FCC votes to use phone subsidy fund for high-speed Internet

[bfdd]

I could see the redirecting of ALREADY ALLOCATED FUNDS to change towards "broadband" infrastructure vs traditional telephony. As long as it's not being tacked on as another/extra expense.

 

[Throckmorton]

food, clothes, electronics... all kinds of manufactured good you use travel via interstate... even in Hawaii. You benefit from a qood quality road system even if you do not drive on it. When I drive on an interstate, I pay for using it.

John Doe surfing porn in podunk, north dakota does not help anyone. So no federal subsidies for him to get internet.

All our goods come straight from China. Except food which comes from rural America where the FCC is also going to expand broadband... which is exactly my point.

The internet isn't just for porn. Why do you think offices all have broadband? It's just a part of doing business, and farmers and other rural Americans are businessmen.

 

[IronWing]

Yet another stream in the endless flow of money from the cities to the country and small towns to subsidize finger wagging moralizers who like to talk about independence and self reliance.

 

[chucky2]

OMG, is this another one...WHAT is going ON????

 

[spidey07]

It's very funny watching this forum talk about shit they have ZERO knowledge about. It's real funny. I get lots of laugh out loud moments.

1) But if they have broadband access the business will come!
---hey dumbasses, business doesn't use broadband, they use baseband and you can get it just about anywhere you want even in the middle of nowhere. SONET, learn it.
2) Just because you have "cheap" baseband be it SONET or metro, it all comes down to customers and density. I have zero interest in spending millions of dollars to give a few customers multimegabit services for less than 10K a month. Sorry, it's just business. I won't give you shit for free and I'm not going to spend millions of dollars for 1000 subs, it's a losing proposition for me
3) Enter government subsidies! They pay me to plug you in and spend the capital, but then I have to make money after the capital is gone...economics don't work unless I lose money on that investment and government makes up the difference. In essence I'm stealing.

The only model for rural areas is wireless and it's associated really bad performance and large upfront cost on customer prem. You get what you pay for, and I'm not paying for your antennas.

 

[Throckmorton]

It's very funny watching this forum talk about shit they have ZERO knowledge about. It's real funny. I get lots of laugh out loud moments.

1) But if they have broadband access the business will come!
---hey dumbasses, business doesn't use broadband, they use baseband and you can get it just about anywhere you want even in the middle of nowhere. SONET, learn it.
2) Just because you have "cheap" baseband be it SONET or metro, it all comes down to customers and density. I have zero interest in spending millions of dollars to give a few customers multimegabit services for less than 10K a month. Sorry, it's just business. I won't give you shit for free and I'm not going to spend millions of dollars for 1000 subs, it's a losing proposition for me
3) Enter government subsidies! They pay me to plug you in and spend the capital, but then I have to make money after the capital is gone...economics don't work unless I lose money on that investment and government makes up the difference. In essence I'm stealing.

The only model for rural areas is wireless and it's associated really bad performance and large upfront cost on customer prem. You get what you pay for, and I'm not paying for your antennas.

So does a farmer use "baseband"? Or is a farm not a business to you?

 

[Zorba]

How is high speed internet a basic necessity?

People asked the same question about Electricity and Telephone in the 30s...

Since I am sure most of you did not read the wiki link:

RUS traces its roots to the Rural Electrification Administration (REA), one of the New Deal agencies created under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The REA was created on May 11, 1935, with the primary goal of promoting rural electrification.[1] In the 1930s, the U.S. lagged significantly behind Europe in providing electricity to rural areas due to the unwillingness of power companies to serve farmsteads.

Private electric utilities argued that the government had no right to compete with or regulate private enterprise, despite many of these utilities' having refused to extend their lines to rural areas, claiming lack of profitability. Private power companies set rural rates four times as high as city rates.[2] Under the REA there was no direct government competition to private enterprise. Instead, REA made loans available to local electrification cooperatives, which operated lines and distributed electricity.

In 1939, 288,000 households had their electricity provided by rural electric cooperatives; most of these electric coops had applied for and received loans from REA. Harry A. Slattery was the administrator of REA from 1939–1944. In 1944, he resigned after a conflict with the Secretary of Agriculture.

