NYC to Offer Free Broadband to 300,000 Public Housing Residents (bloomberg.com) 74
New York City is partnering with Charter and Altice to provide free high-speed internet and basic cable TV service to about 300,000 residents of public housing. Bloomberg reports: Called "Big Apple Connect," the program aims to bridge the digital divide between wealthier residents and lower-income people who lack the tools necessary for remote learning, access to health care and job opportunities, city officials said. An estimated 30% to 40% of people who live in buildings run by the New York City Housing Authority lack broadband, according to the cable providers. The city plans to have the service available in more than 200 NYCHA buildings by the end of 2023.
The program differs from a previous short-term promotion by Altice's Optimum and Charter's Spectrum that gave New York City students free internet service after the pandemic hit. Some parents said they were duped into signing up for paid subscriptions after the promotion ended. Under a three-year agreement with the providers, New York will pick up the cost at about $30 per household. The city is in talks with a third major cable TV carrier in the city, Verizon, to join the program. NYCHA residents enrolled in Big Apple Connect will still be able to use the federal Affordable Connectivity Program benefit to save money on their cell phone bills and provide discount of up to $30 per month toward internet and cellular data service, city officials said.
The program differs from a previous short-term promotion by Altice's Optimum and Charter's Spectrum that gave New York City students free internet service after the pandemic hit. Some parents said they were duped into signing up for paid subscriptions after the promotion ended. Under a three-year agreement with the providers, New York will pick up the cost at about $30 per household. The city is in talks with a third major cable TV carrier in the city, Verizon, to join the program. NYCHA residents enrolled in Big Apple Connect will still be able to use the federal Affordable Connectivity Program benefit to save money on their cell phone bills and provide discount of up to $30 per month toward internet and cellular data service, city officials said.
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This is common and grammatically correct conversational English. Most native speakers know this.
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How nice from them! Do they also allow migrant form buses to stay in the city, unlike they did in Martha's Vineyard?
Read it again and tell me how that is grammatically correct.
And everyone else? (Score:2, Insightful)
How about the hard-working taxpayers who pay all the bills for these various giveaways? What do they get? The privilege of paying Time Warner over $100/mo for throttled and capped internet? Plus a bunch of additional taxes on the bill that pay for among other things, free internet and phones for those who already get everything else in life for free.
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Yeah but the median taxpayer has money for other stuff that the poor can't afford. For example dining out, house in a decent neighborhood, going on vacations, a decent car, better health insurance, etc.
EBT (Score:2)
EBT may be used in some restaurants. Those on public assistance may eat out.
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Uhh .. yeah, which restaurants? Do they take EBT at Benu? It will be the only meal that month.
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Residents of NYC public housing are not "the poor." They are employed, middle-class people.
The rent is subsidized but is still way more than a poor family could afford.
The poor are living in shelters, on the street, or somewhere other than NYC.
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Residents of NYC public housing are not "the poor." They are employed, middle-class people.
The rent is subsidized but is still way more than a poor family could afford.
The poor are living in shelters, on the street, or somewhere other than NYC.
Wait... are you asserting that there are no poor people in the NYC projects?
Re: And everyone else? (Score:1)
To the rich liberal elite, everyone is poor.
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The ability to get by on only a single job. Someone's going to pipe in and claim they should get off their lazy asses, without realizing that most are working, trying to get work, or working multiple jobs for low pay. Very often the most physically demanding jobs pay the least, and only the highest paying jobs lets the worker slack off.
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In what way? Which failed red state policy is subsidized by blue states? And before you say farm subsidies, those are extremely bipartisan.
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Private school vouchers, privatized prisons, welfare money diverted to build volleyball facilities...you know...that kind of thing.
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Nice straw man. Don't let it get wet.
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Freakin' psychotic. W and Cheney signed UN papers that said we had invaded Iraq. And the invasion of Afghanistan... I suppose you missed all the news that said 3/4s of the 9/11 hijackers were FROM SAUDI ARABIA. But, oil, y'know.....
