"I can't fix any of them if I can't get an exploded diagram, a shop manual, a parts list, and order parts."

"Right now I've got 14k on my dialup, when it works!" the machinist lamented. "You can't download anything at 14k. It runs for two hours and gets halfway through one page and stops!"

Thus is the lament of a rural-area Vermont repairman mentioned in an Ars Technica article on rural broadband.

The good news is that, even compared to a few years ago, broadband options are looking brighter for rural-area residents. With technologies such as municipal fiber and independent DSL providers, bringing broadband to rural areas is feasible and, despite reports of only a few years ago, greatly in demand. And as the machinist quoted above demonstrates, because of clear need.

It is the kind of clear need demonstrated during the New Deal, which lead to the establishment of the Tennessee Valley Authority. Back then, electrification meant improved living conditions and the ability to participate in the modern economy – today, the same things are true for broadband. And the mere fact that expensive, relatively slow services like satellite broadband exist definitely show that there is a market.

But you may ask yourself: I live in the city. I have broadband. I get allergic smelling hay, I just adore a penthouse view… what does this have to do with me?

One of the reasons that housing prices skyrocketed in places like San Francisco, Seattle, and New York, is because of high tech concentration – that is, typically, the places with the best high tech infrastructure have the best, highest paying jobs. It’s a rule of thumb that has been more or less applicable since the invention of the waterwheel. But many of our high paying jobs are in the high-tech fields – people for whom broadband is in high demand. However, no one works forever, and retirees can choose between living in the city, or moving out to the countryside. But as broadband has become part of our daily life, fewer retirees are willing to move – leading to less housing supply and increasing prices for the rest of us – if the place they’re moving to doesn’t have the broadband they need.

Similarly, anything which lowers the quality of network performance in a particular area can lead to lost property values, lost jobs, and lost income for a particular reason, one of the reasons that Time Warner’s broadband billing plans were criticized by Austin Mayor-elect Lee Leffingwell.

Broadband is simply becoming too important to leave in only a few hands. It has moved from communications tool to utility to near-necessity. We live in exciting – and frightening – times.