In 1934, less than 11% of US farms had electricity. (In Germany and France that same year, nearly 90% of farms had electricity.) By 1942, nearly 50% of US farms had electricity; and by 1952, almost all US farms had electricity.[3]

In 1949, the REA became authorized to provide loans to rural telephone cooperatives.[4]

 

[Zorba]

It's very funny watching this forum talk about shit they have ZERO knowledge about. It's real funny. I get lots of laugh out loud moments.

1) But if they have broadband access the business will come!
---hey dumbasses, business doesn't use broadband, they use baseband and you can get it just about anywhere you want even in the middle of nowhere. SONET, learn it.

That's funny my in-laws own a business out in the country and they use DSL broadband. They could not perform their business without it. They actually had wireless for a long time, but it got very crappy, luckily they finally got DSL access.

 

[Cerb]

*For the folks that already have phone lines strung that aren't recent, and there are like multiple tens of millions of those - even in urban areas - the lines themselves cannot support broadband in the manner a rollout would be feasible to implement or maintain. Pair bonding will get you more, but, you've got to have the pairs. If say AT&T or Verizon could have already done this, don't you think they would have?

No. They were in fact given money, more than once, to improve their networks, but since no enforcement was applied, they just took it as profits.

*: It's not a matter of just running a crew (who's Union, so low to high $$$ per hour depending on crew size and OT) to put up new lines. You've got to fund the project, get the project staffed, the rollout and provisioning planned, procure the cable, (where and/or when necessary) work with local gov, have the employee bandwidth to string the cable, go through the task of stringing cable through what is going to be in many cases decades of growth/deterioration due to nature (trees, caved pull pipes, etc), and then once all that is accomplished, terminate the pairs at the - presumably - (and I'll use lets say AT&T U-verse as an example) new crossbox and VRAD (because F, if you're going to go through all that, mine as well get them up on the U-verse system so they've got advanced broadband speeds, VoIP, and video; oh, did we cover the new crossbox and VRAD going in???), once all that's done, condition them, run new drops to all the houses on the cable (well, in some cases, house on the cable), put in the new NID/iNID/whatever, provision, cut over customer with new service, run the homerun to where they'll have the RG located in their house/trailer/shack/barn/whatever, pray to god you get sync and then service, test their phones (because it'll be a Fed and thus legal No No to leave them with no phone service), explaining to them that now they're on VoIP (at the minimum, unless they wanted more service) that when the power goes out in BUFU they live in instead of the phones still working because power is supplied by the phone company that the battery backup AT&T is providing will supply power until it runs out...and then the phone dies, arguing with them, and then finally leaving. All that for potentially one dwelling.

Hence taxes to subsidize it. Also, again, you're exaggerating. Most of the time, it will be for several houses. Not the dozens or hundreds of an urban area, but usually not just one, either. If you're out in complete BFE, fine, go to Hell. That's easily <2% of the population. Most people in rural areas have every other piece of infrastructure needed by other modern people in the country, and most even live within easy driving distance of cities.

I love the country as much as anyone who does, I plan to move there ASAReasonablyP, however, even I realize I'll be giving up some suburban luxuries when I do so...and one of those things is likely wired broadband.

Not if it is built out. Now, such broadband won't be great. I know rural people who've gotten it thanks to municipal funding (OMG, they're already doing it by themselves in some places!), and 100KB/s is unheard of, but it's good enough to keep up with the modern web.

We're talking a lot of money to get Everyone onto some form of wired broadband...if we're going to do it, best I think to do what Phokus mentioned and do something like county/state service so each county/state can take out the Fed loan and be on the hook for paying for it. That way the people in those counties can dictate whether they want to pay for it or not: Some will, some won't. There is a place for the Fed to provide a framework of software suite and hardware standards and so all the states can have a cohesive infrastructure. Or, the Fed's can extend the same type of loans to the current wired providers and lock them down to be used only for rural broadband upgrading. Or.....pick another idea....no matter what idea though, it's going to be hella expensive to put in a for-the-future wired broadband solution for Everyone...

