Gigabit Internet With No Data Caps May Be Coming To Rural America (arstechnica.com) 147
Jon Brodkin, writing for Ars Technica: The Federal Communications Commission is making another $2.15 billion available for rural broadband projects, and it's trying to direct at least some of that money toward building services with gigabit download speeds and unlimited data. The FCC voted for the funding Wednesday (PDF) and released the full details yesterday (PDF). The money, $215 million a year for 10 years, will be distributed to Internet providers through a reverse auction in which bidders will commit to providing specific performance levels. Bidders can obtain money by proposing projects meeting requirements in any of four performance tiers. There's a minimum performance tier that includes speeds of at least 10Mbps downstream and 1Mbps upstream, with at least 150GB of data provided each month. A "baseline" performance tier requires 25Mbps/3Mbps speeds and at least 150GB a month, though the data allotment minimum could rise based on an FCC metric that determines what typical broadband consumers use per month.
Promises, promises (Score:5, Insightful)
The ISPs shouldn't receive a penny until they do what they say they'll do. How much money are we going to give these guys for promises they never keep?
sure, let's DOUBLE DOWN on STUPID! (Score:5, Informative)
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I hope this time Congress attached some performance requirements
Even better would be to just kill this subsidy program entirely. Median farm income in America is over $80k, about 30% higher than the overall median. Why should poor people be taxed to subsidize other people that are better off?
Re:sure, let's DOUBLE DOWN on STUPID! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:sure, let's DOUBLE DOWN on STUPID! (Score:4, Informative)
That covers the farm owners, but what about all the other people who work on the farm?
Besides, you don't seem to comprehend the scale here. Areas defined as "highly rural" have fewer than 7 people per square mile. So at most two or three houses per square mile, and possibly not even one house per square mile. Urban areas have over 1,000 people per square mile. We subsidize services for people who make twice as much money as others because otherwise their Internet connections would cost potentially three orders of magnitude more, and even that's potentially an underestimate. That $200 setup fee suddenly becomes a $20,000 setup fee.
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otherwise their Internet connections would cost potentially three orders of magnitude more
The Internet connection still costs three orders of magnitude more. It is just that someone else is paying for it.
That $200 setup fee suddenly becomes a $20,000 setup fee.
If the connection is not worth $20k, then why is it magically worth it when someone else is paying for it? If you want to subsidise rural people, why not just give them the $20k in cash, and let them spend it on what they want, rather than what you think they should want?
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Because the only real alternative to everyone else paying for it is for farmers to let everyone else starve to death. As a society, we need farmers. If we didn't have farmers, every single city dweller would die of starvation. And the low population density that makes it so expensive to provide essential services for farmers is unavoidable, because farming requires large areas of flat dirt without bu
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We were quoted something like $1200 to bring in fixed wireless, just over a mile from town. So, yeah, setup costs can be a trifle more than urbanites envision.
Competition vs monopoly in the market. (Score:5, Informative)
without some form of subsidy, the greedy private carriers will NEVER develop the tech, or expend the cost to wire/beam just a few locals in a small farm town in the middle of nowhere America. I agree we should just require cable/internet services to be open and do away with utility protections. I happen to live in an area that has a couple of cable options, as well as satellite services, and the cost/service benefit is HUGE. When Astound/Wave came to town Comcast/Xfinity cut their cost and upped their data caps within a month to compete because they HAD to.
http://www.wavebroadband.com/ [wavebroadband.com]
http://www.xfinity.com/ [xfinity.com]
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City folk!
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They can't even get it together to kill the rural electrification program. Hasn't had a use or need in 50 years, 1.5 billion/year wasted.
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Rural electrification program money is all taken by rent seekers anyhow. Any new rural wiring is at fully loaded, union worker scale. 10k$us/pole when I last checked, 15 years ago.
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Is this like the last 3 times they did this? Was not every household in the US supposed to have FIOS at this point from the money stolen in the 90s by the providers? Verizon basically took the money from NJ and laughed all the way to the bank.
