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The Internet The Almighty Buck

Virginia Will Use a $700 Million Grant To Roll Out Statewide Broadband (engadget.com) 55

Posted by BeauHD from the internet-for-all dept.
Virginia will use $700 million in American Rescue Plan funding to expedite broadband buildouts in underserved communities throughout the state, Governor Ralph Northam announced on Friday. Virginia is only one of the states across the country that plans to use that money to build faster internet infrastructure. Engadget reports: With the investment, Virginia says it's on track to become one of the first states in the US to achieve universal broadband access. An estimated 233,500 homes and businesses throughout the Commonwealth fall under what the Federal Communications Commission would consider an underserved location. They don't have an internet connection that can achieve download speeds of 25Mbps down. The state estimates the additional funding will allow it to connect those places to faster internet by the end of 2024, instead of 2028, as previously planned. What's more, the "majority" of those connections will be completed within the next 18 months.
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Virginia Will Use a $700 Million Grant To Roll Out Statewide Broadband More

Virginia Will Use a $700 Million Grant To Roll Out Statewide Broadband

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  • internet connectivity (Score:5, Insightful)

    by FudRucker ( 866063 ) on Saturday July 17, 2021 @06:11AM (#61590983)
    it should be a utility just like water or electricity, too many important things require an internet connection, like schooling & education and work & employment, paying bills and shopping, especially shopping for the disabled who can not get out to go to the store, and with this pandemic thing it makes it even more of a requirement (too important to be considered a luxury)
    • Too true but then we have Musk putting 60k boxes in the sky. Someone's gotta pay. Which jurisdiction will be the first to use public money to pay a billionaire for something that should be like running water?

      • If you think that 60k satellites would ever cover the world's Internet needs without fixed wired broadband filling the gaps, you're crazy. The world's Inter-regional bandwidth capacity stands at 466Tbps. [telegeography.com]. The total Internet bandwidth in use simultaneously is probably at least that - even though those big undersea cables are used way below capacity, quite a lot of traffic stays domestic. The success of Starlink depends on them not being the only option. Otherwise, they'll be as congested as satellite Int

        • The thought that just rolled through my head... 466 Tbps = 477,184 Gbps Then if we take that can determine bandwidth per satellite 477,184 Gbps / 60,000 satellites = 7.95 Gbps per satellite. Something tells me those 60,000 satellites will meaningfully contribute to the connected bandwidth of end customers. Not saying it will replace anything high end that exists (high end cable, fiber to the curb, etc.), but it's certainly going to connect a lot of rural customers that had zero options in the past and sim

          • and simultaneously crush all the provides servicing rural areas with slow products (geo-satellite, cellular, fixed wireless)

            At least with stationary satellite it's all or nothing. Imagine being in a mountain valley and you only have Internet for 15 minute periods sporadically throughout the day.

            By the way, 60k satellites is still wishful thinking. There are less than 2k actually available. It's going to take a while to hit 60k and it remains to be seen whether some of those are already going to need replaced before they're all deployed.

            • Starship will be capable of lifting 400 satellites at a time into orbit. These satellites have a lifespan of 5 years (fuel). They will need to have 2.5 launches per month with Starship to ultimately get 60K satellites into orbit within 5 years and then keep them there. Are any of us going to sit here and say SpaceX isn't capable of achieving that goal given everything they've accomplished to date? I'm not about to take that wager. I'm better that within 10 years this is reality.

              • TFA says that $700M will be used to bring broadband to 233,500 homes.

                That is $3000 each.

                A StarLink ground terminal costs $500.

          • Your math is forgetting that everytime you have to repeat a packet your bandwidth is cut in half. Also you are forgetting that even with TDM techniques in play, your talking maybe 100 devices active simultaneously per radio and other radios still count towards that number. Its a spectrum crowding issue. Im not sure what the 5G tech did to those numbers but there are hard physical limits to factor in. Wireless has more limits than fiber because its not exactly shielded point-to-point. Therefore your spectrum
        • Wireless communication is monocasf. Without some form of TDM and frequency shifting the space crowds up pretty fast. Even with those there is still a finite number of simultaneous connections that are possible. It will never be a total replacement for sure.
        • First the sats are cheap and short lived, hence the large number of them. Second, per Musk, they are not a primary provider but more aimed at filling the gaps that the terrestrial internet providers can't (Read that refuse) to fill. The speeds are good for sure but as dishes are added to the mix there will come a point where the service is going to have to be capped and throttled regardless of the number of boxes in orbit. The sats down link to a few places where the backbones of the internet are connect
        • It doesn't needs to cover the needs of the entire world, just those households that could not be efficiently hardwired. Which includes pretty much every place in the US that doesn't already have wired broadband.