They could. But, that would be a mess. Why not just reallocate funds people are already paying in, whose current uses are becoming outmoded? This is not about new taxation, it's about making better use of money everyone has already agreed to take and spend, and have been doing so without incident for ages.

 

[chucky2]

No. They were in fact given money, more than once, to improve their networks, but since no enforcement was applied, they just took it as profits.

You can thank the Politicians for that, they must have "forgot" about those loopholes...

Hence taxes to subsidize it. Also, again, you're exaggerating. Most of the time, it will be for several houses. Not the dozens or hundreds of an urban area, but usually not just one, either. If you're out in complete BFE, fine, go to Hell. That's easily <2% of the population. Most people in rural areas have every other piece of infrastructure needed by other modern people in the country, and most even live within easy driving distance of cities.

No, I'm not really exaggerating. There would be a LOT of runs due to wire length that would literally be one house. Even if it's a few houses, so? That's still a sh1tton of cost to get those few houses wired for speedy broadband. And now I see we're going from Everyone to Not Everyone. P.S. There are Millions in rural areas that don't have 'every other piece of infra'. They have LPG tanks for gas, wells for water, septic for sewer. About the only thing they do probably have is via some really old electric lines and probably phone via some really old phone lines.

Not if it is built out. Now, such broadband won't be great. I know rural people who've gotten it thanks to municipal funding (OMG, they're already doing it by themselves in some places!), and 100KB/s is unheard of, but it's good enough to keep up with the modern web.

And that's how in fact I think it should happen. If the counties want to deploy wired broadband to the people in their county, that's awesome. More power to them. They can take out the government loan, so they are on the hook for it, and contract WhoeverTF they want to get the lines and systems run and setup. The cable co's, phone co's, private co's, they can all bid on each section to be done. And the best part is, the county - meaning the people of the county - can be on the hook for the QoS and the costs of that QoS. Great huh? I think so too...

They could. But, that would be a mess. Why not just reallocate funds people are already paying in, whose current uses are becoming outmoded? This is not about new taxation, it's about making better use of money everyone has already agreed to take and spend, and have been doing so without incident for ages.

Sure, but, those funds aren't going to be enough to cover each counties retrofit. Providing POTS is a whole easier ballgame than providing wired broadband.

Chuck

 

[kranky]

An investment of $5B takes us to 97-98% wired coverage for broadband. It would cost another $15-30b to cover the remaining 2-3%. Wireles is the only way to go to capture the last 2-3%.

It would be interesting to know how many additional homes will be reached for $5B. Then we could determine what it is costing per home.

 

[chucky2]

Yes, but, take the $5B, and then multiply it by 2-3x. It never costs what they estimate.

 

[Fern]

My thoughts:

1. I generally dislike taxing one thing (LD telephone) to pay for something else. It distorts costs and I hate these 'little taxes' the fed gov keeps inventing.

2. I think investing in our infrastructure is good. We've got it developed in the more urban areas, now it's time to roll it out to the more rural. Everyone will benefit.

3. The cost seems pretty reasonable (if they make that last few &#37; use satellite - per amounts in post #73 above).

Fern

 

[Fern]

Therefore city folk should have to pay for rural folk's Internet infrastructure?

This is not city people paying rural folk's infrastructure. It's not like there is some new tax if you live within some city limits.

It's tax on people who use long distance telephone services, I'm pretty sure rural people use that.

I'm not sure what you're referring to when you say "rural", but google tells me that only 8% of people live in large cities (1 million or more). So don't worry about it, the other 92% will be paying the bulk of the tab, not you big city types anyway.

(US Census figures were no help, they consider as little as 2,500 people to be "urban". I think most of us would feel a place that small is rural, not urban.)

Fern

 

[charrison]

It would be interesting to know how many additional homes will be reached for $5B. Then we could determine what it is costing per home.

From what I have read, somewhere between 80-90% of the population has access to cable, dsl or both. So $5B would buy about a 7-17% increase in availability.

