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Dems pitch $100B broadband plan

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51–60 of 96 posts

Re: Dems pitch $100B broadband plan

#51

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

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.

But they won't. We've already done that before.

Re: Dems pitch $100B broadband plan

#52

We already paid for nationwide broadband installation several times by now. How many more funds do we need to siphon to major corporations that still don’t build anything?

Wait, really?

What happened to the money? Is it not contingent on delivery of the completed product? Or was it intentionally badly written in order just to funnel money/pork to big donors?

Can you provide some citations? I'm not finding anything with a quick search.

Re: Dems pitch $100B broadband plan

#53

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?

ISPs will sue saying the government should not compete with business.

Re: Dems pitch $100B broadband plan

#54
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I definitely think we shouldn't give another dime in tax credits to broadband providers - a signed contract with aggressive enforcement provisions would be in order, and if the current major ISPs don't want to build the infrastructure we should find someone else who will.

> current major ISPs don't want to build the infrastructure we should find someone else who will. There are no such people. Both Baltimore and Los Angeles put out bids asking for companies willing to build fiber networks on certain terms. Nobody volunteered. E.g. https://la.curbed.com/2018/1/9/16863352/free-internet-los-an... > Los Angeles officials planned to build up a network through a public-private partnership,…

why though?

Re: Dems pitch $100B broadband plan

#55
post #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 w…

High density urban areas are well served by existing infrastructure. Suburbs and rural areas on the other hand will basically close the gap entirely, and hundred billion dollar money black hole will be gone forever. Unfortunately that will happen after this $100B is already wasted. For perspective, that's about $312 per each man, woman and child in the United States. We should be really pissed about this.

Re: Dems pitch $100B broadband plan

#56
post #31

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.

I don't get why we want to build stuff in rural areas. From a cost perspective, we have to subsidize the infrastructure including medical and utilities. From economic standpoint, the jobs are in the cities. Labor participation rates in cities is much higher than rural areas. Investing in housing cost reductions in urban areas seems like a better investment than wiring rural areas with high speed internet.

Are jobs in the cities anymore? Jobs downtown in an expensive office building for information workers to basically do the same work they're doing at home right now seems like an artificial and outdated constraint.

Why are we propping up concentrated urban cores with their congestion, pollution, expense/inflation?

Re: Dems pitch $100B broadband plan

#57
It feels like people don't realize how broke the US is right now. We're going to be in a recession, we're going to have massive unemployment bills, we already spent a ridiculous amount of money this year...

Tax revenue is going to be way down.

We can't afford these things; if the internet is too slow, you can either pay more for it or you can move somewhere where it is better.

Re: Dems pitch $100B broadband plan

#58
post #30
post #27

I prefer Sanders’ proposal https://berniesanders.com/issues/high-speed-internet-all/

Sanders' proposals in general have no chance of actually passing in Congress, so I'll trust the Dems' one.

This plan probably won't amount to more than a corporate hand out. Much rather have Bernie's plan.

TLDR:

• Provide $150 billion through the Green New Deal in infrastructure grants and technical assistance for municipalities and/or states to build publicly owned and democratically controlled, co-operative, or open access broadband networks.

• Require that all internet service providers offer a Basic Internet Plan that provides quality broadband speeds at an affordable price.

• Break up internet service provider and cable monopolies, bar service providers from providing content, and unwind anticompetitive mergers.

• Ensure broadband infrastructure is resilient to the effects of climate change.

Re: Dems pitch $100B broadband plan

#59
post #30
post #27

I prefer Sanders’ proposal https://berniesanders.com/issues/high-speed-internet-all/

Sanders' proposals in general have no chance of actually passing in Congress, so I'll trust the Dems' one.

Better a good plan that doesn't pass than a bad plan that makes the (corporate takeover) problem worse.

Hint to Dems: GET CAUGHT TRYING.

Re: Dems pitch $100B broadband plan

#60
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I definitely think we shouldn't give another dime in tax credits to broadband providers - a signed contract with aggressive enforcement provisions would be in order, and if the current major ISPs don't want to build the infrastructure we should find someone else who will.

> current major ISPs don't want to build the infrastructure we should find someone else who will. There are no such people. Both Baltimore and Los Angeles put out bids asking for companies willing to build fiber networks on certain terms. Nobody volunteered. E.g. https://la.curbed.com/2018/1/9/16863352/free-internet-los-an... > Los Angeles officials planned to build up a network through a public-private partnership,…

Baltimore is a basket case, so no surprise there. LA is probably too big for a single company. Normally when these tenders fail it is because the terms need to be tweaked. Probably want you really want is simply to allow individual suburbs to set up their own little broadband networks, and have the city just run some central hub. But big city beauracrats are never keen on giving up control.
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