I haven't lived in the U.S. for over 30 years and find this thread interesting. I live in what is considered a very poor, antiquated country. That said, we traveled four months in the U.S. and Canada last year. Internet was a disaster. Good luck finding a place where you can sit down and send documents and heavy files. One such place is Kinko's FedEx. They charge .49 a minute. That's almost $30 an hour and I have used them on several occasions only to say their wifi isn't any faster than that of an rv park. Many libraries we found had a secured signal and had us sign up for a card which was very time consuming, and in some cases charged a fee. We found only one town on our trip that had open wifi everywhere and that was in Canada and if memory serves me correctly it was Merritt, BC.
The rv park signals were pathetic. I don't care what cost is, how many users are online it stank. After all, we are in the age of YouTube, live-streaming and sending files, online banking and "innovative" technology such as Skype and Facebook face talk. Somebody is not doing something. We found our trip, in terms of internet, frustrating to say the least and when you are being charged almost the same price as a discount hotel it is not acceptable.
In Mexico, this poor, poor little country where people still ride burros and use smoke signals, we actually have internet cafes that charge a less than a dollar an hour, you can sit in front of any public educational institution and connect free to the internet, governemt offices, and our home internet provider including landline, free long distance to the U.S. and basic Dish cable charges us a measly $38 a month.
The U.S. has a long, long way to go to get people connected without gouging the consumer to use a service that is available for little or no cost in most of the world.
