[PLUG] FYI - ROSEBURG , Oregon HAS FIBER IN ~50% OF COUNTY PER

[Mike C.]

"If Roseburg can do it , Portland should have accomplished this too!    The
only thing affecting this lack of Fiber in PDX is  entrenched interests - "

I'll entertain this a bit as I think about it a lot. As I suspect you
well know, rarely is anything that simple. Over the years, through a
lot of social justice activism and volunteer work I've gotten to know
a lot of non-tech, every day, common people.

Most of them just want to be able to use the internet when they need
to and don't think about things like bandwidth price, security,
infrastructure, etc. My point is there's not a real public driver.
People are concerned with all sorts of other issues like jobs, money,
housing, healthcare, climate change, etc.

Necessity is the mother of invention. There are countries who are
farther behind the U.S. in industry and economic power that have fiber
run all over their land that provides high-speed internet to almost
everyone. They didn't have existing infrastructure to deal with and
the time was right for them to do it.

The state of the internet in PDX frustrates me too but there are a lot
of other things happening in Portland and in the greater PNW that I'm
much more concerned about.

Maybe I'm just an aged out techie turned hippy but I often think that
high speed internet & technology does way more damage to humanity,
civilization and our shared life support system and doesn't really
deliver all the good that it promises and people willing shell out
lots of their hard earned cash for.