Colorado Aims To Use Pandemic To Expand Funding For Broadband Access (axios.com) 33
Colorado and federal lawmakers want to put big money into more efforts to expand high-speed internet access. From a report: In Colorado, about 90,000 rural residents and 65,000 students across the state do not have access or adequate access, according to a recent Colorado Broadband Office report. A state-level stimulus measure unveiled this week proposes spending $50 million to $75 million to extend broadband to more parts of the state -- the third-largest item in the package. The money would essentially double what the state spends on the initiative now and help replace diminishing revenue from a 2018 law that fell well short of its goal. Congress also set aside $7 billion in funding for broadband in the December COVID-19 relief package. And now Democrats want to allocate another $94 billion and offer a $50 monthly discount on internet service for low-income Americans.
You know, this could start to add up.. (Score:1)
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> I would argue the broadband dollars are pretty well spent
Investing in more terrestrial infrastructure to bring broadband to rural areas is not money well-spent; the LEO internet, like StarLink, looks like a much cheaper solution.
Sounds like more corporate welfare and crony capitalism to me.
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If the government wants to create their own backbone to sell to last mile providers, sure. Dumping ALL of that money on Starlink would be far worse corporate welfare than whatever companies would get it otherwise. But LEO Internet is global and no one nation and definitely not an individual state should be subsidizing that. Running fiber to mountain tops would be a far quicker solution than waiting on Starlink to ramp up. They're not going to be supporting 10s of millions any time soon.
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I agree - we shouldn't subsidize Starlink. We don't need subsidies. After billions wasted by the government with little progress made, we should let the market work - we shouldn't subsidize horse and buggies because it looks like cars will take over.
> Running fiber to mountain tops would be a far quicker solution than waiting on Starlink to ramp up. They're not going to be supporting 10s of millions any time soon.
We've had decades of the cable companies taking our tax money for this purpose, and these mo
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Why would you want the entity that brought us the "Patriot" Act, the NSA, the CIA, the FBI, the CDC, the IRS, etc., etc. running our broadband service?
To quell riots, dissension, demonstrations, etc.; to conduct warrant-less searches, eavesdrop, collect meta-data and real data, etc. -- One source, switch, controller to turn-off All broadband communications. Which will also spread to all sorts of wireless communications.
The Federal Government could easy turn the USA into the Hunger Games!
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The federal government also brought the Interstate Highway System. Just because they're flawed doesn't mean we should prefer private corporations. It would also be worth a lot of people's effort to shut down the bad things the government does. Giving up is lazy.
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It may be cheaper, but it may not be the best investment.
I have Cable Internet. I got it back in 1999 it ran at about 200kbs 22 years later it is running at about 200mbs (nearly 1000x faster) The Cable Company has services that reach 900mbs, to get this I just need a new Cable Modem. But not a full redo of the infrastructure, as my home wires in my community are nearly 30 years old already.
LEO internet is slower, and not as easy to upgrade. Putting the people using that service at a major disadvantage, wh
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Sounds like more corporate welfare and crony capitalism to me.
I totally agree. How many times do politicians have to repeat this failure before they start talking about real solutions. Of course, that presumes that politicians are interested in actually solving the problem rather than greasing the hands of their corporate overlords.
LEO satellites are part of the solution, but Starlink can't serve everyone (according to Starlink). Terrestrial Internet is part of the solution, but the incumbents need to be cut off from Federal funding (they've failed every time to deliv
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A wonderful way to make the Enemies of the State -- or, at least, the current POTUS -- "disappear". Don't like New York, then Cut Them Off! Don't like Texas then Cut Them Off!.
A dream Every politician and bureaucrat could love.
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It's wierd. Other countries use the "shared local infrastructure (run by local government) with private companies running services on it" model, and they don't whine about "making our enemies disappear". Is this what American Exceptionalism is like, because if so, wow, some of us are exceptionally stupid. Or maybe other countries just don't build Jewish Space Lasers?
