Rural Broadband to Replace POTS As Beneficiary of US Gov't Subsidies 208
IDG reports that "The U.S. Federal Communications Commission has voted to overhaul a decades-old system of telephone subsidies in rural areas, with the funding refocused on broadband deployment. The FCC's vote Thursday would transition the Universal Service Fund's (USF's) high-cost program, now subsidizing voice service, to a new Connect America Fund focused on broadband deployment to areas that don't yet have service. The FCC will cap the broadband fund at $4.5 billion a year, the current budget of the USF high-cost program, funded by a tax on telephone bills." That cap, says Reuters, is "the first budget constraint ever imposed on the program."
Make broadband a tariffed, regulated utility (Score:5, Interesting)
I have been trying to get broadband for my parents for years. They live a mile off the main road in a deep valley. Thus far...
* No ISDN. A year or two ago Tennessee decided it no longer had to be a tariffed service, and AT&T burned their ships behind them as rapidly as possible, because I was told our CO no longer has ISDN hardware (it did back in 2001-2002).
* No DSL. AT&T has a cluster of SAI cabinets 1 mile from their driveway, but no free ports on their DSLAM, and no intention of adding new ones. I've voluntered to *BUY* them a frickin' VDSL2 DSLAM and give it to them, but I've never heard back from them on that or any of several other offers. AT&T is a bigger information sink than /dev/null
* No Fiber. I have asked Charter if they could provision single-mode fiber if I pulled it to the road. I was agnostic about whether that's a pure FTTH setup, or just a cabinet by the road with a cable modem and a fiber converter. Nope. They cannot provision my fiber under either scenario, but they *can* provision fiber they lay themselves, which strangely costs roughly "one new car" more than doing it myself. Which is kind of hard on retired fixed-income folks.
* No cable. Their house doesn't have cable coax. See Charter's idea of fair price above.
* No cell. The valley effectively blocks all signals. I have maps of every cell tower in a 10 mile radius, and never found a useful signal on any of them.
* No satellite. They don't have line-of-sight with geosynchronous orbit, and even if they did, the satellite providers in our area aren't accepting new customers right now.
I mean, what can you do at this point? My next step is getting two 2 watt Wi-Fi routers and a couple of high-gain antennas, setting up a couple of passive repeaters between them and my house (very NoLOS), and hoping I can set up a wireless bridge. My next step past that is contacting CERN to see if they can beam internet over neutrinos.
The last time this issue came up on Slashdot, the (L)ibertarians came out of the woodwork, blaming my parents for building a house somewhere where there's no broadband, despite the fact that they built the house in 1985. Which is about as rational as blaming settlers in the 1700's for not building cities where the interstates were going to be.
They also pounced on me for wanting something subsidized. Except you're not subsidizing me one thin dime. The phone cable is already in the ground. All I need is a DSLAM in the local SAI cabinet, *which I volunteered to purchase myself*. No go. A free market only exists when the buyer actually has a choice (see "healthcare" for another example of your economic ideologies colliding with reality).
Freshman economics tells you that some business don't behave well under the usual free-market rules, and thus need to be heavily regulated. Those business are called "natural monopolies", which is why gas, electricity, sewage, roads, phone (hah!) are provided by either public utilities, or publicly-regulated private utilities. A utility only needs one set of physical plant, one set of staff, one set of senior management. Multiple companies waste megabucks on multiple plant/staff/management. They waste further megabucks on advertising, trying to steal profitable customers from each other in a zero-sum game. All that needless spending increases your costs, increases the necessary rate of return before they will provide internet, and ends up marooning a lot of marginal households on the wrong side of the digital divide.
In the middle 2000's several underserved TN cities and utilities got tired of being ignored by the AT&T and Comcast's of the world and were looking at getting into the game themselves. And then in 2008 our state politicians decided to actively hinder the formation of municipal internet and the entrance of local electric utilities (existing ones got grandfathered in), in the name of "encouraging compet
Re: (Score:2)
* No cable. Their house doesn't have cable coax. See Charter's idea of fair price above.
