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Cities will sue FCC to stop $2B giveaway to wireless carrier

arstechnica.com

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Re: Cities will sue FCC to stop $2B giveaway to wireless carrier

#11

Post by devhead »

stefan_ wrote: post #7

This seems like a perfectly reasonable policy. The fear mongering by the cities how the power grid will collapse if they can't charge large fees and delay as they see fit.. not convincing. Giving cities control over this is just a NIMBY dream.

I think it's up to the city, it's their pole. The federal government is coming in and saying there's a new price per pole and giving that discount to the ISP's, when will the people get their discount?

how about we barter, we'll give a smaller range (a fixed rate really isn't a good reality) and then the ISP's have to disband their lobbying efforts for ten years. Also they need to undo each state and local law they had put in place to prevent city and states from creating their own local ISP service. Oh, and Pai has to quit and be banned from working at any ISP for at least two decades.

i'll be here waiting with my full support to these terms.

Re: Cities will sue FCC to stop $2B giveaway to wireless carrier

#12

Post by blaisio »

At first I was torn on this issue, but then I realized that really it makes no sense for the FCC to be telling cities what they're allowed to charge for this. It is sort of like the federal government preventing a city from charging taxes. This doesn't seem like an interstate issue so it doesn't seem like the federal government should be able to regulate it.

Re: Cities will sue FCC to stop $2B giveaway to wireless carrier

#14

Post by bluGill »

maxsilver wrote: post #8
joshstrange wrote: post #6

I went into this expecting to side 100% with the cities but after reading it I'm divided. I completely understand wanting to cut through some of the government bureaucracy and impose limits on time and cost of putting up these devices but at the same time then umber feel rather low. That said it seems very wasteful that our 2-3 phone carriers are all going to be putting up new equipment, I'm not sure if there is any…

It's not quite as wasteful as it might seem. Even if there was just one national carrier that owned all of T-Mobile/AT&T/Verizon, they'd still need close to the current amount of RRUs + gear + backhaul, to support the same number of total users on all of the various spectrum bands being used. There would be some maintenance/cost savings. But not a huge night-and-day difference. -- For what it's worth, Portland charge…

Why are cities owning a pole used just by one company though? The only reason for a city to own the poles is so "everyone" can use them - electric, cable tv, telephone... The combined rent from them all should pay for the pole, not the rent from one.

I don't know what a fair rent is though.

Re: Cities will sue FCC to stop $2B giveaway to wireless carrier

#15

Post by joebubna »

Am I the only one concerned that they are rolling this tech out without further study? To quote the IEEE:

"Millimeter waves are broadcast at frequencies between 30 and 300 gigahertz, compared to the bands below 6 GHz that were used for mobile devices in the past."

In 2011 the WHO (World Health Organization) panel of scientists decided to label Cell Phones as possibly cancer causing after a review of the available studies: http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/05/31/who.cell.phones/index.h...

This past year the department within the US government responsible for studying toxic effects released a preliminary report showing an increase in brain and heart cancer rates within male mice exposed to 2G and 3G wireless radiation: https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/results/areas/cellphones/index.htm...

That's not to mention the personal stories of cell-phone induced brain cancers that have been circulating since the 80s. For instance: my brother-in-law's dad died of brain cancer, and he was a business man who was on his cell phone almost 24/7.

Exposing the majority of the US population to higher frequency waves than the ones already under suspicion of causing cancer seems like a bad call without further study.

Re: Cities will sue FCC to stop $2B giveaway to wireless carrier

#16

Post by specialist »

hcurtiss wrote: post #13

The headline is terribly misleading. There's a good argument that localities are preventing competition in the broadband space with these fees. Here's a good Wired article from back in 2013: https://www.wired.com/2013/07/we-need-to-stop-focusing-on-ju...

Berin Szóka, Matthew Starr, Jon Henke -- the authors of that opinion piece -- also oppose net neutrality.

Their "think tank" organization TechFreedom is funded by the wireless industry and the Koch brothers. TechFreedom has also been (still is?) a member of ALEC.

Jon Henke is a Republican political consultant and self-described "neo-libertarian". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Henke

https://twitter.com/BerinSzoka

Re: Cities will sue FCC to stop $2B giveaway to wireless carrier

#17

Post by hcurtiss »

specialist wrote: post #16
hcurtiss wrote: post #13

The headline is terribly misleading. There's a good argument that localities are preventing competition in the broadband space with these fees. Here's a good Wired article from back in 2013: https://www.wired.com/2013/07/we-need-to-stop-focusing-on-ju...

Berin Szóka, Matthew Starr, Jon Henke -- the authors of that opinion piece -- also oppose net neutrality. Their "think tank" organization TechFreedom is funded by the wireless industry and the Koch brothers. TechFreedom has also been (still is?) a member of ALEC. Jon Henke is a Republican political consultant and self-described "neo-libertarian". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Henke https://twitter.com/BerinS…

So, do you have any thoughts on the substance?

Re: Cities will sue FCC to stop $2B giveaway to wireless carrier

#18

Post by stonogo »

hcurtiss wrote: post #17
specialist wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Berin Szóka, Matthew Starr, Jon Henke -- the authors of that opinion piece -- also oppose net neutrality. Their "think tank" organization TechFreedom is funded by the wireless industry and the Koch brothers. TechFreedom has also been (still is?) a member of ALEC. Jon Henke is a Republican political consultant and self-described "neo-libertarian". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Henke https://twitter.com/BerinS…

So, do you have any thoughts on the substance?

Sure: the regulation in question removes the cities' ability to oversee the installation of the hardware. Currently, microcell installation in many places requires a city engineer to sign off on the mechanical part -- can the pole support this load, is the mount going to stand up to stormwinds, and so forth. The FCC edict turns it into a free-for-all: this is irresponsible.

Re: Cities will sue FCC to stop $2B giveaway to wireless carrier

#19

Post by rayiner »

This article is off the reservation. 5G is the best hope for actual competition in broadband. By dramatically decreasing deployment costs (compared to wireline), it will enable several competing providers in places that have de facto monopolies today. Putting up red tape is not the way to go about fostering competition.

There are differing views on the appropriate level of regulation for uncompetitive markets and natural monopolies. But almost nobody sane would prefer a regulated market to an actually competitive one. Deregulation of industries like trucking, air freight, and airlines, where there are several competing providers, has proven to be a massively positive thing compared to how things were in the 1930s-1960s. 5G offers that possibility here--the possibility to abandon hairy questions about how to regulate because competitive obviates the need to regulate. Opposing that is madness.

Re: Cities will sue FCC to stop $2B giveaway to wireless carrier

#20

Post by [deleted] »

ohithereyou wrote: post #10

I am stunned that the FCC is not conditioning the receipt of this money with targets (phased giveaway where completion of one task triggers the next payment) and agreement by the mobile carriers to have their rate plans regulated until this money is repaid. If you're going to use government money paid to private corporations to do this then the private corporations should pay the government back out of the regulated…

[deleted]
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