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Every red state gets more in federal dollars than they put in. Blue states put more in than they get back.
Facts.
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More of a trend than a hard rule
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Should the Blue states also start complaining equally about how their federal taxes subsidize the failed policies of Red states?
No, because of Simpson's Paradox [wikipedia.org].
Blue states subsidize red states, but that does NOT mean that blue taxpayers subsidize red freeloaders.
What is actually happening is that Republican taxpayers in blue states are subsidizing poor Democrats in red states.
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It's because the US is highly diverse regionally. We have rich states and poor states. If this was the EU then the conservatives would be yelling that we shouldn't allow in places like Alabama to join because it will bring down the economy, then the bleeding hearts will say that those are people too, etc. But we are all the same country and so the economy gets smooshed together. Historically, the industrial revolution took hold most strongly in the north whereas the south remained more agricultural, but
Re:And everyone else? (Score:5, Interesting)
How about you bitch at billionaires who don't pay any taxes at all, rather than whining when a few bucks get thrown at people who will probably use reasonable internet access to improve their lot and become contributors to society?
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How about you bitch at billionaires who don't pay any taxes at all, rather than whining when a few bucks get thrown at people who will probably use reasonable internet access to improve their lot and become contributors to society?
Flamebait me all you want... Karma available to burn... but almost no one in public housing will be using the Internet to "improve their lot and become contributors to society". There'll be lots of uploading cell phone videos of street fights to World Star Hip-Hop, and very little of things like taking community college courses online. If the taxpayers of NYC want to shell out money for this, fine, none of my business. But let's not pretend that it's going to spark some education or economic revolution in t
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Wow, you're actually trying to say that having stable home internet access brings no economic benefit. That's pretty wild.
Re: And everyone else? (Score:2)
They just going to view porn and watch movies man.
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Not accusing you of anything, but I've noticed that commentators on the right often use this argument. Anything socialist like this is automatically bad, but since a lot of people think it's a good thing they switch to arguing that it's *not socialist enough*, it should apply to everyone.
Likely it saves more money than it costs, because the cost of poverty is quite high.
Re: And everyone else? (Score:2)
How come then that in cities around the world where these programs have been implemented since the 70s, poverty and vagrancy is rising exponentially.
Welfare programs have been the primary contributor to inter-generational poverty.
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In places where programmes like these have been implemented over long periods of time, poverty has decreased.
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The privilege of paying Time Warner over $100/mo for throttled and capped internet?
Very unlikely. Running cable to every unit in a building is cheap.
I owned a condo that had universal (no opt-out) Internet through the HOA, and it cost $15/mo for 200 Mb.
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When you're right, you're right. What the city should be doing is providing internet to all residents at cost, and the for-profit ISPs should all be shown the way out of town.
Unfortunately, that's not going to happen, because we have to let capitalism shit up the landscape for the profits of some already rich fucks who make deals to cut jobs and service levels while golfing and call it work.
Re: And everyone else? (Score:2)
If it were not for capitalism, nobody would have high speed internet, but even if we did, we wouldn't be able to use it for anything since there would be virtually no sites and no apps of any real consequence.
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If it were not for capitalism, nobody would have high speed internet
If it were not for capitalism, everybody would have high speed mesh networked internet by now. It's much cheaper (without capitalism, read: easier) to provide than what we have now.
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If it wasn't for capitalism nobody would have anything. Odds are you would still be squatting in a cave wondering what you were going to hit over the head for dinner. The problem you people don't realize is capitalism is the basic system that props up everything. Bartering, trading of goods for someone else's good, that is basic capitalism.
Eveny your precious socialistic systems are propped up by what? Say it with me, "capitalism."
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If it wasn't for capitalism nobody would have anything.
Found the person who doesn't know what capitalism means. Hint: You can have currency without having capitalism. HTH, HAND.
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Incorrect. Any form of trade is capitalism. I have something, you want it. You have something, that I want. We come together and trade for it. That the very basic of capitalism. All economic systems evolve from this very basic system. Period.
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Incorrect. Any form of trade is capitalism.
