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The Internet Communications United States

ISPs Seeking Government Handouts Try To Avoid Offering Low-Cost Broadband (arstechnica.com) 20

Posted by msmash from the daylight-robbery dept.
Internet service providers are pushing back against the Biden administration's requirement for low-cost options even as they are attempting to secure funds from a $42.45 billion government broadband initiative. The Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program, established by law to expand internet access, mandates that recipients offer affordable plans to eligible low-income subscribers, a stipulation the providers argue infringes on legal prohibitions against rate regulation. ISPs claim that the proposed $30 monthly rate for low-cost plans is economically unfeasible, especially in hard-to-reach rural areas, potentially undermining the program's goals by discouraging provider participation.
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ISPs Seeking Government Handouts Try To Avoid Offering Low-Cost Broadband More

ISPs Seeking Government Handouts Try To Avoid Offering Low-Cost Broadband

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  • If you screw over poor people to do it, then you get an even bigger bonus. And, if you do it while taking free taxpayer money, then you'll get an even larger bonus! Corporate responsibility at its finest.

    • The ISP solution here is broken: "We want your money handout that comes with stipulations, but could you please remove the stipulations?" If they feel that even with the extra money that it is infeasible to offer low cost broad band, then the solution is that ISPs shall not take the money. Strings are attached to the 'free' money.

      There's the carrot versus stick approach to get the donkey to move. The donkey must move to get the carrot, if it doesn't then it can only blame itself if the stick option is co

      • Re:Make the next quarter look good (Score:5, Informative)

        by Revek ( 133289 ) on Friday July 26, 2024 @05:17PM (#64658704)
        "We want your money handout that comes with stipulations, but could you please remove the stipulations?"

        Its what they have been getting. They get money and don't build a single mile of phyical plant with the money.
        There is no oversight of how its used and no rules to enforce it. Other than some easily dismissed guidelines.
        I've seen it more than once working for a ISP. Its no surprise they keep pushing to not keep their word.
        They never have kept it once. Its always just one big cash grab that leave smaller ISP's out.
        When you finally lock out the big guys and only give it to ISP's with fewer than 30,000 subs you will see a change.
        Alternatively you could put people on the ground with a thumb on the pay.
        If they got paid after 100% completing and only after 100% completing the builds you might see the money being used for something other than padding the bottom line.
        Even from AT&Fee but so far they just throw money at them and watch them do nothing.
        All the while pretending they did.
  • Honestly, I just want the option of low-cost narrowband. If I want to pretend it's 1992 and pay ten bucks a month to connect exclusively to low-bandwidth web servers also pretending that it's 1992 and that they're BBSes and that .txt is an image file format, I should get to.

  • Easy solution (Score:5, Insightful)

    by smooth wombat ( 796938 ) on Friday July 26, 2024 @03:56PM (#64658536) Journal

    Stop leeching off the government and don't take the money.

    You can't have it both ways. If you want the money so your quarterly numbers look good you have to provide low-cost broadband to those who qualify. If you're not going to do that you don't get the money.

  • Why the hell hasn't this shit been solved in over 25 years of ISPs pulling this crap? Politicians, ISPs, and government agencies can go fuck themselves.

    • They steal your money and give it to their friends.

      They use all kinds of layers of abstraction to fool you but it's just organized crime.

  • It's been discussed over and over again over so many years about how other countries have internet that's so much more affordable and so much a better value that it's not even worth getting into anymore. U.S. ISPs are shitty and greedy and screw over everyone. There are of course exceptions but the big ones (AT&T, Verizon, Comcast) are nigh-unto monopolies and gouge everyone. They, among so many other corporations, need to have their chains yanked hard.

    • they are also the 4th largest country by landmass, and the bottom quarter of the world in population density. I am not on the ISPs side by any means, but they kind of have to suck just by sheer economics and physics. Comparing them to south korea or the like is kind of disingenuous

      • If it was only the rural areas with horrid speeds that might be a reason. However, even the major cities with high population density have crap service compared to many other countries.

        • but its not the ISP who you should fault fault, They are just doing market economics in capitalism. Minimum viable product, maximum profit. Venture capitalists and the like jacking off into their money pits.

          Blame should be squarely on the Govenment for not making it a public service, like water, and regulating it heavily.

          Everywhere people cite for having "better" internet, they either invested later and therefore got better technology, or had huge (proper) government funding and/or municipality owned ISP.

  • Not illegal (Score:3)

    by sjames ( 1099 ) on Friday July 26, 2024 @06:47PM (#64658892) Homepage Journal

    There is no rate regulation, this is the Feds offering to pay the ISPs to voluntarily offer low cost service. If they don't want to, then no deal, no money. It's that simple.

    Funny that their sense of entitlement to the handout is so strong, they think they can call the attached strings illegal regulations.

  • ... against rate regulation.

    Money for doing something is a crime so give us money for doing nothing.

    • Let me guess, next you're probably going to want your chicks for free.

      • Let me guess, next you're probably going to want your chicks for free.

        Well, at least I appreciated the joke! Whoever modded you down has no sense of humour and/or is entirely ignorant of 80's hit music.

  • This has been written about multiple times yet I've never seen any comment about government actually looking into it. The claim, with mountains of evidence, that taxpayers have paid 400 million+ to get free fiber to the door. Universal coverage open to any instead of the surviving large ISPs.
    https://newnetworks.com/ShortS... [newnetworks.com]

    • By 2006, 86 million households should have already been wired with a fiber (and coax), wire, capable of at least 45 Mbps in both directions, and could handle 500+ channels.
    • Universal Broadband: This wiring was to be done in rich and poor neighborhoods, in rural, urban and suburban areas equally.
    • Open to ALL Competition: These networks were to be open to ALL competitors, not a closed-in network or deployed only where the phone company desired.

  • Isn't this fund the one paid for by fees that the Fifth Circuit court have found unconstitutional in a recent ruling?

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