Internet Infrastructure

I live in a town that, according to some basic research, is slightly over a hundred years old. It has a post office, and it has a school and that is pretty much it for public works. It has a bunch of nice parks, too, which is cool, but broadly speaking it’s the kind of place that you step past if you’re on the highway. Which is legit true – the highway bells around it.

Here, there is basically one affordable internet provider that isn’t a mobile internet provider. The latter group are disproportionately expensive and rely on mobile reception – which, in my house, is awful. Therefore, this one internet provider is… pretty much it.

Today, the internet dipped down to speeds of .25mb/s. I could jiggle cables, test things, but ultimately, my only option was to call my internet provider, wait on the phone for a little bit, then be told, very politely, that after the obligatory checks, they had effectively turned it off and on again – and that jumped it up to ten times its speed. I was quite happy and went back to work.

It’s spotty again, now.

Here’s the thing. I don’t live out in the fucking nowheres. I live in what is essentially a suburb of one of the larger cities in my home state. I live walking distance from another suburb’s public library which has a very, very strong internet connection. I live walking distance from a KFC where I can get better internet than that.

I’m essentially just irritated, really and this is bitching. But please consider what this means if my primary vector for videogames is very expensive physical purchases, or downloads of 20+ gig.