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I do not want the feds owning the lines but this should at least go to states to build out their infrastructure and allow private ISPs to use and compete on. The major telcos and cable companies have proven that they cannot be trusted with rolling this out themselves. Kentucky is already doing something similar.
I'm curious.. what services would the private ISPs be able to offer if the city/state owned it? I get on the cable side they can all try to compete for different channel packages, but for internet, all you need is one local small company to sell plans with almost no overhead cost and then sell unlimitted plans for a very small profit.
Not judging either way, I am just trying to understand what a private ISP would do if the city/state has already done all the work.
Re:Promises, promises (Score:4, Insightful)
The ISPs shouldn't receive a penny until they do what they say they'll do.
The ISPs need funding for their projects.... My suggestion would be that the money granted, at least 90% of it should be a LOAN, which will be automatically cancelled/forgiven with a graduated schedule as the project progress, subject to an independent reviewer indicating that they are performing, and if they fail to perform, then the FCC's regulatory authority will be used to recover the payments.
Also, it should be setup as a debt partially secured by the ISP's software and network equipment.
This way the grant is an award, but only if they follow through.
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That seems rather high for a 10/5 fiber. What part of the country is that? A business 10/10 fiber connection is $55/mo here. Alhough gigabit service is not available as the whole isp only has 2Gbps of backhaul.
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That seems rather high for a 10/5 fiber. What part of the country is that? A business 10/10 fiber connection is $55/mo here. Alhough gigabit service is not available as the whole isp only has 2Gbps of backhaul.
No kidding! A little podunk town called Lavaca, AR has FTTP at every house in town and you can get GIGABIT Internet for $200 / Month!
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Funny you mention that as I'm only about 40 miles from Lavaca, AR in Sallisaw, OK. I think our biggest limiting factor here is back haul as 2Gbps costs the city 12K/mo.
The highest speed available here is just 50/50 for $157/mo
And I just noticed it shows that Lavaca was the first FTTP in Arkansas and sallisaw was the first FTTP in Oklahoma.
Funny how two states managed to both start their first fiber networks less than 50 miles apart and in roughly the same year.
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Most of their service is to places that already have high-speed lines running through for other reasons (so the uplink isn't just for them), but they are willing to go into communities off the beaten path if support is there.
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Try Australia - unless you have the NBN (*Government Business Enterprise* funded fibre) a business fibre connection is $1,200+ (yes over one thousand dollars) per *month*, thats for around 20/20. 1GB isn't even available.
Private enterprise has completely failed telcoms in Oz. Labor stared a visionary fibre to the home infrastructure project but the LNP/Murdock killed it.
FTFY: "With no data caps TO START WITH" (Score:5, Insightful)
o Offer gigabit broadband with no data caps
o Allow a few years for Rural America to get used to having it
o Impose Shadow Datacaps on the biggest bandwidth users
o Complain about 'data hogs' and 'lost profits'
o Impose 'overage fees'
o Impose data caps for all subscribers
o Profit!
data caps? how about CAPACITY? (Score:2)
You left off:
o horribly over-commit available bandwidth resources so 30/5 jerks and stalls like a horse being driven over a cliff
Wahoo. And stuff.
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U.S. ISP Business Plan for Rural America:
o Offer gigabit broadband with no data caps
o Allow a few years for Rural America to get used to having it
o Impose Shadow Datacaps on the biggest bandwidth users
o Complain about 'data hogs' and 'lost profits'
o Impose 'overage fees'
o Impose data caps for all subscribers
o Profit!
Damn! Where are my mod points when I need them? You sir (or madam) nailed it on the head...
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did you miss "with at least 150GB of data provided each month"? This IS explicit agreement for datacaps of 150GB/month
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Hold on, buddy! That 20x is just theoretical. The end customers won't see anything that great.
