$6 Billion Proposal For High-Speed Internet Grants

witherstaff writes "House Democrats have proposed $6 billion in Internet investmentsas part of a sweeping economic stimulus bill that the full House is expected to vote on next week. The $6 billion is considered a down payment on efforts Obama will make in this area over the next several years. Of course let's not forget the $200 billion broadband scandal that the large telecommunication companies have been paid but never delivered on."

Comments

Subject

[Ian Alexander]

As long as we get some return on the investment I'm all for it, but as the FS says: we've sunk a lot more than $6bn into this same thing already and got nowhere.

Fool me once, shame on you...

Re:Subject

[Ian Alexander]

$6bn, as absurd an amount as it is, is a drop in the water compared to some of the things the last President put through. At least that kind of spending is starting to get funneled back into the US as opposed to, say, across the world in military misadventures that are actively damaging our security.

Re:Subject

[brian0918]

As long as we get some return on the investment I'm all for it

And I'm against it, even if we get some return on the "investment". The ends don't justify the means.

But, then, what choice do I have in what is done with the money I earned? When a society puts mob rule above individual rights, its no surprise that people assume that whatever passes a vote passes as just.

Re:Subject

[Pros_n_Cons]

12 billion
vs.
6 billion

thats some very bad logic bud.
the point is to get out of iraq. Not compare it to something to spend more money.
Thats like sayin hey honey we can afford this BMW its only going to be half of the mortgage amount

Re:Subject

[SnapShot]

Actually, according to Keynsian economics a recession / depression is exactly when you are supposed to run a deficit.

The unforgivable sin of the Bush administration (or at least, one of the first) was taking the country from surplus to deficit when the economy was relatively strong. Remember, the first round of tax cuts for the rich?

Public wireless - no other option

[unity100]

ANYthing you pay to any private telco company, will be pocketed. pockets will be so deep that you wont be even finding a nickel when you plunge your hand in. Remember how did the money given to banks vanished just 1-2 months ago ?

well. these are telcos. they have numerous times tried to scam/suffocate public in terms of cash and choices and even freedom of information before.

it would be stupid, stupid to trust them with anything.

And the oversight?

[geekmux]

Any chance we could look to put some REAL oversight into this round of spending?

If the oversight committee was a total of 5 people with backgrounds in actual accounting that ended up costing $1 million a year, but prevented the "loss" of billions in funding, I'd say it was money well spent.

Obama, you could prove your salt here by putting some REAL Common Sense behind MY money.

Nationalise the networks

[EmbeddedJanitor]

If the taxpayer is doing the investing then the taxpayers (ie the government) should own the networks. The private telcos are free to compete and provide better services. If the taxpayers invest in private telcos then the taxpayers should have partial ownership of the telcos and profits should go back to the people (ie govermnet).

After all, the big bank bail out is not by just giving money to the banks. The government has bought loans from the banks.

Re:Nationalise the networks

[znu]

The most logical structure for telecom networks is to have the government own the physical infrastructure (which is a natural monopoly) and then allow any private company that wants to to provide services (Internet, television, phone, whatever) over that infrastructure. This would create an actual competitive market for telecom services, which is something we're never going to see otherwise.

Of course the existing telecom companies have lots of lobbyists, give lots of money to both parties, and are quite happy with things just the way they are, so this is unlikely to ever happen.

Re:Nationalise the networks

[lysergic.acid]

well, "we" don't give out local monopolies. it's the laws of economics and the nature of telecommunications that creates natural monopolies. there are no laws stating that X county must only have one ISP/telecom. but communications networks work best as a single large monopoly rather than a handful of small disjointed competing networks. so even if you start off with a couple of competing networks in an area, over time the larger ones will absorb the smaller ones, giving them an even greater competitive advantage over the other small networks until eventually there's just a single carrier left. if it weren't for government regulations that force major communications carriers to lease out a portion of their networks to smaller second-tier carriers, there'd be even fewer ISPs/telecoms for consumers to choose from.

just look at the Japanese model. they have a single national telecom & ISP, NTT, which the Japanese government as a 1/3rd control in. they are leading the world in FttH penetration, offering residential users 1 Gbps symmetric broadband connections at $51.40/month--$0.05 per megabit (symmetric). compare that to Comcast's 50 Mbps "wideband" service that costs $150/month--$3.00 per megabit for asymmetric access.

while American ISPs are wasting money on traffic monitoring & packet shaping technology, lobbying against net neutrality, trying to convince the public that open wireless & municipal wifi will never work, and bitching about consumers actually making full use of their measly 3.5Mbps downstream connections, other countries in Europe and Asia are leaving us in the dust. and to make matters worse, we have all the tier-1 networks trying to extort money out of one another on peering agreements that would actually benefit everyone by making internet routing more efficient.

Ahh ... the generosity

[El Cubano]

The $6 billion is considered a down payment on efforts Obama will make in this area over the next several years. Of course let's not forget the $200 billion broadband scandal that the large telecommunication companies have been paid but never delivered on.

I'm so glad that the Democrats are so generous with MY money. Of course, the Republicans before them were basically the same, as were the Democrats before those Republicans, and so on going back quite a ways.

Seriously, why is the answer to mismanagement of money (tax payer or private money as the recent market troubles have shown) always to give away tax payer money?

School run out of money? Here is more tax payer money. Spent too much building your pro sports team's venue? Here is some tax payer money. Make bad choices in the marketplace? Here is some tax payer money. When is this going to stop? When we've mortgaged how many generations' future earnings on today's ridiculous growth of government?

Decisions, Decisions

[moniker127]

When the government invests X billion into something, they should come up with a list of specific items to be accomplished by the investee, put it into the contract, and send auditors to check up on the progress on a regular basis.
Anything else is just charity.

Half right

[Spy Hunter]

Telecom *services* are not a natural monopoly. Telecom *wires* are a natural monopoly. What we need to do is separate the service providers from the wire provider.

TARP Responsibility

[namespan]

Funny--last time I checked, the President didn't have a f*cking checkbook. It was the liberal senators that took over in the last 2 years that passed the bailouts.

The poster wasn't talking about TARP, he was talking about our misadventure in nation building known as the Iraq war.

Although it's worth noting most of congress, including the Democrats, went along.

Although Bush doesn't get off scot-free--he didn't veto the f*cking thing.

  Not only did he not veto it, his administration (primarily the Treasury folks, headed by Goldman Sachs alumni Paulsen) basically went to Congress and said "The economy will die within weeks (if not days) if you don't give us this program." So, again, you can fault the Democrats for not having the backbone to tell them to go to hell or even that they had better damn well be reporting back weekly for approval, but placing primary responsibility on them is incorrect.