Report from the Frontier

There’s a saying, attributed to a former territorial governor of New Mexico, to the effect that whatever works elsewhere comes to grief here. As a six-year resident of northern New Mexico, I can give that a hearty second.

I used to regale Applelinks readers with long sob stories about lying telcom swinery in the southern Rockies. For a time here in Taos, a common problem was that you couldn’t have more than one phone line — Qwest just didn’t have ’em to dole out. In fact, a few years ago, there were still people just a few miles outside of town who had been waiting for any kind of land-line phone service at all for over ten years. Subsequently, Qwest promised to invest massively in regional infrastructure, provided the state of New Mexico would overlook tens of millions of dollars in unpaid taxes. Part of that infrastructure upgrade involves whatever it takes to do DSL, so I was happy.

The deal with the state took place at least two years ago. This August, Qwest said DSL would be coming to my neighborhood on Sept. 19, 2005. In September they said it would be here by Oct. 19. When I checked around Halloween, the word was “by Nov. 19.” Last month I checked again: the current DSL arrival date is now Dec. 19, of course. This would be the same company whose executives pocketed millions of dollars in “bonuses” even while the corporation was losing billions, but my hopes are still high. Perhaps I will get DSL for Christmas.

After all, the “nothing works right here” axiom has pretty much played out, so it’s time for the pendulum to swing the other way. Still, I’m not expecting any sympathy. It’s like getting old: once the salesgirls first look right through you, the jig is up for the rest of your life and the old “we’re all in this together” never comes back. Even though most people still connect to the Internet via lousy dial-ups, once you have broadband, you don’t care about the masses. Just ask all the idiot Web designers who build sites with a zillion images. Bah!

In this case, one ought to care, however. As soon as I have 1.5 mbps download capability, I’ll build stupid Web sites too, and I’ll be able to upload those honker audio files I’ve been working on. Watch out, world, and if you’re still on dial-up, I ain’t talkin’ to you.