Gee, wonder what ISP-employed lobbyist got this in (Score:3, Insightful)
This could be interesting... (Score:5, Interesting)
As long the providers don't get the money until after the project is completed. Have it held in escrow, even.
If they say they need the money for the build-out costs, I'm sure there are more than a couple banks that would make a loan on a business expansion where the repayment is guaranteed by the federal government.
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As long the providers don't get the money until after the project is completed
And people are connected.
And the customers have a contractual commitment from the company to keep them served and cap their PAYMENT rates for at least enough years to amortize the installation investment.
And they have to PAY IT BACK if they drop service.
My AT&T DSL at home has been out for over two weeks and it looks to be out for another week before they get around to moving my line to a RT that is still live. That's IN A CI
Re: This could be interesting... (Score:4, Informative)
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As someone who has clients in one of those areas I can tell you: you have to contact your state legislator to get ordinary service orders completed.
Are "those areas" suburbs buried in cities (like my townhouse with the outage) or rural?
I'm not even kidding. AT&T only wants to do wireless now. From where I'm sitting, it looks like they are stripping the wireline side bare and are waiting for a regulatory opportunity to spin off the carcus.
My retirement ranch, in a somewhat rural part of NV, used to have
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The telco in the small town my parents live in was sold off to Frontier, and the service has somehow gotten even worse than it was under Verizon. I didn't think that was possible.
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As long the providers don't get the money until after the project is completed. Have it held in escrow, even.
If they say they need the money for the build-out costs, I'm sure there are more than a couple banks that would make a loan on a business expansion where the repayment is guaranteed by the federal government.
Then we will be back to bailing out banks for bad loans.
Wheel goes round and round.
I'll start holding my breath. (Score:5, Insightful)
They still haven't delivered what they promised when we, the people, gave them several hundred million in 1996.
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While no fan of ISPs, I'll wager that 100% of the problem lies with the City of Seattle and its draconian laws regarding new infrastructure. Run some searches on why Google chose not to run fiber in Seattle (it was in the first wave of cities they looked at). You'll see just how much of an issue it is just to do something simple like install a new switch in a neighborhood. Seattle's slogan should be: "Whatever it takes to remove the 'progress' from 'Progressive'."
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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Nice idea in principle, but there will be lots of political bickering - with that much government involvement you can bet more than a few congresspeople will want to show their pro-family credentials by mandating anti-pornography filtering on any government-funded network.
Don't forget abortions... (Score:3)
with that much government involvement you can bet more than a few congresspeople will want to show their pro-family credentials by mandating anti-pornography filtering on any government-funded network.
And don't forget abortions. There shall be no abortions on government funded Intertubes.
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Nice idea in principle, but there will be lots of political bickering - with that much government involvement you can bet more than a few congresspeople will want to show their pro-family credentials by mandating anti-pornography filtering on any government-funded network.
And the other side of that coin will be giving free internet for people who can't/won't afford it, subsidize it for pro-eco and non-profit companies, and any like minded people.. Hell, the government would probably annually lose money on this.
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Ideally, the government would not be able to sell directly to consumers - it should be L2/L3 infrastructure access only, with retail services being sold by private entities (whoever wants to provide and can satisfy the criteria), as it is done in many parts of Europe, parts of Asia and New Zealand for example.
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Everybody wins.
Except for those people who don't want the government running the pipe through which they talk to family, entertain, telecommute, handle their finances, etc.
No. The federal government gets to own and run something that vital when they show they can maintain things like interstate highway bridges or other less complicated and less sensitive things well and on budget. The federal government can't even fix completely broken, highly scrutinized VA hospital administrative staff, let alone become a giant new
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You're silly. Just drove the interstate from Connecticut to Houston. It's magnificent.
I get that you're anti-government, but I can't imagine they'd do much worse by their customers than the big telecoms.
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I get that you're anti-government
No, you mean you're making up that I am, because I said no such thing. I'm anti-waste, anti-corruption, and anti-incompetence. Those things can be found in every venue and institution, organization or company, but they abound in the federal government. If we're about to spend a pile of newly taxed money, why let the feds manage it when they cannot manage so many things already under their control?
