacing...
by
56k modem56k modems are voiceband modems nominally capable of download speeds up to 56 kbit/s . At the beginning of the 21st Century, most personal computers contained one, their use is declining as broadband technologies such as DSL gain wider availability.-Speed:The 56 kbit/s theoretical speed is only...
but poor phone lines in many rural areas, many of them installed or last upgraded between 1930s and the 1960s, may limit actual download speeds to 23-26K or less. Since many of these lines serve relatively few customers, phone company maintenance and speed of repair of these lines has actually degraded over the past fifteen years, leaving their upgrade for modern quality requirements unlikely.
See digital divideThe term digital divide refers to the gap between people with effective access to digital and information technology and those with very limited or no access at all. It includes the imbalances in physical access to technology as well as the imbalances in resources and skills needed to effectively...
.
Methods for
broadband Internet accessBroadband Internet access, often shortened to just broadband, is a high data rate Internet access—typically contrasted with dial-up access using a 56k modem....
include:
- Mobile Internet (broadband if HSPA
High Speed Packet Access is a collection of two mobile telephony protocols High Speed Downlink Packet Access and High Speed Uplink Packet Access , that extend and improve the performance of existing WCDMA protocols...
or higher)
- Power-line Internet
- Satellite Internet
- ADSL loop extender
An ADSL loop extender or ADSL repeater is a device that a telephone company can place midway between the subscriber and central office to extend the distance and increase the channel capacity of their DSL connection...
In the United States
The
United States Department of AgricultureThe United States Department of Agriculture is the United States federal executive department responsible for developing and executing U.S. federal government policy on farming, agriculture, and food...
’s
Economic Research ServiceThe Economic Research Service is the main source of economic information and research from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Located in Washington D.C., the mission of ERS is to inform and enhance public and private decision-making on economic and policy issues related to agriculture, food,...
has provided numerous studies and data on the Internet in
ruralRural areas are large and isolated areas of a country, often with low population density.About 91 percent of the rural population now earn salaried incomes, often in urban areas...
America. One such article from the Agricultural Outlook magazine,
Communications & the Internet in Rural America, summarizes internet uses in rural areas of the United States in 2002. It indicates, "Internet use by rural and urban households has also increased significantly during the 1990s, so significantly that it has one of the fastest rates of adoption for any household service."
Another area for inclusion of the Internet is
American farmingAgriculture is a major industry in the United States and the country is a net exporter of food. As of the last census of agriculture in 2007, there were 2.2 million farms, covering an area of 922 million acres , an average of 418 acres per farm.-History:Corn, turkeys, tomatoes, potatoes, peanuts,...
. One study reviewed data from 2003 and found that "56 percent of farm operators used the Internet while 31 percent of rural workers used it at their place of work." In later years challenges to economical rural telecommunications remain. People in
inner cityThe inner city is the central area of a major city or metropolis. In the United States, Canada, United Kingdom and Ireland, the term is often applied to the poorer parts of the city centre and is sometimes used as a euphemism with the connotation of being an area, perhaps a ghetto or slum, where...
areas are closer together, so the
access networkAn access network is that part of a communications network which connects subscribers to their immediate service provider. It is contrasted with the core network, for example the Network Switching Subsystem in GSM...
to connect them is shorter and cheaper to build and maintain, while rural areas require more equipment per customer. However, even with this challenge the demand for services continues to grow.
See also
- Dial-up Internet access
- Broadband Internet access
Broadband Internet access, often shortened to just broadband, is a high data rate Internet access—typically contrasted with dial-up access using a 56k modem....
- Coverage
In telecommunications, the coverage of a radio station is the geographic area where the station can communicate. Broadcasters and telecommunications companies frequently produce coverage maps to indicate to users the station's intended service area. Coverage depends on several factors, such as...
- Flat fee
- Internet in the United States
The predecessor of the Internet was a project created by the United States Department of Defense in the late 1960s. Called the ARPANET , it was first developed by DARPA...
- Open Access Network
In telecommunications, Open Access Network refers to horizontally layered network architecture and business model that separates physical access to the network from service provisioning...
- Rural electrification
Rural electrification is the process of bringing electrical power to rural and remote areas. Electricity is used not only for lighting and household purposes, but it also allows for mechanization of many farming operations, such as threshing, milking, and hoisting grain for storage; in areas...
- Rural free delivery
- ASTRA2Connect
ASTRA2Connect is a two-way satellite broadband Internet service available across Europe, which launched in March 2007, and uses the ASTRA series of geostationary satellites...
example rural satellite internet system
External links