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Dems pitch $100B broadband plan

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21–30 of 96 posts

Re: Dems pitch $100B broadband plan

#21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like it or not, certain parts of the US are too rural/poor to justify even monopolists expanding internet service there. This will incentivize them to build in those areas.

Why doesn’t the government just build it? They do it with sewer lines, power lines, gas lines, water lines, but a little fiber is too much?

Actually they often don't. In the US, we had the Rural Electrification Act (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_Electrification_Act) that brought electricity into rural areas, but these places often still have wells, septic tanks, and gas tanks.

Re: Dems pitch $100B broadband plan

#24
Going to be a little while before I have the time to sit down and go through the full text of the bill.

I see a couple of mentions of dig once requirements, no mentions of one touch make ready rules. References to municipal Internet that seem at glance to mostly be about allocating funds, but again, I haven't been able to read over the bill in detail, so I'm very likely missing details. I can't find much mentioning repeals other than what appears to be (again, just skimming) caps on the lifeline program.

For anyone who has spent more time reading, what are the big takeaways from this -- beyond just allocating money for infrastructure?

I'm pretty skeptical of a bill that just adds a few regulations around consumer costs and devotes money to building infrastructure, because what I've seen is that the big players like Comcast swoop in, take the money, and then don't build the infrastructure. And then nobody punishes them. I don't really get the point of throwing money at this problem when we've already seen that established players can just take the money and run.

What would make me excited is repeals of regulations surrounding municipal wifi, or tangible paths to stop new competitors from getting sued out of existence.

Should I be excited about anything in this bill?

Re: Dems pitch $100B broadband plan

#25
post #4

> providing a $50 monthly discount on plans for low-income consumers This only serves to support the inflated pricing of the monopolists.

I believe the FCC has to approve internet prices already, so they wouldn't be able to just arbitrarily inflate the price. edit: Obviously I was mistaken, oops

From fcc.gov site

> Q: Does the FCC regulate the rates charged by Internet Service Providers (ISPs)?

> A: No. ISPs are considered "enhanced service providers" under FCC rules. The FCC does not regulate the rates that enhanced service providers charge to their subscribers.

Moreover, even if they could, we would need leadership at the top of FCC who would care about consumers. Right now, Mr Pai is available to dance for the highest bidder [1]

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tribune-media-m-a-sinclai...

Re: Dems pitch $100B broadband plan

#26
How feasible would it be for a city to build publicly available wireless access points so that anybody who wanted to run a WISP can do so? I'd really like the option to walk away from a commercial ISP entirely if it's too painful. Right now I just cancel my Internet for a few months and go to the library before calling Comcast again, but with the current and possible future pandemics that might not be a viable option.

https://startyourownisp.com/

Re: Dems pitch $100B broadband plan

#28
Is it worth it? Its always amazing to me the correlation between fiber and tech success. Eg SV doesn't have much fiber and lots of fiber rich cities and countries dont have much tech. Seems the best use for fiber is video streaming which isn't really that useful. I have 1 gig fiber and dont really notice the difference from 5/150 cable unless I'm uploading backups.

Re: Dems pitch $100B broadband plan

#29
post #5

Austere scholars of pork wrote a bill to pacify their corporate sponsors. The entire SpaceX's Starlink will cost a fraction of that. Now watch this $100B disappear without a trace, as usual.

As much as I would love to see it, Starlink will not come close to competing with the majority of incumbent ISP networks as it is currently designed. High-density urban areas (where most of the US population lives) cannot be well-served by Starlink due to bandwidth/RF limitations on their current satellites. They will however totally rout the incumbent satellite ISPs in rural/semi-rural areas.

But yes, you might as well light the $100B on fire and get a good bonfire out of it... that money is headed nowhere useful.

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