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Communications The Internet United States

Comcast To Invest $1 Billion Over Next Decade To Help Close Digital Divide (cnet.com) 41

Comcast will invest $1 billion over the next decade to help address the digital divide among low-income Americans. The company announced this week its plan to continue investment in its Internet Essentials program as it marks the 10th anniversary of the effort this year. From a report: Comcast said it'll put that $1 billion toward a number of initiatives, including supporting its new Lift Zone effort, which establishes Wi-Fi connections in public spaces such as community centers. These Lift Zones can be used to provide internet access to adults and children who are homeless and may not have permanent access to an address. Comcast began opening up these Lift Zones in cities, such as Philadelphia and Chicago, in September when many schools and libraries were closed because of the coronavirus pandemic. The company said it expects to connect more than 1,000 community centers nationwide by the end of 2021. Comcast also plans to continue funding its new laptop and computer donations efforts through Internet Essentials. It'll also continue to provide grants for nonprofit community organizations to create opportunities for low-income Americans, particularly in media, technology and entrepreneurship.
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Comcast To Invest $1 Billion Over Next Decade To Help Close Digital Divide

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  • by Immerman ( 2627577 ) on Thursday March 25, 2021 @09:09AM (#61196464)

    I'll believe it when I see it. How many decades now have they been promising such things? It makes for nice sound bytes, but limited profit. And the only "digital divide" they've actually proven they care about is the divide between the digits of their current profits, and the much bigger digits they'd like to see.

    • Whether they do it or not, the will get money from the government to do it. What we need is a break up of the monopoly...

      • by torkus ( 1133985 )

        Whether they do it or not, the will get money from the government to do it. What we need is a break up of the monopoly...

        This, but more. They'll get grant money and then handily profit on offering 'free' services or supporting 'net-negative' customers.

        Then they'll sue other companies who apply for/get some of the same grant money...because what right does some dinky startup *cough*SpaceX*cough* have to take away from the free money Comcast expects every year? /sarcasm

        Meanwhile, comcast is "working hard" to push through service downgrades (data caps) in all it's regions that don't already have them.

      • In many ways it's a government created monopoly. Many places where I've lived, there was only one cable operator granted permission to service the area. Thankfully Verizon laid fiber in my current neighborhood so there are now 2. Prior to that it sucked even more since there was no competition to keep em honest.
    • I seem to recall this was part of their deal with Philly to maintain their government mandated monopoly in the city for cable service.
      • It's been part of a lot of internet company's deals in a lot of different places - both for the monopoly, and for various government handouts.

        And yet somehow the problem persists. The monopolies continue. And the handouts never have to be paid back.

  • Utter BS. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by aitala ( 111068 ) on Thursday March 25, 2021 @09:14AM (#61196474) Homepage

    Utter BS.
    I would not believe Comcast if they said the sky was blue.

    • by torkus ( 1133985 )

      ...just assume there's a * attached to everything they say

      * where we'll make the most profit while providing the absolute minimum required to pretend we meet laws/rules/regulations.

      ** p.s. we actually hate our customers and are working on a 10-year plan to eliminate them entirely - though increasing profits sufficiently in such a situation is proving more difficult than expected

  • by Anonymous Coward
    fuk comcast! they are so obsolete. they have terrible small business contracts where you're locked in for 2 years and have to pay 75% of the remaining balance to get out of the contract. sick. and it's GARBAGE bandwidth.
  • The divide? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by LenKagetsu ( 6196102 ) on Thursday March 25, 2021 @09:18AM (#61196488)

    Companies like Comcast caused it!

  • Funding breakdown: Lobbying to reduce the requirements: $450M Bribes to have regulators look the other way: $500M System upgrades: $50M
  • by Revek ( 133289 ) on Thursday March 25, 2021 @09:26AM (#61196510)
    Just like other telecom companies Comcast takes federal funds and doesn't build a single mile of additional plant. They use it for operating money and bonues for management.
    • > doesn't build a single mile of additional plant

      Right - they're doing this to have an accounting trick to talk to regulators about because Starlink is about to serve most of the people where they have monopolies and refuse to provide service.

    • by torkus ( 1133985 )

      ...and then they sue over companies like spaceX who might dare to spend that money on actually providing service as intended. It's no wonder people hate Elon Musk!

  • already give them that money, or was that every communications provider except Comcast?
  • Yeah, right... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by noodler ( 724788 ) on Thursday March 25, 2021 @09:33AM (#61196534)

    Comcast makes over $100 Billion in profit (not even revenue).
    Spending 1% of their profit on society is an absolute pittance. 'Here son, have a penny on us.'
    And of course this whole investment is only justified by the promise of future customers.
    It's an 'invest now, rake later' kind of scheme.

    • Comcast makes over $100 Billion in profit (not even revenue).

      No, that is their 2020 revenue.

      "For the twelve months ended December 31, 2020, revenue decreased 4.9% to $103.6 billion compared to 2019. Net income attributable to Comcast decreased 19.3% to $10.5 billion. Adjusted Net Income decreased 16.4% to $12.1 billion. Adjusted EBITDA decreased 10.0% to $30.8 billion."

      https://www.cmcsa.com/news-rel... [cmcsa.com]

    • by leonbev ( 111395 )

      Yeah, when I see stories like this, I just think "Oh, look, there is Comcast's excuse to add another random fee or 'tax' to my cable bill".

      I guess that we should be happy that Comcast is being generous with OUR money?

