91–100 of 114 posts
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SpaceX's planned satellite network could fix that eventually… if it's ever actually constructed.
OneWeb is in the lead, they actually have funding and launch contracts.
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Infrastructure, whether broadband or highways, has positive externalities that are hard for infrastructure builders to capture, so the free market under-invests in infrastructure. However, government investment in infrastructure also is distortionary and needs to be considered in every instance. For example, it's great that we can get products delivered overnight from Amazon. However, as you point out, that is effect…
In theory Amazon/FedEx pay for their share of road maintenance costs, via gas taxes. In reality, gas taxes apparently only cover about half of such costs (overall) [1], but that still doesn't sound like a huge distortion to me. [1] http://www.frontiergroup.org/reports/fg/do-roads-pay-themsel...
Honest question. Is there something better/faster than fibre that they should be laying instead? Seems like fiber is just enough to catch up, but we'd rather get ahead.
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I'm asking about the economic benefits to GDP of rolling out broadband to the places that don't yet have it, considering that they can get satellite.
There are a lot of things you can't do on satellite internet right now. VOIP is the most obvious example.
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This would only apply to projects receiving federal funding, which I don't imagine includes most subdivisions. Most likely just interstates, state highways, and maybe county highways. That wouldn't necessarily get fiber through your front door, but it should get it far enough out to provide a viable high speed option for rural households that are currently stuck with dial up or satellite.
They can make taking federal highway funds contingent on adopting a dig once policy for locally funded projects. This is how the speed limit and drinking age was standardized across the country.
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I think the idea is to get fiber into the last mile. Vast parts of the country are still under construction. New subdivisions are being built, and people are moving there from established northeastern/midwestern states. Requiring conduit to be put underground as you build the roads for a new subdivision, for example, would dramatically reduce the costs to deploy fiber in these places.
> think the idea is to get fiber into the last mile. Vast parts of the country are still under construction. New subdivisions are being built Such an interesting subject is this; we have freaking building codes, regulations and requirements - esp re: elec and structure and such... We need to take a step back and make a freaking INFRA code that requires what the data line requirements to a building should be. DATA SHO…
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> think the idea is to get fiber into the last mile. Vast parts of the country are still under construction. New subdivisions are being built Such an interesting subject is this; we have freaking building codes, regulations and requirements - esp re: elec and structure and such... We need to take a step back and make a freaking INFRA code that requires what the data line requirements to a building should be. DATA SHO…
I think the breakdown should roughly be: developers must wire out to the property line (and if they're building a subdivision, out to the main road). The county should wire anywhere a public road is being built and bring glass to some reasonably convenient place (because otherwise developers would have nothing to connect the other end of the line to). Private companies should handle everything that's not dumb glass.…
They exist because the US continues to insist on spreading responsibility out of thousands of local governments instead of having a single set of rules and standards for everyone.
But who owns the infrastructure? Would the government own it? Would the municipalities? Is this just one way for the NSA to be able to tap into the major backbone now by mandating this type of stuff? Don't get me wrong, I'm all for it, but what are the downsides to this? Where is that explored?
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According to some sensationalist stories I've read, it's only ~10X what we're spending to protect/transport President Trump on his weekend vacations.
What does this contribute to the conversation?
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> There is literally no reason why, today, we don't have at least 50/10 to every goddamned home in America. Every goddamned home, no matter how far you are out in the sticks. Because the country is huge, and building adequate backhaul to sparsely populated areas is very expensive. > This is a drain on our economy every second we aren't working towards this actually rather easy to achieve goal. I find this sort of arg…
Every home is probably overkill. But every home that is also connected to a road, electricity, water and sewage should also have decent internet. Laying fiber for 50/10 everywhere is expensive, but so is building roads everywhere.