You know what I would consider doing (seriously)? I'd actually lay the coax myself and order the cable. The guy on the truck won't give a crap who installed it, and he'd probably get a kick out of you doing it yourself, if you did it right. Assuming he even knew you did it.
Re: (Score:3)
I would be tempted. But given the cost of doing so, and the likelihood that they wouldn't support that either, it doesn't make a lot of sense.
It also doesn't make a lot of sense to invest several thousand laying coax when it's going to be obsoleted by fiber in a few years any. Last time I checked, the successor to HDTV (Utra-HDTV) required 250 Mbs for streaming, and is supposed to be out around 2018. I rather doubt coax would scale that high. So it doesn't make sense to spend money that's going to be
Re: (Score:2)
If they will provision on the cable, then run both. You only need to rent the ditch witch for the same amount of time.
Odds are they will not. They will tell you that their coax ends at the road, and they want $XXk to run it to the house. They will have no way of dealing with you running it yourself.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Bury a damn conduit. Pull whatever you need later.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Just choose a diameter that will accommodate anything you might expect to pull in the future and be sure to have some intermediate weather-tight boxes every few hundred feet.
Always make your installation look crappy (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with that is that the provider will know you did it, because it's been done right.
If you do a half-assed looking job you can just call 'em up and when they say "we don't have a cable into your house" you can reply "yes you do, what are you talking about, I'm looking right at it!" and make them send a truck out to check. The guy on the truck will say "hmmm, looks just like one of ours" if you do the job badly enough, and you'll probably get hooked right in.
Re: (Score:2)
I would be tempted. But given the cost of doing so, and the likelihood that they wouldn't support that either, it doesn't make a lot of sense.
Hmmm. Well, maybe what you could do is FIRST badger the person taking the order into just putting it in. Insist that you brought out a "technician" who told you the cable is there, and that they insisted that the cable is in place. Or insist that you *did* agree to have them come out and bury the cable, but they came out and said the cable is already there. "What do you mean you don't have a record of it? Your records are wrong! Look, I don't have all day, just put in the order please, do you know how
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Split the different run a pair of single mode fiber to each home/business back to a CO, allow all comers to rent space or bring fiber to these CO's. Sounds like something better to do with 4 billion a year. Since it can all be doen with passive optics it's realy cheap CWDM and that gets 10 gigabits or more to each and every house.
Re: (Score:2)
a moderate Republican
boggles I think I saw one of those in a museum once.
with a ...MBA
This is /. , now you're just bold-faced trolling. GTFO. ;-p
Re: (Score:2)
The last time this issue came up on Slashdot, the (L)ibertarians came out of the woodwork, blaming my parents for building a house somewhere where there's no broadband, despite the fact that they built the house in 1985. Which is about as rational as blaming settlers in the 1700's for not building cities where the interstates were going to be.
If by "blame" you mean that people live with the consequences of earlier decisions, then we certainly do. Those towns founded in the 1700s don't have Interstate service. You're in the position of saying that we should build an interstate to every town founded in the 1700s just so that people there aren't "blamed" for the founder's choice of location.
Re: (Score:3)
Build or buy a yagi and point it at one of the cell towers you have mapped. You should easily be able find signal in a valley with a 35db gain antenna. It might not be the most pretty solution, but it shouldn 't be too costly either. Kinda down and dirty, have by torrow solution.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm not going to scroll through ALL the responses and see if someone else already suggested this, but...
Have you considered trying to acquire some land closer to, or even adjacent to, the road? If you could just get 100sq ft or so, you could perhaps convince the companies to provision to THAT location and then run the rest of the cabling yourself. This has the advantage of solving the "we have to run it all the way to the property ourselves" problem, you've brought the mountain to Mohammed!
Re: (Score:3)
Actually I have considered it. It's a ludicrous idea, but it's also a ludicrous situation too.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Because you can't in most parts of the US? Much for the same reason he mentions the outlawing of municipal broadband. They simply won't allow new competitors in their markets to run cable and unless you have money to buy spectrum (good luck with that!) your screwed.