  • by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Thursday March 25, 2021 @09:34AM (#61196540)
    they're going to make a few fake gestures because they're afraid of states or the fed doing Municipal broadband.

    Add this to yet another list of industries (health insurance, prisons, electricity & water ) that it doesn't make sense to privatize. When you have something that is completely universal and needed to live privatization is pointless.

    And if anyone's thinking "hey, what about our food supply" you need to look into how subsidies work. We nationalized food production ages ago, we just did it in a roundabout way.
  • by iggymanz ( 596061 ) on Thursday March 25, 2021 @09:34AM (#61196542)

    There are those with lack of opportunity, and investment in education and health can be some tools for those people to make something of themselves. These people need more than an internet connection to get out of the situation they're stuck in.

    There are those with lack of will to take responsibility for their own lives and are lazy, and place no value on other's lives and property. We've already proven throwing trillions of dollars at such is a waste and can breed criminal classes. They'll always be on the other side of the divide, making lives miserable for those I mentioned in the preceding paragraph who are stuck in inner cities with them.

  • No they wont (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dicobalt ( 1536225 ) on Thursday March 25, 2021 @09:41AM (#61196562)
    Comcast does not invest into infrastructure. After working there 5 years I can tell you that Comcast CMTS' frequently have around half the modems out of acceptable signal ranges. If a node is having problems workers aren't permitted to fix it correctly because funds are not allocated. They see the modems are barely holding sync or are intermittently sync and that's good enough for them to bill the customer.
    • Re:No they wont (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Ritz_Just_Ritz ( 883997 ) on Thursday March 25, 2021 @09:57AM (#61196652)

      As a former employee, you were probably a frequent recipient of those internal spam emails to help them lobby the government for their latest profit-generating scheme in the guise of pretending to be socially responsible. Things don't appear to have changed much.

  • This is just Comcast trying to bootstrap its struggling MVNO effort. This is why they're so eager to cram wifi access points down to customers. They want as much of that traffic on their network as possible.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

  • The reality about last mile is it's a natural monopoly. It should be regulated just the same way we regulate the grid for power supply. If you want to make a difference, get involved in local government because that is where the decisions are made about last mile. You may also have to be involved in state government to push back on the lobbying efforts by Comcast, Verizon and other societal leeches. When you piss on government, when you tear it down its ability to function, only corporations and benefit an
    • Comcast bribed my state to pass a law BANNING democracy from getting involved. All because a town they ignored for years built their own last mile network!

      So nobody else can repeat that success! Phone, TV, internet all CHEAPER and more reliable than comcast ever could be; plus free low income access without the BS. In a crisis, they can operate the whole thing at a loss too!

      Republicans forbid anything working properly; it's the only thing they can run on besides racism and change! People still are too stu

      • Then become one of the people in charge and start trying to change things. Start out learning what worked and didn't work with previous municipal Internet initiatives. Volunteer for local town/city technology committees. Get to know who's who on the political scene and learn how to work within it to get your voice heard. You might also try getting a job a technology staffer for someone in your state Senate. There are lots a way to fix this.
  • Just like how they and the other telecom companies have been promising to roll out rural broadband. Still crickets on that one. Just another government shakedown with no oversight and a waste of taxpayer money. It's going to be Starlink for me. The rest of these dinosaurs can go get stuffed.

    • by t0qer ( 230538 )

      Specifically went through the thread looking for Starlink. Linus tech tips did a test about a month ago. [youtube.com] While it's not quite as latency free as Elon claims, it's still magnitudes better than any other alternative. We also have 5G coming. I think Comcast knows this and is likely getting ready to come up with cheaper plans.

      • Yes and it's important to note that Starlink is still in beta. I have seen some of the same YouTube videos and most of them are showing at least 100 mb/sec on average for download speeds. From what I understand, HughesNet provides about 5mb/sec on a good day and it applies data caps. DSL is probably on par with that.

        Musk is saying they should be up around 300mb/sec and latency less than 10ms. by the time all the bugs are ironed out. Time will tell but it looks very promising. I'm on the list to get StarLink

  • So, let's work this out. $1 Billion USD over 10 years is $100 Million per year. Comcast is in 40 states. That works out to about $2.5 Million USD per state per year.

    Just for perspective, 1 mile of fiber is $27,000. One $50,000 employee costs about $70,000. For $2.5 Million, you can install 92 miles of fiber per year. You can hire about 35 people.

    If we split the difference, you get a team of 18 people that can install 45 miles of fiber per year. Over ten years, you create 18 decent jobs per state

  • Now you know how much of your Comcast bill is going to support woke causes. Pay attention, stockholders.

  • Comcast CUSTOMERS pay $1,000,000,000 over the next 10 years!
    Note: The last years will be paid with "cheaper dollars"

  • I have Comcast ... or should I say I'm stuck with Comcast. As soon as there is an alternative (SpaceX) available I'm leaving. I don't care if the alternative will cost more. Comcast has been squeezing me for too long. Screw you Comcast. Don't believe anything this monopolistic crap house has to say.
  • Sure they'll invest a billion. I just wonder who's money that will be.

  • Meanwhile at SpaceX, the company stands to profit $10B during the next decade by actually closing that divide worldwide using space-based routers. If half of that $1B of Comcast's investment goes to SpaceX, I wouldn't be too surprised. There's a lot of talk about how the future is space-based internet. It seems that Elon Musk figured that out about 20 years ago and took 20 years worth of actions to make that a reality.

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