The goal is to run fibers to within two miles of every home. DSL requires only copper phone lines, but copper has a tendency to lose signal strength over long distances. Fiber optics, which uses lasers, has much better endurance. Trailing the big ones Despite such forward-looking policies, rural cooperatives will probably forever trail behind the phone giants. The latest technology would fall into rural customers' hands only after their city cousins have experimented with it.
New technology is simply too risky and demand is usually too low.
Yet without the co-ops, country residents would probably have to wait a lot longer. Both Crookston and Grand Forks are in U S West territory, he said, but residents there didn't get equal access to long-distance carriers until after Garden Valley customers got it through Onvoy. Maybe size doesn't matter.