Re: (Score:2)
You think (L)ibertarians are in any way happy that a telecom duopoly is about as competitive as it gets in America? Fix root causes, rather than pretend turning that duopoly into a monopoly will magically make things better.
Re: (Score:2)
Uhh, the only reason they have more than one service provider is because of the Universal Service Fund. Gotta credit the government with giving them a choice at all.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I think they need to fill in the valley.
Re:Make broadband a tariffed, regulated utility (Score:5, Informative)
No, he's complaining that the current sorta-kinda half monopoly, half unregulated market thing isn't working. He would prefer the government do it right and own the lines.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
So you are willing to purchase a $25000+ dslam, but not pay the $10000 fiber run charge?
I've only been out of telecom for 3 years now and can't at all believe prices have changed that much in such a tiny amount of time. Especially for hardware that is not mass-produced for consumers...
I'm also almost shocked* they wouldn't run a PRI to you for around $10k. That's what AT&T wanted to charge me to pull new wiring from the CO down the 5 block area where I live, just to provision a PRI/BRI
(* Yea after 3 s
Re: (Score:3)
A Zhone 24 port VDSL2 DSLAM goes for about $100 a port nowadays. The fiber run and node was north of $20k just for the hardware. Labor was estimated at $5-7k on top of that.
I'd be willing to run twister pair to a neighbor's house, pay their internet if they'd share, and pipe it back on VDSL2 modem. ZyXEL sells 'em for $300. But the neighbors are in much the same situation.
Re: (Score:2)
You missed the rest of the anectdote.
The 10k install figure was only the beginning. They want a 100% ROI for 10 years, based on that figure.
Eg, 20k/year, for 10 years.
I would be hesitant to spend a quarter million dollars just for dsl servie myself. That 25k dslam is peanuts in comparison.
Benefits vs costs of living away from civilization (Score:2)
There are many benefits of living away from civilization that your parents enjoy but urban residents don't. Consider the lack of broadband options one of the costs. It's up to them to decide whether the benefits outweigh the costs.
Until you can prove that the benefit to the government of subsidizing broadband access for rural residents outweighs the costs, don't ask the government to intervene. It isn't the government's role to pick the winners and the losers.
Re: (Score:2)
So if we don't subsidize broadband for farmers, we'll starve?
No, I don't think that's true. It's quite possible that a farm with broadband can produce food more cheaply than a farm without broadband, but are the benefits really worth the costs?
Remember that subsidies distort the market, and that prevents those farmers from making rational decisions that lower the cost of food production. That means we will all pay more i
Re: (Score:2)
There's a price for everything. These rural residents simply don't feel that the benefits are worth the costs, and want urban dwellers to help subsidize their lifestyles.
Re: (Score:2)
You're going to have to go ahead and build that unlicensed repeater network yourself. The good news is that you should be able to do it very inexpensively with mostly used parts. It's too bad yard sale and flea market season is just ending.
Re: (Score:2)
The last time this issue came up on Slashdot, the (L)ibertarians came out of the woodwork, blaming my parents for building a house somewhere where there's no broadband, despite the fact that they built the house in 1985. Which is about as rational as blaming settlers in the 1700's for not building cities where the interstates were going to be.
Yeah, I feel your pain. I consider myself a moderate libertarian, and my response to this would be dismantling their effective monopolies and encouraging local coops.
I'm also a believer in Kenesian economics - so I'd be putting all those people who are out of work to work building infrastructure. It'd catch up sooner or later.
Re: (Score:2)
Are there telephone poles? Can you get pole space to pull wire to run VDSL? You'll be in for about a thousand bucks for wire and modems. If there's conduit do the same.
If you can't get pole space, blame your local government - they dictate rights of way and grant monopolies to people who couldn't care if you live or breathe.
Re: (Score:2)
There are electric poles to my parent's house, but that hits two major problems:
* Hanging anything on a power pole costs $1 per month. Multiply that by the number of poles it would take, and that's $30 a month just by itself.
