According to
Consumer Affairs, The FCC is finally beginning to
look at broadband connectivity in the rural United
States. According to
speedmatters.org only 38% of rural residents
subscribe to broadband. Unfortunately, it's not because
they don't want to. Cable and DSL are usually not
available and Satellite ISPs such as Hughes.net are too
costly, unreliable and slow.
The FCC has created a website:
http://broadband.gov/
for your information, questions and comments. I
submitted the following comment and am thinking about
making a petition.
We live in a rural
area about 10 miles out of Vancouver, WA, up in the
hills. We are not serviced by cable or dsl broadband so
we use Hughes.net satellite services. Because of our and
others experience with them, we are hoping that
satellite ISPs such as Hughes.net, Skyway, and WildBlue
will _not_ be considered viable broadband providers by
the FCC for these reasons:
Cost--
$60.00--$350.00 a month for Hughes.net. We are on the
pro plus plan and pay $80.00 a month. Besides this we
had to buy the equipment at a cost of around $600.00,
have had to have the receiver replaced twice in 4 years,
and were forced to upgrade to a new modem last year
because it went bad and they "no longer serviced" the 3
year old modem we had purchased from them.
Quality--1) on a
good day the actual speed is about half that of regular
broadband, and I personally have never seen it reach
their advertised speed. 2) As noted above we have had to
have frequent replacement of expensive equipment. 3)
Twice we have been without Hughes.net internet services
for over a month. The first time was while trying to get
through their so called customer service 'tiers' to get
a repairman out to fix the actual hardware problem. The
next time some sort of internal error kept throwing our
name and/or address out of the repair loop resulting in
us not getting service on faulty equipment for almost
two months, despite repeated calls to their service
department.
Quantity--200-500 mb
daily download limit. With the pro plus plan, we are
limited to 425 mb download per day. We could pay $120.00
a month for 500 mb a day, however, no one can get more
than 500 mb daily even if with the $350.00 a month plan.
That means we can surf as long as we don't watch more
than a few 3 minute videos or download more than a few
podcasts. Once we reach that 425 mb limit we are subject
to their FAP (fair access policy) where they throttle
our speed back to less than 28.8K dial up for 24 hours.
We can not watch a full half hour news report or listen
to streaming internet radio without being "FAPed".
It is our opinion that
satellite internet service is too costly and difficult
to maintain for the limited service it provides and
should not be considered a viable, cost effective option
for connecting rural consumers to broadband.
We encourage the FCC
to research this subject thoroughly. Please take the
time to see consumer comments on sites such as
DSLreports.com, ripoffreport.com, the cnet forums or
alternatively just Google "hughes.net sucks". Thank you
for your attention.
Our
older dear daughter has (more than) satisfied the Washington
state requirements for graduation from homeschool (or high
school if we must call it that). Whatever the name, the
end's the same. We are proud to announce our daughter's
graduation and will be presenting her with her diploma
on June 2nd, 2008. She has gone above and beyond the
basic requirements for a high school diploma by
simultaneously completing her senior year credits while
working full time in our office as an administrative
assistant. Out of the literally hundreds of employees we
have had over the past few years, she's been one of the
best. She's dedicated, dependable, loyal, honest, and shows
tenacity and persistence in the face of major obstacles.
She's been able to keep her cool under pressure, deal calmly
and gracefully with taciturn and sometimes down right
abusive builders/customers, all while managing thousands of
little details that the men in the office would be lost
without. 
"Right back at ya, buddy. Your Hindu caste system is nothing to crow about."
In reality, I do understand and even somewhat identify with Ghandi's observation that not all Christians are fantabulous people. The big obvious targets instantly come to mind; TV evangelists, the Roman Catholic child abuse cases, etc...
But really it gets closer to home than that. When fear creeps in sometimes it is hard to take that leap and do the right thing because we are scared it might somehow backfire on us and hurt us or otherwise contaminate ourselves or our loved ones. As to that, God didn't mean for us to live in a bubble. We need to get over our bad selves and not be afraid to sit down with the tax collectors and the other sinners as Jesus did.
Mark 2:15While Jesus was having dinner at Levi's house, many tax collectors and "sinners" were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. 16When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the "sinners" and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: "Why does he eat with tax collectors and 'sinners'?"
17On hearing this, Jesus said to them, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."
But I digress. Fortunately for all of us, Christ was perfect. Of course we are not. And therein lay the perfect opportunity to teach Gandhi about God's grace. Too bad he didn't have a firmer grasp of who Jesus is or how Christianity is different from other religions. Then maybe he could have gotten over the guilt of his adolescent rebellion "marked by secret atheism, petty thefts, furtive smoking, andmost shocking of all for a boy born in a Vaishnava familymeat eating." (Encyclopedia Britannicaa) And he wouldn't have had to spend the rest of his life trying to attain perfection which is an ideal that is not possible for humans to achieve here on this earth.
Don't get me wrong, he did a lot of good in the world. But so have countless other missionaries, preachers, teachers, and every day heroes who never get mentioned. Ghandi did try to improve the lot of the "lowest caste" of people in the Hindu religion by lobbying to end discrimination against them and even went so far as to change their name from something akin to "untouchables" to Harijans (literally children of God) but ridding Hindu of the caste system all together would have done a great deal more good for the Harijans. In effect, Ghandi himself was an example of the pluralism, double speak and contradictions of Hinduism. However, this is to be expected in any religion or society which believes that truth is relative.
In almost 41 years of living, two lessons I have learned is: never tempt God; never say never. The other one is: human beings will never fail to disappoint.
Thank God we do not have to earn our way into heaven because none of us ever could. Romans 3:23 For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, (24) and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.
We are all in a different place in our walk with God, some are just toddling, others are running a race. But God places obstacles for each of us to learn from and overcome. Occasionally we trip over those obstacles and sometimes even get injured because of the natural laws God put into place (like gravity, or harvesting what we reap). But we are all still learning and no one, NOT ONE has it completely right yet. Don't ever let anyone fool you into thinking they do. But in the end, God's grace fixes all of it.
We're not answerable to Ghandi nor any of his Hindu deities. We as Christians are only answerable to God who is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent and totally understands ALL the details of EVERY situation and EVERY life, unlike religious leaders and false deities.
I pity Ghandi and all who have not come to Christ. In the end, their efforts at being perfect, or even being "a good person" will come to naught. Only God's grace, his free gift of salvation and the changes that occur in our hearts when we truly accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior will ever afford any of us this thing called "inner peace"; the peace that surpasses all understanding during this lifetime. Of course the benefits of accepting Christ in the eternal perspective are beyond what we can imagine, and beyond the scope of this article.
So for now, let us gather our strength to do the only thing that really matters on this earth; let us spread the gospel to every nation, to every people, to every person so that as many as possible may be saved.
2 Peter 3:9