          Which in the end basically means we're spending billions of dollars to make sure Starlink has an inefficient, subsidized, competitor. An idea in which I see no merit whatsoever.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by thomst ( 1640045 )

        Anonymouse Cowtard blurted:

        Too true but then we have Musk putting 60k boxes in the sky. Someone's gotta pay. Which jurisdiction will be the first to use public money to pay a billionaire for something that should be like running water?

        Apparently you have never paid a water bill. They ain't cheap.

        And Elon isn't offering satellite internet service to communities. Only individuals - and only in rural/underserved markets, like the one where I live ...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tomhath ( 637240 )
      Chances are very good that most of those "underserved" locations have private well and septic systems. Some might even be off the grid with solar panels. Besides, anyone who wants an internet connection can get one, it's only a question of whether four people in the house can stream movies while junior plays online games.

      • Besides, anyone who wants an internet connection can get one, it's only a question of whether four people in the house can stream movies while junior plays online games.

        It’s like you live in a bubble and deny the idea that there may be people whose lives aren’t like yours.

        At my address there’s exactly one ISP offering broadband speeds with unlimited data. The next closest ISP with unlimited data tops out at 3 Mbps. Three. Megabits. Per. Second. In case you thought that was a typo. That’s not even enough for a proper Zoom call, but a half mile from where I live that 3 Mbps plan is the best option for many people because the ISP I use isn’t avai

    • Fuck that, that is socialism! Let the rural communities suffer and pay for it themselves, the capitalistic forces will fill in the gap... /S

    • it should be a utility just like water or electricity

      Connectivity monopolies don't seem like a good idea to me.

  • Even if you don’t want a computer, the usefulness of having an internet connection for other devices is incredible. In fact in many countries there are more people with internet than running water.

    • In fact in many countries there are more people with internet than running water.

      Cell towers every bunch of km is a lot cheaper than running pipe between those points, assuming you even have water to deliver. At least with cell service you can find out where there is some water.

  • And how long until we learn that they didn't use the money to do what they were paid to do?

    • Yah,,,, this feels like deja vu all over again. Remember all those tax abatements and subsidies given to Ma Ball... then Verizon... and who knows how many others? And incentives for maintenance?

  • So will it be fiber? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Pollux ( 102520 ) <speter AT tedata DOT net DOT eg> on Saturday July 17, 2021 @06:33AM (#61591009) Journal

    So the first question in my head was...what's the medium? Fiber? Cable? Anything? So, I clicked the link to the Engadget article. What a terrible, terrible article it was. Four paragraphs, with little detail? Surely one can do better. There's NPR [npr.org], or the Washington Post [washingtonpost.com], even (dare I say) The Verge [theverge.com], all with a lot more details.

    But amazingly, none of the articles actually say anything about the broadband medium. But the governor's announcement does cite that funding and program management are done via the Virginia Telecommunications Initiative [virginia.gov]. So, let's check out the VATI guidelines [virginia.gov], and we find this paragraph:

    [Department of Housing and Community Development] will award funding to applicants to provide last-mile services, including middle-mile networks, equipment, or other investments required to deliver last-mile service to unserved areas of the Commonwealth. Unserved areas are defined as having broadband speeds below 25 Megabits per second (Mbps) download and 3 Megabits (Mbps) upload...For a wireline project, a proposed project area is considered eligible if 10 percent or fewer of serviceable units have access to service with no special construction costs from any provider as of the date of the application...For a wireless project, a proposed area is considered eligible if 25 percent or fewer of serviceable units have access to service with no special construction costs from any provider as of the date of the application. Passings with RSSI below -90dbm are not eligible to be included in a VATI application.

    So, it looks like they will fund anything, wired -or- wireless, as long as it meets or exceeds the 25Mbps threshold.

    Personally, while universal service is a step in the right direction, I wish I would see a state commit to the 100% fiber-to-the-household infrastructure project. That's a commitment to the future of the internet. Funding anything that's 25Mbps is more so an investment in political points and future votes.

    • So the first question in my head was...what's the medium? Fiber? Cable? Anything?

      Let's hope they're not figuring that out themselves and are spending a portion of that money to figure out the best plan.

      I wish I would see a state commit to the 100% fiber-to-the-household infrastructure project.