* Even if I did that, no one else on my main road has DSL either.
Right now I'm looking at creating a wireless bridge to my house. Airlive sells a 2 watt Wifi Router for $70
http://www.flyteccomputers.com/details.cfm?wid=1270&wb=N.Power&wre=1 [flyteccomputers.com]
and TP-Link sells a 24 DBi Wifi dish
Re: (Score:2)
Right now I'm looking at creating a wireless bridge to my house. Airlive sells a 2 watt Wifi Router for $70
How wooded are you? I started out with WiFi and wound up running VDSL for all but very short hops. It was fine in the winter, but when the leaves came out everything stopped working.
I would have gladly paid $30/mo for pole space - I wound up on ladders installing standoffs on random trees in the woods, usually on rocky footing.
Re: (Score:2)
So, does Charter have coax on the road? Is the only thing holding you back the cost of getting the coax down the driveway?
Here's a solution that is cheap and wrong, but it works.
You know how construction sites have a small pole (usually a 6x6 10 foot beam the ground) with a plywood backboard for electrical and phones?
You can get a coax CATV drop done to a "work site" demarc. They may say no initially, but you can do it.
You could create your own "construction site" temporary service pole near the road, wi
Re: (Score:2)
Unfortunately no. I asked them if they could just drop cable off the pole and I'd handle the rest, and they said no because it wasn't a physical address. If they would just do that, I could lay fiber and then get a cable modem and fiber converter and run it, similar to what you said.
Our neighbors are in the same boat as my parents, so that's another problem
Appreciate the suggestions though.
Re: (Score:2)
You have to be better at not taking "no" for an answer. :-)
They can do it. They just have to be persuaded. Or you can get a physical address for your construction site from your town/county/etc.
One new car (Score:3)
Why are we're supposed to provide your parents with broadband?
Why are hospital emergency rooms supposed to provide everybody with care instead of turning away patients who cannot pay? Public investment in services that have become necessities helps reduce the demand for criminal services. Are you familiar with the plot of the film John Q, about someone who used crime to obtain health care?
I notice too that you have fiber (and probably DSL), but aren't willing to pay to have them installed yourself.
Grandparent is willing to pay for parts and labor to have them installed, but the carriers want to add a surcharge of tens of thousands of dollars (search post for "one new car").
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Yep. You can probably get better, faster, cheaper medical care from a veterinarian, paying cash without insurance.
You just have to watch out that they don't forget and do a bonus neutering on the side. Plus, those plastic neck things to keep you from chewing on the scab are super annoying.
Re: (Score:3)
All /.ers thank you for sharing your experience and sympathies with your recent loss. If Hallmark make a post neutering card I'd get you one.
Re: (Score:2)
Yep. You can probably get better, faster, cheaper medical care from a veterinarian, paying cash without insurance.
Not sure if you were being serious or not, so ... since vets are trained to work on multiple species in addition to the human aspect of their medical training, you're pretty much spot-on.
Given the increase in very technical veterinary treatments available (surgery, oncology, etc), you could probably go to any well-trained vet and get much cheaper healthcare than a hospital. The only real differe
Re: (Score:2)
So broadband should be provided the same as health care?
Because if that's the claim you're making, you're crazy.
And if that's not the claim you're making, then they have no relation to one another and your example is completely meaningless.
Re:One new car (Score:4, Funny)
Then the problem is that your grandparents aren't willing to pay for internet service which is more than just "parts and labor".
Your internet service had a ten thousand dollar sign up fee?
Re: (Score:2)
I've noticed that hardcore libertarians typically lack both empathy and foresight.
I noticed that "empathy" turns out to be "gullibility". And "foresight" ends up being a sacrifice for someone else's short-sighted benefit.