 

[Fern]

From what I have read, somewhere between 80-90% of the population has access to cable, dsl or both. So $5B would buy about a 7-17% increase in availability.

US Census says about 115 million households in teh USA for 2010

http://www.census.gov/prod/1/pop/p25-1129.pdf

I'm coming up with about $200-$400 per household. Not much when that one-time cost is amortized over a period years.

Fern

 

[PrinceofWands]

From what I have read, somewhere between 80-90% of the population has access to cable, dsl or both. So $5B would buy about a 7-17% increase in availability.

Just remember that sometimes 'access' is misleading. I have dsl, and it sucks sweaty donkey balls. You can only get 1.5/768, which is too low for most modern uses of networks such as streaming netflix. Moreover, we've been down as much as up for the last year+ because the infrastructure is so degraded and service so oversold.

 

[werepossum]

Our local electric utility, the Electric Power Board of Chattanooga, is a community-owned utility. They got into the Internet and telephone business for one smart reason: subsidizing their fiber optics metering project. Reading meters is slow and expensive, especially in rural America, and carries a fair amount of liability in employee malfeasance and in employee safety. So over five years they are replacing every meter with a digital pulse meter and running fiber optic cable to every customer. After all, installing fiber optic cable is not much more expensive than installing copper, and you have much less attenuation. This lets them use their regular linemen and vehicles to install fiber optic cable when not needed for other purposes, and they use all that extra bandwidth for telephone and cable television. It provides some much-needed competition for cable and telco-based phone and Internet companies and leverages the existing facilities and rights-of-way quite nicely while cutting significant costs for the EPB.

While not every electrical utility has the capability or the desire to go into telephone and/or Internet service providing, every electrical utility has the same expense in meter reading. The additional bandwidth above that small amount required by the pulse meters could easily be leased to existing or new telephone and/or Internet service providers - preferably more than one - to provide broadband access to anyone with electrical service. To me this makes a lot of sense. If rural broadband must be done, let's kill two birds with one stone.

 

[Hacp]

Too expensive. Take the cost of the program and multiply it by 5. Thats what it will probably cost the taxpayers. Is investment in infastructure good? Yes. At some point you get diminishing returns however. We are past that point.

 

[techs]

Great idea.
No one seems to remember that it was government laws like this that gave us the best phone system in the world and helped us to rise to the number one economic power.

Sometimes you have to subsidize "utilities", which is what the internet is today.

 

[DrPizza]

People can choose to live where they want. There are pros and cons to living in each area. Sometimes those cons are really pros. But why should I have to pay via taxes to provide basic infrastructure for your choice to live where you live. I'm not saying that you shouldn't be able to have it at all. You should pay for it. If its too costly though, then maybe you should consider moving to where its more affordable or not have it at all.

I live in a rural area. We have virtually zero crime. Why should I pay taxes to subsidize your police and all the other services that are provided to urban areas? There's a lot of funding for the "arts." We don't have the "arts" out here in the rural areas. Why should my taxes subsidize all that crap in the urban areas. We don't have any illegal aliens out here in the rural areas. Why should I pay taxes to subsidize their medical care so that they can continue making your fast food for you, mowing your lawns, providing manual labor, in urban areas? Etc.

 

[chucky2]

Be easy, her209 is becoming a Republican....

 

[charrison]

Just remember that sometimes 'access' is misleading. I have dsl, and it sucks sweaty donkey balls. You can only get 1.5/768, which is too low for most modern uses of networks such as streaming netflix. Moreover, we've been down as much as up for the last year+ because the infrastructure is so degraded and service so oversold.

I wont disagree, dsl is highly dependent on line conditions. Copper is in place to serve dsl to rural areas, but the loops length are going to be so long it probably is not worth it. 3g/4g will probably better serve these areas.

However dsl will not have bandwidth caps and has lower latency.

 

[UberNeuman]

I don't find that high-speed access should be just given out, however basic access should be...

 

[charrison]

I don't find that high-speed access should be just given out, however basic access should be...

What is basic access and what is high speed?

384/384 would probably provide basic access and reasonable realiabity for many on very long copper loops.