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Just drove the interstate from Connecticut to Houston. It's magnificent.
As a follow up ... I just drove 175 miles on interstate highway and bridges this week, and it was miserable: out of date signs, crumbling pavement, terrible water management, the same bridge repairs under way for three years with virtually no progress, damaged and missing signals at ramps/exchanges, and so on. I know, you also think the VA hospital system, Amtrak, the IRS's operations, and more are "magnificent." Yes, the government can do MUCH worse than telecoms. I deal with, for example, both Verizon an
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Then you should have taken the private roads instead.
Oh, I'm sorry, the private roads don't exist. At a certain scale, government is the best, most efficient and least corrupt option. Telecommunications may be one of those.
Health care is also one of those things, given the experience of most of the developed world. I'm surprised that you believe that private insurance could do a better job than the VA. That is, if
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Then you should have taken the private roads instead.
Oh, I'm sorry, the private roads don't exist.
That's an option? And no zoning or environmental requirements either? They can create roads going through neighbors and next to freeways?
The road system is about as corrupt as you can get. The construction companies get the gig based on nepotism, bribery, and pretty much anything else non-quality related. Where I live they have been working on the same roads for years. They tear up one lane and leave the other one open. Then they close the open one in favor of the new one. Then they close that one and
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Then you should have taken the private roads instead.
About 40 miles of that trip was on a not-inexpensive toll road, and yes it is privately administered, though in partnership with local counties. It's by far the best part of the trip. Clean, well paved, wide enough to handle the traffic.
I'm surprised that you believe that private insurance could do a better job than the VA.
I don't have to "believe" it, I just have to watch it. I've never had to wait for an appointment to see a doctor. Private insurance comes in after the fact, when the bills show up. Vets don't get to think like that unless they want to arrange for private care. And why shou
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The VA has been in decline since Ronald Reagan was president. People say they want vets taken care of, until they find out they'd have to pay for it.
And they don't want to pay for it because very nearly 100% of the vets alive today became vets by fighting in wars that had absolutely nothing to do with "Pr
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No sir. Americans really don't care about veterans unless they're marching in some pageant or showing up at the national anthem at the baseball game.
Ah, I see now. You're a shut-in who doesn't actually know anybody. That actually explains a LOT of your posts.
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Those 40 miles of toll road? Built, owned and administered by the Federal government. The money from those tolls goes to the Federal government, not to the private company that runs the toll booths.
The interstate highway system was built by the United States Government. It is funded mainly through taxes. And it's a primary driver of the US economy.
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And the reason, of course, is because a private road has a requirement that a public road doesn't: to pay for itself 100% (vs. less than half [uspirg.org]) through user fees.
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The amount of commerce and economic activity an interstate highway system creates more than covers the other half.
How do you think your box of Fruity Pebbles got to the grocery store? Drivers aren't the only ones getting value from roads.
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If that's true, then it shouldn't be difficult to make the road pay for itself 100% through user fees.
Did you know that they used to build grocery stores right next to railroad spurs? True story. But now that freeways are so highly subsidized, there's no longer any need to.
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As a follow up ... I just drove 175 miles on interstate highway and bridges this week, and it was miserable: out of date signs, crumbling pavement, terrible water management, the same bridge repairs under way for three years with virtually no progress, damaged and missing signals at ramps/exchanges, and so on.
That's what you get when you want to "starve the beast."
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Just drove the interstate from Connecticut to Houston. It's magnificent.
The Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 appropriated money to go to states. Many states then bid out contracts to private firms. For example, Boh Brothers Construction built the I-10 elevated roadway that runs across the Atchafalaya Swamp in Louisiana that opened in 1973. Kiewit Construction Company built the stretch of I-15 runs through the Virgin River Gorge in Arizona.
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Except for those people who don't want the government running the pipe through which they talk to family, entertain, telecommute, handle their finances, etc.
