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Dems pitch $100B broadband plan

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Re: Dems pitch $100B broadband plan

#61

Post by dv_dt »

rayiner wrote: post #47
thomaslord wrote: post #10

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,…

I think this is odd because a lot of the major ISPs seemed to have outsourced the actual physical and electronic construction work to third parties. It's a different thing setting up the accounts and operation, but the building part seems accessible.

Re: Dems pitch $100B broadband plan

#62

Post by rayiner »

misiti3780 wrote: post #54
rayiner wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

There's no money in wired broadband. Investors have been trying to get Verizon to divest itself of FiOS pretty much since the beginning. It's probably profitable at this point, but barely. (Verizon's entire wireline division has a 5% or less profit margin.)

Chatanooga Tennessee charges about $60/month for 300 mbps fiber. It is probably financially sustainable, but: 1) Tennessee is a low-cost, right-to-work state; 2) the capital costs of the fiber network were shared with the electric "smart grid" so some of the capital costs are being recouped from electric ratepayers. You couldn't make the same thing work in New York, San Francisco, etc. at the $60 price point. But at a much higher price point than that, you're talking about something quite expensive for what's supposed to be a public utility. Wired broadband, unlike water or electricity, is an optional service for most people. (1 in 6 high-income households only have cellular service.) If it costs you closer to $100 to have the same service in an expensive northern city, many people will opt out, and that will cause the per-household costs to skyrocket. It's a really tough mathematical equation to work out.

Re: Dems pitch $100B broadband plan

#64

Post by InTheArena »

Wait! We've seen this before. It happens right before elections to promise companies a fat payday from the companies, and then they gouge customers for under performing bandwidth!

How about we just buy service from Starlink, on a per-connection basis, rather then paying for their infrastructure?

Re: Dems pitch $100B broadband plan

#65

Post by rayiner »

crazygringo wrote: post #52
manigandham wrote: post #6

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.

It's a trope based on the notion that the 1996 telecom deregulation was supposed to encourage development of fiber. It's kind of like saying "we already paid for XYZ" where XYZ is whatever justification was given for the recent corporate tax cuts.

Re: Dems pitch $100B broadband plan

#66

Post by RickSullivan »

yingw787 wrote: post #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…

Many states have laws that prevent cities from entering the ISP market.

https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadbloc...

Re: Dems pitch $100B broadband plan

#67

Post by buttersbrian »

Klinky wrote: post #56
adrr wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

If jobs were in vacuums, I'd agree.

More importantly, lives are not in a vacuum and might have physical constraints. Perhaps I want to live in a city (congestion, pollution that comes with it) because the lifestyle and culture I prefer blossoms in a more urban area.

Re: Dems pitch $100B broadband plan

#68

Post by mabbo »

The missing X% without high speed internet available to them are primarily rural. Space's Starlink is poised to offer high speed internet to those exact people on a timeline faster than whatever this project dreams it can achieve, at zero (additional) cost to the government.

The other chunk of society without access to high speed internet are the low income. So why not just spend $50B on welfare reform (or even Basic Income) to provide the financial means needed to access the existing high speed internet. They can buy internet, or something they need more. You'd save $50B.

All together, this just seems like a new way to funnel $100B of tax money into the pockets of corporations who make the right political donations.

Re: Dems pitch $100B broadband plan

#70

Post by nordsieck »

jandrese wrote: post #48
nordsieck wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really hope Starlink will have a turnkey small-community ISP “solution”. I mean, an ISP could get a receiver and use Starlink as backhaul, but IMO, that just doesn't make much sense. The cost of infrastructure is almost certainly more than the cost of a receiver per consumer.

Depends how much the Starlink user terminal ends up costing. it might make sense for some communities to buy one terminal and then distribute the data via relatively cheap long haul wifi. Trailerparknet.

> Depends how much the Starlink user terminal ends up costing. it might make sense for some communities to buy one terminal and then distribute the data via relatively cheap long haul wifi.

I think a wifi network is the only thing that could possibly make sense. The minute the ISP needs to start digging, it's all over. That being said, even a wifi network can be expensive in term of labor.

Additionally, in the case of really low population density combined with low line of sight distances (think northern Canada) even wifi may not be feasible.

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