Ill try and make the argument nonetheless. There are services central to a modern society which only yield huge profits in high population density areas. Typically outside major urban areas these services are only mildly profitable or even zero sum. Electricity and phone were like this, and internet is like this now. Because there are higher margin investments elsewhere, a true free market will never expand into these areas, ever. It wouldnâ(TM)t be rational. But it is in society's best interest not to let 20% of its population live in poverty and squalor, tied by blood to land that is worthless because it lacks basic services. After all, would you be alright with your great grandchildren living in abject poverty because a hundred years before their birth the railroad located forty miles to the north of the family farm (many urban areas exist for reasons as trivial as this)?
I don't see that. First, you're talking about broadband. That's not a serious necessity. It's also an open-ended obligation. Unlike phone lines, there's not going to be an upper limit to transmission speeds. We'll keep paying top dollar for this for decades.
I am about to start a phd after having finished a masters (in a hard science), and the ONLY reason that was possible was subsidies for my highschool that paid for better school equipment and my AP courses, pell grants and loans for college, and the good fortune to have our family farmhouse on a hill where we could just barely get basic over the air internet. In a libertarian world I would be digging a ditch somewhere. And libertarians wouldn't care, as its easy to rationalize away such things happening when they aren't happening to YOU. I picked up a PhD in a hard science too. I didn't have internet or federal subsidized public schools. I didn't have to take out student loans except one year while getting my master's degree.
Iâ(TM)m not some raving liberal lunatic. I fall somewhere between conservative democrat and liberal republican, if you had to give a grade. But I understand that there is a difference between subsidizing a service that will provide opportunity for those with some ambition, and paying people money just to exist. Things like public libraries, rural broadband, and inter-city youth programs/college grants are worth funding because they provide a path for self-betterment. The poster isn't asking for you to pay for his parentâ(TM)s utility bill. He is asking for them to have the same opportunity as you do, even if it only nets the utility 5% instead of 15%.
The thing is they already have the same opportunity. He's already listed at least two ways they could get broadband internet without requiring Uncle Sugar to force someone to supply them with service. And they already can get dial up apparently. That gets you a lot of the current benefits of the internet. For example, posting on Slashdot, reading email, or reading news and blogs (which is what I did three summers ago when I had dial up speeds). Oh yea, I've been through what his parents apparently have, and it's not a big deal.
The founding fathers advocated heavily for government funding and support of services like education, mail, and the free press. If you advocate any less for equivalent services today, I challenge that you no longer have the American ideal of a free and prosperous society in your heart.
To get some idea of what a joke this part is, consider that if the US were spending money as a fraction of GDP just as the US did in 1800, it'd be slightly over 300 million dollars! The US spends ten times as much per GDP as it did during the time of the "founding fathers". It's current deficit alone is four times the total 1800 budget as a fraction of GDP. Where's your empathy and foresight on this one?
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Why are we're supposed to provide your parents with broadband?
They also pounced on me for wanting something subsidized. Except you're not subsidizing me one thin dime. The phone cable is already in the ground. All I need is a DSLAM in the local SAI cabinet, *which I volunteered to purchase myself*.
I notice too that you have fiber (and probably DSL), but aren't willing to pay to have them installed yourself.
I've voluntered to *BUY* them a frickin' VDSL2 DSLAM and give it to them...
I have asked Charter if they could provision single-mode fiber if I pulled it to the road.
You need to work on your reading comprehension.
Hush-A-Phone and Carterfone (Score:2)
the phone company wouldn't accept an outside sourced piece of hardware to be installed in their cabinets and connected to their networks?
Requiring the local phone monopoly to accept any conforming equipment wouldn't be much of a stretch from the Hush-A-Phone and Carterfone decisions.
Re: (Score:2)
Making 'you're an idiot' your sig must save you lots of typing. Perhaps you should extend it, something about feebs might be affective.
At first I thought someone was running a Turing test variation. Trollbot. It this is so please pass my compliments on to your author.
I now have my doubts. Anybody good enough to write the 'MK' trollbot should have better things to do (I'm looking at you God and/or Mrs Kristopeit + Mailman).