You don't want them running the pipe, but you're perfectly okay when they demand weak encryption so they can listen in, and to compel a person to assist in his own prosecution because, OMG! Bad Guys!
You want government authority, but not government service. This is your basic shtick.
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Because government run projects ALWAYS finish cheaper & faster than private companies. [/sarcasm]
The real answer is competition. Outlaw all forms of ISP monopoly agreements, including city and building level. Let tiny municipal ISP's start up and compete against Comcast. Let Google Fiber deploy anywhere they good and well please. Make it legal for anyone to buy a big pipe & resell to their neighborhood.
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Government funds can help pay for initial infrastructure and allow the cooperative to build out.
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They did that once, the result was what we have now - a bunch of copper and fiber in the ground with nobody wants to upgrade.
Suburbanites w/ 10Mbps to pay for farmer's gigabit (Score:3)
Alternative headline for the same story:
City-dwellers with 10 Mbps service by govt-enforced monopolies to buy gigabit for farmers
Last year, taxpayers paid the ISPs $9 billion for rural broadband, so that people who like owning horses can watch more Netflix movies simultaneously. Another couple billion this year, and $10 billion more planned. (About $82 per tax payer). Meanwhile, those of us paying for it get whatever Comcast or the local government franchise holder decides to give us, because the government has made if effectively illegal for a competitor to offer better service in our area.
I'm from the government and I'm here to help, they say. How about get the fuck out of the way and allow competition. There has been some of that in some states, and average speeds have gone up considerably in the last year.
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Rural Electrification Act of 1936 [wikipedia.org]
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I know! And how about all those childless people paying property tax to subsidize public schools? It's an outrage!
Re:Suburbanites w/ 10Mbps to pay for farmer's giga (Score:5, Insightful)
The Rural Electrification Act was a (relative) success. So let's try a similar scheme again. Let rural governments create cooperative ISPs, apply to the FCC for their share of the funding and put in broadband. I have the feeling that the incumbent telecoms are going to get their hands on the money and it's all going to disappear down the same rat-hole that the last subsidy did.
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The Rural Electrification Act was a (relative) success. So let's try a similar scheme again. Let rural governments create cooperative ISPs,
The oligarchs will never allow that. They fight that tooth-and-nail every time someone tries it, up to and including statewide /bans/ on coops.
Because it's better to never sell anything than it is to allow locals to do for themselves. *spit*
--
BMO
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That pig fuck is still costing us 1.5 billion$/year. There basically are no more 40 acre family farms left, much less ones that needed subsidised electricity. It's a case study in rent seeking.
Worse, if you need power in BFE, you pay fully loaded costs. $10k/pole last I did the research (NCal, Sierra Nevada foothills, about 2000).
Not an argument for something. Rather the opposite.
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Because program that's been around for 80 years has completed it's mandate and shut down, correct? Like all (no) government programs do.
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Don't know about your circumstances, but I'm happy to subsidize them because I like to eat what they grow and raise. Everybody can talk about competition and how eager companies should be to provide electricity or internet in this day to the rural sticks, but no company is going to do that on its own at a price any farmer or rancher is going to be able to pay. Maybe if they get gigabit to the rural sticks the prices will come down where I live.
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You think people are going to quit working on farms due to lack of internet?
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People are already leaving farms and ranches in droves. Small towns are disappearing. Small farms are getting bought up by large corporations. There are a host of reasons for this and the vast majority of them won't be fixed by cheap fast internet. But in my view, the internet access is no different than electrification. Nobody would be expecting farmers to work their farms without electricity.
If internet access was not available in your city of x million and only 15 people wanted it - scattered throughou
Thanks, we're moving June 20th (Score:2)
Thanks for the offer, we're scheduled to close on the new place in country June 20th. Horse pasture is prohibitively expensive here in the city of Dallas. Fiber is prohibitively expensive out at the new place, so we appreciate your help paying for it. Houses are too damn small in the city too, our new country place is three times the square footage of our current place.
