[Lakegeezer]

It is hard to be sure how we'll get our in-home bandwidth in 10 years. Wired or wireless. Wireless in the form of 5G will take that long to reach into all the nooks and crannies of the lakes region, but also has the fatal flaw of data caps for home use. Wireless from space will be here, but the speed, capacity and costs are unknown. On the ground, in 10 years, it will be the left over cable installations and growing numbers of fiber. Fiber today can provide bidirectional 1 gigabit/second and within 10 years will offer 10 Gbps. Few need that speed today, so service in the 50-100 Mbps range can sold at a lower cost. 5G and Spacenets won't be there. Datacaps are the disqualifier for wireless, as long as every provider has them. Last 30 days, I used 560 gigabytes of data (lock-down does that). Verizon wireless doesn't have a plan for that. Costs are important too. There has to be a plan for everyone.

The NHEC petition is a good one. It is unlikely, but possible, that NHEC will get into fiber-to-the-home business, but in the end, the pole owners have control over who strings the wires. If the incumbent cable and telephone companies won't put in fiber to the home, there are many small companies waiting to do it. Today, the cable and telephone companies are making it difficult for newcomers to use their poles. NHEC doesn't own all the poles, but can be a force to encourage other pole owners to be more open about renting space.

Money is going to be an issue, especially if there is a long recession starting in 2020. State and the feds were starting award grants for fiber infrastructure, but those may be delayed. The business case for a small company to come in and take away the incumbent business is a tough one. Solving the pole issue makes it a bit easier. Or, maybe a miracle will happen and the incumbents will upgrade to fiber. We'll see.

There is less doubt than a month ago about the need for 100% high-speed availability to every home. Remote learning, telecommuting and tele-medicine just turned the corner and will only accelerate in popularity.