Re: (Score:2)
I'm sorry, but I'd rather not pay your parents internet bill. If its so important, why don't they move?
I live in the countryside well outside a small city (population about 100,000 including surrounding countryside), and have 100/10 internet. This internet service costs me 43euro per month from the regulated local monopoly. Actually, they're upgrading me to 100/100 in early November with no change in price. So should I move also, to a hell-hole like the US suburbs? GP is correct, US service mostly sucks; some places are OK or even good, but in most places - even some large cities - it sucks.
Re:Make broadband a tariffed, regulated utility (Score:4, Funny)
I live in the countryside well outside a small city (population about 100,000 including surrounding countryside), and have 100/10 internet. This internet service costs me 43euro per month from the regulated local monopoly.
So the solution is to get the Europeans to subsidize US broadband? Sounds good to me!
Re: (Score:2)
Why not, the US is subsiding the European bank bailouts and has been subsidizing the defense of western Europe since 1945, and central Europe since 1992.
Re: (Score:2)
1917.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Natural monopoly is a myth (Score:5, Informative)
Other economists claim that natural monopoly is a myth, and effects attributed to natural monopoly are in fact caused by 1. local government ownership of roads and 2. local government's failure to efficiently value permits to tear up those roads to install pipes, conduits, etc.
Back when I was pricing out my broadband options, I checked out Comcast's (heavily advertised) three for one package. TV, broadband and telephone. But when I called them, they told me that, based on my address, Verizon was my telephone provider and they wouldn't compete with them. On the other hand, Verizon wouldn't install DSL because 'Comcast provides broadband in your neighborhood'. Covad checked out my line and was more than happy to take over the loop and install voice/DSL. But Verizon told them that they couldn't have the pair (they'd take it and reassign it to a second residential service if ever I dropped my Verizon line before leasing it to a CLEC).
This has nothing to do with permits and installing facilities. It has everything to do with not throwing telecom execs in prison for Sherman Antitrust Act violations. If you want to keep your NSA fiber taps running in the switching facilities, you're going to have to grant these bastards immunity from the law.
Re: (Score:2)
Which are thought to be Tyrian shekels of 1.38 troy ounces each. At current price of 35 USD per troy ounce, Judas turned in Jesus for less than $1,500.
Wow, that's scary. He should have at least held out for $5000!
Re:Natural monopoly is a myth (Score:4, Funny)
Just read a fair bit of that article.
Author must be a migrant worker--he's supremely skilled at picking cherries.
Re: (Score:2)
I have no interest in letting private companies tear up the road to my house all the time. I don't want to drive on that, both for me and the wear on my car. And I know that none of those companies would pay for the damage to me or my car unless I sue them, and I would never be able to because of the free-market costs for a lawyer. Instead, I'd rather get together with my neighbors, get some guns, and pass a few "laws" that say they can't tear up roads in my town any more. Which, incidentally, is exactl
Re: (Score:2)
Which are thought to be Tyrian shekels of 1.38 troy ounces each. At current price of 35 USD per troy ounce, Judas turned in Jesus for less than $1,500.
Which is 50,000 times GP's stated $0.03 per person.
Re: (Score:2)
Natural monopolies tend to form any time you have large up front costs that take a long time to pay off. Once someone comes in and puts down the money, it's somewhere between hard and impossible to compete.
It's nearly impossible for a new ISP to get land rights to run lines. Even if they could afford the tens of millions to connect a small city, most local governments are doing to deny yet another company coming in and re-trenching lines.
There are only so many people who can have internet. For the first ISP
Re: (Score:2)
Free-market nutters are like health food loons who have decided any "natural" product is better than every man-made product, 100% of the time.
Or, maybe more accurately, the people who thought (think? I'm sure there are still some people laboring under this misunderstanding) that natural evolution leads to an ever-improving hierarchy of animals, and that each "level" is objectively better than the one before it, rather than simply more adapted for its particular circumstances, which may leave it proper fuck
Re: (Score:2)
Pfft, I bet you don't even know how to use the three shells.
