Let’s Hope Internet Chair John Thune Will Remember his Dad–and Other Rural Underdogs

South Dakota’s US Senator John Thune will be prominent in the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee next term, most likely as chairman.  The Sioux Falls Argus Leader reminds us that “He would take on the new position as residents in even the most isolated parts of the rural countryside demand faster Internet connection.”

       Let’s hope that what he said recently on a C-Span broadcast about his father is a guiding principle–and not just a rhetorical balm “to touch all bases” as a career campaigner:  “My dad is 94 years old. He still lives in my home town of Murdo, South Dakota, population 500.  And the Internet is his window to the world.  I get e-mails from him.  I asked him once to Google himself, and he did.  He played basketball for the University of Minnesota in the 1940s, and under the images section his Goggle website, there’s a photo of him in the shower.  Fortunately from the waist up.  Something you probably wouldn’t see today.  It’s from a Minneapolis newspaper at the time.  But it’s an example, again, of how much information is available to people, even like my father, who is 94 hers old, and that is what keeps him connected and keeps him going every single day.”

      Were he not John’s father, the elder Thune is just the social underdog that is most at risk of being marginalized in America:  rural, old, white, and living on fixed, limited income.  These people don’t make the dollars flow.  Big business and political machines prefer big urban centers, where all the welfare and votes are.

         “Not every technology user is a young person with a good job living in a big city on the coast,” says John Thune.  But should he stake everything, as Tom Daschle did, on aligning himself with big business, big government, and high-echelon power brokers whose lobbyists are all over the Beltway handing out perks?  “Play ball with us, or else” they almost seem to say.

      South Dakota Internet services in Rapid City and Sioux Falls aren’t that bad, thanks to fiber optic cable.  But leave the city centers every so slightly, and you’ll find yourselves in an Internet rural slum–and no competition.  Internet satellite coverage in most of the Black Hills is spotty and so is microwave.  Entertainment programming from Dish and DirecTV is increasingly trashy, loaded with obnoxious commercials and mounting expenses.

       Everyone wants $8/month Internet streaming of movies and documentaries–real freedom to choose without commercials, but the courts have sided with big business once again.  As reported here recently, “Internet Service Providers may be underhandedly slowing down popular viewing options like Netflix.  As reported in the May issue of Consumer Reports, ‘a federal court decision, Verizon vs. FCC, struck down the FCC’s Open Internet Rules, which forbade Internet service providers (ISPs) from blacking, slowing down, or charging more for bandwidth-intensive streaming services, such as Amazon Instant Video, Netflix, and Skype.’”

        Verizon undoubtedly hopes to sell the extra bandwidth to big businesses, who will, in turn, pass the expense onto the consumer.  But will rural people like John Thune’s father be able to afford pricey Internet in a world spiraling toward greater inflation?  The same goes for the “tribal communities” that he mentions.