      That would be great, but the money won't go as far. It's Virginia. They would be spending millions and millions drilling fiber through mountains to hit goals like that. Almost certainly the most underserved areas are going to be isolated valleys. Fixed wireless backed by fiber is not ideal but it's going to get more people connected for a lot less money. There are likely people with n

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Pollux ( 102520 )

        There are likely people with no more choice than dial-up over 60 year old copper.

        So, if we could figure out how to lay out copper to every household 60 years ago, why can't we figure out how to lay fiber to every household today?

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Entrope ( 68843 )

          60-year-old copper is a lot more forgiving to install than optical fiber. For POTS, the last mile only needs to provide 10 to 20 dB SNR over DC to 4 kHz. You can terminate them at the neighborhood cabinet with dead simple tools and almost no practice. Minimum bend radius is practically zero, and copper cables can be strung up without (much) risk of breaking in high winds. Fiber has none of that.

          Fundamentally, we know how to lay fiber everywhere. We just don't know how to do it at a cost that can recoup

        • One, the monopoly Bell system was broken up so everything is way more complicated. Long ago (WWI) the phone system was temporarily nationalized for national security reasons - with one of the reasons stating being that it's a natural monopoly anyway. The Universal Service Fund idea goes back a long way. The "Ozark Plan" was used to set long distance rates in a way that subsidized rural areas with higher prices for everyone. The government more or less forced the phone company to charge more in order to

          • "There is now no incentive to build unprofitable last mile. Carriers want government subsidies to pay for it all or they won't do it at all."

            Poor babies, they won't make as much. Last I heard, the Universal Service was a requirement to *legally* maintain their government-granted monopoly... no universal service, then you can be prosecuted any number of ways. Having bought off the regulators, I would be surprised if it ever came to that, though.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by kenh ( 9056 )

              I have two choices, either your interpretation is correct and the common carriers and ISPs are all clearly in violation of federal regulations, or you don't understand the mandate provided by the "universal service" requirement.

              I'm sorta leaning towards the latter, since to believe the former would mean that the past several administrations, Democrat and Republican, turned a blind-eye towards these blatant offenses.

              Here's better information on what "Universal Service" actually means (spoiler alert: it doesn

        • We Didn't. People in some mountainous areas do not have copper phone service available. I specifically recall parts of West Virginia and Maryland.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tomhath ( 637240 )
          I lived in a very rural mountain area back in the 1990's. Phone service was over fiber, but it was another ten years before they bothered to offer DSL. I doubt much phone service today is still over copper. Most of what this initiative will provide is an upgrade from 5 or 10MBS to "broadband".

    • Funding anything that's 25Mbps is more so an investment in political points and future votes.

      25 Mbps is a perfectly reasonable number to target. It's enough to watch a couple of low-bitrate HD streams at the same time, and it's enough to do pretty much anything you actually need to do. Surf, download updates, etc. It's not much of a goal, I'll admit, but it should be "enough" for some time. And it tends to be a lot easier to upgrade than to install in the first place.

      FttP is also a laudable goal, but a lot more costly in some cases.

      • 25 Mbps is a perfectly reasonable number to target. It's enough to watch a couple of low-bitrate HD streams at the same time

        Just to clarify, not correct, it’s enough for four 1080p streams or one 4K stream from any of the streaming services that offer them, so while I’d love for the goal to be higher, I agree that 25 Mbps is a decent “minimum threshold” target to set. Even accounting for advertised speeds not matching real world speeds, it’s still comfortably enough for any necessities—video conferencing, emails, training videos, file transfers, etc.—and a bit more.

        Frankly, gigabit is ov

        • In a perfect world, your 25 Mbps connection is enough for all that stuff. But what about when there's signal degradation, or surprise updates you thought you had disabled, or whatever? In practical terms, 25 Mbps is enough for a couple of users to not be significantly affected by one another unless they are into some heavy downloading, or for more users to have a mediocre experience. IME anything less than 6 Mbps or so per user and you can tell the difference during mundane operations.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jonwil ( 467024 )

      Fiber is great in areas where you have a decent population density.
      But do you really think it makes sense to run fiber all the way out to a farm in the middle of nowhere?

    • Think about how much fiber would have to be run in order to wire every household in a largely rural State. Now consider how much more efficient it would be if wired connections to remote rural households wasn't necessary. Then ask yourself why the State should spend shitloads of taxpayer dollars to connect people in the most inefficient way possible when something like Starlink can cover those remote households far more efficiently, unless government puts them out of business.