Re: (Score:3)
I've considered 900 Mhz radios too RadioLabs sells a pair with dish antennas for $500. I wanted to test with 2.4 GHz WiFi first just to see, because if I spend $500 on 900 MHz and it doesn't work, then I've poured money in a hole. Whereas if I spend $500 on 2.4 GHz Wifi and antennas and it doesn't work, I can at least use them somewhere else.
Re: (Score:2)
You'd likely also be able to find a way to drag a wire 1 mile without spending tens of thousands of dollars.
You misunderstand GP. He can drag a mile of wire for less than tens of thousands of dollars, but the provider won't provision it. They will only provision it if he pays tens of thousands of dollars for them to pull it.
Good, Now Make it Bigger (Score:4, Insightful)
The changes will cost U.S. residents paying less than $30 a month for telephone service an additional $0.10 to $0.15 a month
This sounds great. Good for people without broadband, insignificantly more expensive for people who currently get a POTS subsidy from the program.
Now how about an urban broadband fund, to replace the worthless service tens of millions of us still have, service so bad it isn't even legally 'broadband' in any other industrialized country, with something usable?
Where's the damn 300 billion? (Score:2)
I hate the FCC. They'll now have an extra 4.5 billion to give back to the major telcos, that already owe 300 billion in undelivered broadband [newnetworks.com]. I harped on my local rep about this when he was head of the house subcommittee on telecommunications, but he was in the pocket of Telcos then. Since the telcos lobbied so hard to roll back the telco reform of '96, that ended up killing CLECs and ISPs, we know who will obviously win with a few billion more - the monopolies.
The libertarian answer would be to stop gov
Re: (Score:2)
Well, these rural areas likely currently only have 56k dial-up or satellite, which is even worse, even for basic tasks like checking email.
Wow... (Score:2)
When I drive around in the vicinity of the Mohave Desert I see houses scattered - a line of poles provides a telephone line may extend to 20 miles, or more to a lone dwelling. So to provided High Speed there will need to be either fibre or a series of amplifiers and power to them. Not something a phone company would enjoy doing, for one dwelling.
Shouldn't this be a regional decision ... (Score:2)
The internet may be important but the telephone remains more important, especially in remote areas where it is the norm for business and power distribution may be less than reliable (POTS usually has backup power supplies, which is useful in emergencies).
On the other hand, there are plenty of places where the telephone system is just fine and they are looking for broadband.
So shouldn't the region be deciding what's more important given their needs and level of development?
Have IP? Get Vonage. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Why are we paying for private corps to build our infrastructure? Can't we wake up and have the DoT lay the lines when they work on the roads? Put them under ground X distance from all roads that have any work done. Same with the water and gas lines. If you don't have a decent enough road; then you are on your own.
The huge profit margins of these corps could fund a great deal.... they don't innovate anymore; they avoid upgrading to maximize profit 1st. Profit is #1 and if they are a monopoly your happin
Re: (Score:2)
All that road work is done by contractors, too. You just meant that we should drop cable whenever we have the earth open already, right? Which means that we can't do it for surface-only work, but we certainly could whenever or wherever we're putting in sewage. Any city with municipal fiber probably already does this. (Hell, as far as I know they run the fiber in lines in the sewer pipes.) But of course municipal fiber is basically dead every where since it competes with companies that won't do shit wit
how much will $4.5 billion buy? (Score:2)
For laying fiber in rural areas, a quick search comes up with a cost of between $16,000 and $80,000 per mile. This appears to include digging a ditch, laying the cable, repeaters, etc. So, for $4.5 billion we should be able to lay about 90,000 miles of fiber. Of course, pretty much all of these rural places that need broadband should already have phone service (and power; internet is probably not terribly useful without it), so in theory we should be able to hang new fiber on the existing utility poles - th
it makes sense IFF (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If nobody lived in the country, what would you eat? Good luck with raising cattle on the roof of your apartment building.
Re:Scam (Score:4, Insightful)
Why is that my problem?
