Darwin, CA, the town trapped by dialup internet.

[darwinupdate]

44. We in Darwin are the 99%

I am astounded by the narrow-minded knee-jerk notions of some of the posts in this thread. Yes, Darwin is in a rural area, but no, we are not "red." We are a mixed bag of political and social types, just like any community, but leaning decidedly to the left. We have Occupied our Post Office periodically since October 2011. It's one of the thousands that are up for closure if Congress doesn't get off its collective ass and do something about the phony "bankruptcy" of the U.S. Postal Service.

Some of us have satellite service, thanks in part to a Recovery Act program that subsidized HughesNet to provide free installation and reduced monthly fees. This has made a tremendous difference, but it isn't broadband, and we are on constant alert not to exceed our daily allowance of megabytes. We have no cell phone service in Darwin, and not even any radio except some AM skip at night. However, there's a project to install fiberoptic cable along the length of Highway 395, on the east side of the Sierra Nevada. This is some 40 miles away from Darwin, and since we're surrounded by mountains there is no direct line of sight to our community. However, we have identified affordable equipment that would enable us to bounce a signal from a backhaul along the fiber, with a couple of hops, ending up in Darwin with a signal that would be good enough to qualify as broadband. (The current definition of broadband, by the way, is 6.5Mbps down and 1.5Mbps up. That pretty much leaves those of us on satellite in the dust.) We are willing to purchase prototype equipment, demonstrate that it works, install and maintain it, once the Digital 395 fiberoptic project is completed. If we can do it in Darwin, many other remote communities can do it too.