  • I live in rural Virginia, and this is a real problem. My daughter's only internet option is satellite. They don't even have cellular coverage where she lives, and even though they have access to land-line phone service, they do not have DSL. The local county has already provided grants for broadband which is supposed to be rolling out in the next year (it's looking like they are going with a wireless based broadband - the mountains are conducive to that because you can put the antennas on them and cover

    • Local infrastructure is better than national/global infrastructure in this case. Communities should really try to come up with a master plan for themselves— it doesn’t need to be especially technical, but at least enough data to cover template options to give coverage to all residents and businesses. Hopefully at some point the master plan is sufficient to either get grant money, solicit bids from commercial entities, or to phase in pathways as construction is performed for other projects.

      Pipe d

    • She can't use anything wireless if she lives in the National radio quiet zone [wikipedia.org]

      It also might be one of the reasons why cellular isn't available by her as well. That area requires wired only connections (in theory, even WiFi in the home is banned), and 700 million dollars might wire a couple counties but that's about it.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by kenh ( 9056 )

        All they need to do is use the money to buy faster DSLAMs to improve existing under-served homes - this money isn't about expanding access to unserved homes, it's about increasing speeds for existing customers.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by kenh ( 9056 )

        If she lives in the national radio quiet zone she can't use satellite service because it uses a terrestrial transmitter to send data to the Internet.

        Also, she'd know about the restriction if she lived there, it's not a secret.

  • Could be good ... (Score:3)

    by cascadingstylesheet ( 140919 ) on Saturday July 17, 2021 @09:59AM (#61591365) Journal

    ... though there's still something a bit cargo-cult-ish about it.

    Reminds me a bit of how we just had to put a TRS-80 in front of every student, so that ... er, something would happen. (Like playing a lot of Oregon Trail?)

    • To me it just sounds like a very expensive way to provide Starlink with inefficient, but subsidized, competition. Why spend billions (of my tax dollars) to solve something when there's already a solution being deployed?
  • Will the extra connectivity be used to kill people? [slashdot.org]
  • My family lives in rural south central Virginia. The only available internet service is DSL from CenturyLink that maxes out at 1.7Mbps down, 128Kbps up. Yes, you read that right, 128Kbps. And that's on a good day when it works, which is rare. If it rains, no service. If the wind blows, no service. If a gnat farts, no service. The DSL modem/router that is provided by CenturyLink is 10yo technology. It provides only 2.4GHz WiFi (no 5GHz bands) and CenturyLink says that's all they will provide. It has b

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by kenh ( 9056 )

      This money is targeted at your precise problem - speeding up service for existing customers at government expense. For you, it means CenturyLink will take the $3K/residence the state is offering and buy upgraded DSLAMs and then raise your monthly fee for the faster service.

      BTW, about that WiFi complaint, so what? You have, by your own admission, a 1.7 Mbps internet connection, why do you need better WiFi speed than 2.4 GHz offers? Based on your description of your residence, you can't really have an interfe

  • The numbers (Score:3)

    by kenh ( 9056 ) on Saturday July 17, 2021 @10:55AM (#61591497) Homepage Journal

    Take the $700 Million Virginia is putting toward this effort, divide it by the 233 thousand homes with "sub-broadband" service, that works out to about $3,000 per under-served residence.

    I have to believe that the money being spent will go to ISPs to build-up their infrastructure at taxpayer expense, putting the currently under-served homes in the position to pay more for faster access to the Internet. What a sweet deal for ISPs! Using free taxpayer funds to get higher payments from existing customers!

    Also, note - this money isn't being targeted on expanding access, it is about increasing the speed of existing customers.

    • A Starlink terminal costs $500 in beta -- and that's before mass production, which will likely cut that cost in half, at least.

      Meanwhile, the state of Virginia is going to spend 6 times as much per household "upgrading" existing service, and probably get 1/3rd the service level (if they're lucky). All the politically-connected firms with their hands in other people's pockets get to spend more borrowed money.

      Yeah, sounds about par for the course. The wheel just keeps on spinnin' round and round.

  • My wallet is tingling.

  • I have a place in the Blue Ridge Mountains and I'm betting there won't be real broadband here for a lot longer than 2024. Even Starlink doesn't offer service where I am. I'm only 24 miles from a major research university, but with the hills and the national forest and all the only thing available to me is a 4mbps fixed cellular service with a 200gb data cap which means no downloading new games and being very careful streaming. And that is a big step UP from the really shitty satellite service. .Having to

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