The new place in the country doesn't even have natural gas service either. Would you want to help put that in? I also worry a bit becau
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It makes no sense to not install fiber, which is likely cheaper and is so much better for long range anyway. So in any new wired rural deployment the last mile at least ought to be capable of a gigabit (could it hit some cable network or even microwave so what comes after/before the last mile is actually slower?)
Let's spend billions to run new copper instead.. With a good enough deployment you might have e.g. reliable long range 512k ADSL. Your pride is safe but it's more expensive and 2000x slower.
That's how you got there (Score:2)
> phone monopolies should be forced to
80 years of "should be forced to" is why downtown Seattle has internet 1/20th the speed of semi-rural Texas towns with 20,000 residents. You could keep trying the same thing and expect different results.
What has worked well around here has been to allow overbuilders like Frontier to come and offer better service, to have competition amongst providers.
I wanna pony (Score:2)
Oh my God sometimes you can't stream multiple Netflix movies at once? Of course you want to watch two movies at once.
I want a pony, and it's too expensive to have ponies in the city.
You have ponies in the country. That's not fair. Buy me a pony.
In Seattle... (Score:2)
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I thought Seattle didn't have good broadband. Am I thinking of Portland?
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Yeah, I must be thinking of Portland.
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Didn't we already do this?` (Score:5, Insightful)
We did, FDA did the doling out then. (Score:3)
One operation based out of Oklahoma City deployed as far south as Corpus Christi. They showed great promise, but oversold their bandwidth and territory, winding up existing from check to check. Then they declared bankruptcy at year 3 when the Dept of Agriculture welshed on their next check, and had to go into bankruptcy. The liquidator's auction for the CDMA licenses looked like sharks in a feeding frenzy; with the telecoms outbidding each other until the licenses wound up selling around 15X-25X their fac
6MPS MAX (Score:1)
Anti-government red states (Score:2)
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Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
How it will be done. (Score:4, Insightful)
2. Throw a little money into astro turf organization to protest.
3. Astro turf will denounce it as Big Government, Obamanet, over reach and argue for the program to be axed.
4. Some law makers will be persuaded by the lobbyists to fake concern and axe the program.
5. The companies will blame the funding cut to renege on all promises
Lather, rinse and repeat.
Shorter version (Score:2)
"The Federal Communications Commission is making another $2.15 billion available for rural broadband projects..."
Shorter version: Whether the federal government is redistributing our tax dollars to the middle of nowhere (see also, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]) or to telecoms, its cronyism all the way down.
Fat pipes everywhere with free right of way? (Score:2)
Consider the potential of laying high capacity broadband along the Interstate Highway System, with tap points at exits that would be leased to local ISPs. The tagline could be 'You already know where it goes.'
Then again (Score:2)
But then again, they probably won't.
Already have 100 GB/sec at universities (Score:1)
Almost all major US and Canadian university campus have 100 GB/sec ports and 40 GB/sec ports right now.
Rural 1 GB/sec is pretty slow. It's like having 1200 baud while everyone else has 28.8 kbps in the dialtone days.
No its not (Score:1)
Bullshit. I live in the middle of Louisiana and I can tell you we don't even have digital fucking cable yet. I live 1 mile from a fucking horse racing casino that has fiber internet and 100000 digital cable channels. Best internet I can get is 3.0Mb DSL and the standard cable is worse than old analog rabbit ears.
THE LAST TIME THIS HAPPENED MY CABLE COMPANY WAS AWARDED A 1 MILLION DOLLAR GRANT TO EXTEND INTERNET SERVICE TO RURAL AREAS. I STILL HAVE NO CABLE INTERNET OR DIGITAL CABLE THAT WAS 2009! THEY"RE AL
Second verse, same as the first. (Score:2)
Re: Which service to use? (Score:2)
We're using gitlab ce successfully. It works nicely, has a lot of good features, and has sifficient integrations (e.g jenkins).