I agree with building out ISP service, but handing the money to private companies is not going to work. They will just steal it and still demand to not be regulated.
Re:Scam (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Choices have consequences, and it would be nice if other people weren't forced to subsidize your particular choice of lifestyle.
Re:Scam (Score:5, Insightful)
That is just as much a strawman. Living in a society means one way or another people are always subsidizing one another.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
My mistake, I meant you present a false option.
Re: (Score:2)
Lets see some quotes for that.
Not a lot of city folks getting farm subsidies, and welfare rates are pretty high out in the country.
Re: (Score:2)
I thought we were talking about subsidies, where did the theft angle come from?
Re: (Score:2)
The theft angle comes from not honoring the requirements of the 1996 Telecommunications Act.
They are past the time limits of the provision. They haven't delivered what they are supposed to (45mbit symmetrical broadband to every house) and thus this is stealing money and not giving the required service.
Re: (Score:2)
Sounds like you should move. Somalia would probably be a good fit.
Taxes are the price of civilization. I am happy to pay mine. I would even support a government program to buy your kind of folks a free one way trip to nations like Somalia.
Re: (Score:2)
There are no places devoid of all taxation that are not in a similar state.
Re: (Score:2)
I contend all taxation done in nations that you can leave or vote in is voluntary.
Re: (Score:2)
You may be consistent, but you are probably hypocritical.
Would you like to see the roadways that you use dug up? Those are subsidized by taxes, and are essential for everything from personal transportation to industry.
Do you seriously want to depend upon unaccountable businesses to provide safe water? Remember, businesses will gladly raise rates and cut safety measures simply to break even (and that is before you factor in greed or negligence).
Are you willing to go without electricity? A lot of our power
Re: (Score:2)
I like how you think that a person can't be held accountable for selling bad water, as if people wouldn't immediately put him out of business by getting their water from elsewhere, and suing him for damages caused by his polluted water.
Just because the government funds a lot of things doesn't mean that those things wouldn't happen without government funding. Indeed,
Victory gardens (Score:2)
If nobody lived in the country
Food prices would go up.
what would you eat?
Rising food prices would lead to a lot more tomatoes and strawberries raised in Topsy Turvy planters, along with other crops commonly found in 4x4 foot raised bed planters [wikipedia.org]. Only government interference (such as the case of Julie Bass of Oak Park) prevents such victory gardens from becoming more widespread.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I got mine, FU! (Score:2)
t is subsidized because it has been determined to be beneficial to society as a whole, just like phone service and education.
I seem to recall hearing something about a few upset people staging sit-ins recently partly as an indirect result of states deciding to de-subsidize higher education.
nah, those chickens will never come home to roost, we've got "Survivor" and "Dancing with the Stars", gay marriage and abortion to worry about.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Why should people with no kids pay school taxes? Why should people with no children in college fund public universities? Why should people who live outside the city pay tax on their cars to subsidize a subway system 90 miles away? Why should I fund state or national parks if I don't use them?
People in my area (100 miles from NYC) have an extremely heavy burden in the form of draconian land-use restrictions in order not to harm the water supply to the city. Is that fair?
You do realize that the people who
Re: (Score:2)
Why should people with no kids pay school taxes? Why should people with no children in college fund public universities? Why should people who live outside the city pay tax on their cars to subsidize a subway system 90 miles away? Why should I fund state or national parks if I don't use them?
All very good questions to which there are no good answers. People shouldn't be forced to pay for things they don't use, including all these examples and more.
People in my area (100 miles from NYC) have an extremely heavy burden in the form of draconian land-use restrictions in order not to harm the water supply to the city. Is that fair?
No, it's not fair. It's your land, and it's not like anyone from NYC has a legitimate claim on the source of the water or the water table itself. If supplying water to the city is a problem they are welcome to collect it closer to the source and have it shipped in.
You do realize that the people who 'choose' to live in the country are the ones providing YOU with your most basic needs, like food and energy, right?
To the extent that they do, they are payed for the service. That's all the "subsidy" the