I'm a big fan of LEO solutions, but wired is always, always better when it is possible. Bandwidth through the air is just too constrained f
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If you own a home, and say your furnace is making some odd noises, but you deal with it because you are still getting hot water. A little later on you may see a random puff of smoke triggering your smoke detector at different points of the day. So you detach your Smoke Detector, because it isn't that bad. Finally it really breaks down and you can't fix it yourself, so you have to pay the plumber a lot of money to get it fixed, and he recommends a yearly checkup to clean that area that gets clogged, which
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I would argue the broadband dollars are pretty well spent
Reality would argue that the United States being a shithole of broadband infrastructure by comparison to the rest of the modern world, proves your statement wrong.
Empty promises of infrastructure upgrades will be peddled to the ignorant masses, while backdoor deals and executive bonuses siphon off millions (billions?), ending in a multi-year abandoned project that citizens will be bitching about again in another 10 years. Starlink will be able to provide a viable solution likely far before this ever will.
Get them Starlink (Score:3)
This will only enrich political contributors, and have little long term impact.
But wouldn't focusing on the actual problem instead of throwing money at it be a better option?
Exactly this (Score:4, Interesting)
Get them Starlink
My mother lives in rural Colorado and ASAP I am getting her Starlink (I've already pre-ordered).
All other solutions tried (including cellular) have been universally terrible. Starlink will be an order of magnitude faster than anything she has had to date,,,
Just use that money to install StarLink to every single person who has no better options.
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Get them Starlink
My mother lives in rural Colorado and ASAP I am getting her Starlink (I've already pre-ordered).
All other solutions tried (including cellular) have been universally terrible. Starlink will be an order of magnitude faster than anything she has had to date,,,
Just use that money to install StarLink to every single person who has no better options.
For people who could pay for access, Starlink is probably a great choice.
Maybe the state could issue some rebates for installation and a few months credit for access for those who can pay for Starlink themselves.
This is stupid (Score:3)
With this level of funding, you can literally FIX the system once and for all and invest in mega grants for municipal fiber optic access, available to and subsidized for all.
This just throws more money down a hole to the existing entrenched huge ISPs and further incents them to do what they've always done -- nothing -- and to continue to provide awful service at insanely high prices.
Not really (Score:2)
With this level of funding, you can literally FIX the system once and for all and invest in mega grants for municipal fiber optic access,
I don't think you realize how rural rural Colorado is... no way is fiber an option for people who live very far outside major cities. It might get some smaller cities hooked up but would not help a large number of people.
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As I understand we actually have fiber up to Nederland. We're a bit farther out and per our ISP, they'd like to run fiber but Excel's poles are too short. They require extra cable run by the ISP to be a certain distance below the power lines which is untenable for the larger vehicular traffic.
[John]
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Running that fiber up a mountain would cover quite a lot of people. Whether that's a WISP or variations of 5G cellular.
Doesn't work (Score:2)
Running that fiber up a mountain would cover quite a lot of people. Whether that's a WISP or variations of 5G cellular.
From personal experience that just does not work. in the mountains, it doesn't matter what you put on a mountain (and pay a fortune to maintain) you are only going to cover a fairly limited area because surrounding mountains quickly kill the signal, or block line of sight options...
Also line of sight stuff is messed with by weather, more even that satellite based solutions.
Try driving anywh
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Line of sight can't be messed up more by weather for high ground-based towers than for LEO satellites. That's more a matter of what frequencies you are using. It's a shorter distance and the same weather.
And yeah, you'd have to go up quite a few mountains. It's still way more practical than lighting up house by house. And having cellular 911 in more places is also a good thing.
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We live up here and are using high speed wifi. It works quite well and we piggyback our cell phones onto the network. But here in Nederland, it's AT&T for cell with a recent installation of another company, I forget who. If our internet goes (such as with this upcoming snow storm), we can only get cell signal if we stand upstairs by the front window and it's only one bar. But sufficient bandwidth to log in to work and poke at servers :)
[John]
Sure why not? (Score:2, Offtopic)
I mean, the latest COVID bill pushed through congress "somehow" manages to also wipe out NY's and SFOs $10bn+ budget deficits.
That's nice.
I'm sure that's about helping people with COVID.
Voters: one party control is what you wanted. (shrug)
low-income plans need to have no cap or min cap 1T (Score:2)
low-income plans need to have no cap or min cap 1TB by law..
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Wait. Isn't streaming Netflix on all three TVs in a typical US "poverty" household a human right?
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and cap as low 10 GB - 100GB can be to low to do basic things.
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Consuming 4 hours of high def porn a day is now considered a human right.