That is literally completely wrong. There is no excuse for you to be this wrong when you can simply go look up the definition of the word, which you provably do not know.
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I can see there is no point in trying to reason with you. So, we are just going to proceed from here with the fact that you clearly have no clue what you are talking about. Feel free to continue to respond and rant but I'm moving on.
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I can see there is no point in trying to reason with you.
Sure, as long as you're speaking a made-up language that none of the rest of us are using, there is no point in us attempting to communicate.
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I read a comment about you a few weeks back, an now I can see it true. The comment went something like this.
> Talking to drinkypoo is like talking to two different people. One is intelligent and the other is like trying to have a conversation with a gibbering gibbon.
That is of course paraphrased. But basically, it is correct. Sometimes you are rational, other times you are a moron. Fortunately, I don't have to suffer the ramblings of fools for long.
*plonk*
Re: And everyone else? (Score:2)
No they wouldn't.
There would be no interest in investing in such a thing.
No interest in investing in any content and put on it.
No way of govt funding it either, since, you know, the govt gets its funds by taxing activities based on capitalism.
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I knew someone would hate this instantly. Are you a resident of New York? If you are, talk to your local representatives. If not, then butt out!
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I missed the part about where Slashdot was limited to NY residents. Or even the part about certain discussions being limited to residents of certain areas. Who the fuck are you to gatekeep who is allowed to comment where?
Fresh meat for social media! (Score:2)
Tracking? (Score:2)
Beware of free stuff from the government. That Free is never free.
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Beware of free stuff from the government. That Free is never free.
The people that get "free stuff" really don't care if the government (or Verizon, or Google, or Apple) is watching them.
If it uses... (Score:5, Insightful)
matter, energy, and/or human labor, then it cannot possibly be "free" - even slave labor has a cost (guards, food, water, etc), so slavery is not even an escape clause from this economic principle.
Therefore, the headline is dishonest - this is just another wealth redistribution scheme that takes by force from the productive people and provides to the unproductive, usually as a bribe to get their political support. One thing the poor have that the wealthy and powerful want is a VOTE, and that's being bought here, with other people's money
This stuff is bad for industry - companies get used to providing products and services to people other than the ones paying - which means they do not feel the pressures to provide high quality, to be responsive to end users, or to control costs. Eventually this creates companies dependent on these contracts and with employees whose jobs become a concern of politicians - so these programs become politically protected, and further clog the economic and political arteries of the nation.
This stuff is not even good for the recipients - as people in power handout "freebies", the people getting the loot feel more comfortable with their stations in society and are actually perversely de-incentivised to work to increase their skills (which would increase their chances for better careers), and better raise and educate their kids (thereby breaking future generations of their families from the cycle of poverty).
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um (Score:2)
You proceed from a false premise... it's impossible to move wealth from people who do not have it.
The "stupendously rich" cannot have gotten there by stealing from people who had nothing. Most of the super-rich are not the "idle rich" who inherited everything - the offspring of the very wealthy often (obviously not always) do not have the skills of their parents and squander the wealth in a couple of generations. The majority of the super-rich got there by creating some product or service - Gates, Zuckerber
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Yeah, people never seem to understand that there is no such thing as "free" money for programs such as these.
As a reminder, here's a quick "grant money" to English translator:
If it's paid for with a state government grant, it's your state tax dollars paying for it.
If it's paid for with a federal grant, it's your federal tax dollars paying for it.
If the UN or the World Bank is paying for it, some other countries (but probably mostly the US) federal tax dollars are paying for it.
If the Gates Foundation is pay
Last chance for cable TV? (Score:2)
Big Apple Connect (Score:2)
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My wallet hurts (Score:1)
1) The Republicans are taking your children's money.
2) The Democrats are taking your children's money.
Meanwhile, in the real world ... (Score:2)
But what it will actually bridge is access to PornHub and social media.
Affordable Connectivity Program is BS (Score:3)
Gotta have it (Score:2)
It's becoming ever more lucrative to be poor these days.
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