$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.

Re:And the oversight?

[JimboFBX]

Thanks Obama, we understand your need to be anon!

Yes, let's not forget ...

[ScrewMaster]

So, okay, we got soaked for some two hundred billion in tax writeoffs. If the Feds really want to make good on that, just allow for actual competition in the national broadband market. No incumbents holding onto their last mile monopoly by hook-or-crook, make it clear that if you enter a region you must serve everyone in that region (outlaw cherry-picking) and see what these guys can do when forced to go head-to-head. Right now, for example, I'm in an area that was previously served only by Comcastoff. In fact, my townhome complex signed an exclusive deal with Comcast a couple years ago, ostensibly to get better rates. Of course that didn't happen: I ended up paying more for my service than people only a half mile away who were not in the complex. Something smelled there, let me tell you.

So, now AT&T U-Verse is in the area (I'm switching: I'm about fifty feet from the local VRAD box and I'm shooting for the 18 Mbit/sec tier ... wish me luck.) Last Monday in the mail I received a postcard from U-Verse confirming my installation date, which was cool. Hilariously, there was also a postcard from Comcast boldly proclaiming that they had doubled my download speed FOR FREE! Really!!! Nevermind that I'm getting more speed for about half the price from U-Verse, for now.

Don't let the FCC fool you ... competition is good for consumers and ultimately good for providers.

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.

Re:Nationalise the networks

[j0nb0y]

Your information is dated. The TARP program never bought any "troubled assets." The TARP program directly invested in banks by buying newly issued preferred shares.

The TARP program originally sold to Congress was to buy troubled assets. That plan was quickly abandoned after the program was passed. See the "changes to the initial program" section from your wikipedia link.

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.

Verizon Fios cherrypicking

[SuperBanana]

You know how FiOS is just about everywhere along the east coast? Well, everywhere except Boston.

Why? Because in MA, each town decides if it wants to grant a franchise for cable TV. Not internet- just TV.

Verizon doesn't like that, but the burbs are the best customers- they have lots of HDTV sets, they like the packages, and they don't do annoying things like share their Wifi connection to 6 other people in a apartment building.

Well, guess what? Verizon has been rolling out FiOS to damn near everywhere in the state, even west-nowhere places like 500-person towns out near Worcester nobody has heard of...yet still no FiOS for anyone in Boston. It's even been in the papers- THREE YEARS AGO- about how Verizon was cherrypicking. A year ago, someone asked Mayor Menino what the fuck was going on, and he pointed the finger squarely at Verizon. Not that I trust him, but in the meantime, some hick represetative from the western end of the state gave Verizon tens of millions of dollars to roll out services in the western end of the state...with no requirements that they provide service to the city.

Meanwhile, we're stuck with really crappy DSL offerings, Comcast's throttling and misleading advertising (go on, try to find the real speed, not the "powerboost" speed which you get for all of about 10MB of transfer), or RCN's overall shittyness. Worse still- Comcast has just started getting really nasty about incoming SMTP and HTTP; they've shut me off twice, despite best efforts to sneak under their radar. I suspect they're enforcing their ToS to try and catch small/home business owners saving $50/month (yes, you read that right- $100/mo for internet service for businesses.)

Re:Verizon Fios cherrypicking

[Migraineman]

If it makes you feel any better, they're cherry-picking FIOS deployments in the DC-metro area. I live almost exactly 1 mile from my local CO, which translates to about 7000 wire-feet. I know, because DSL is the best thing I can get. I live in a fairly urban suburb of DC, and I can't get FIOS to save my life. Why? Because I live in a single-family neighborhood that was built in the mid 1950s. Putting fiber on the poles would be expensive. They'd much rather do build-outs in new communities where the builder passes last-quarter-mile connection costs onto the new homeowner, and Verizon only has to hook up to the community pedestal. If you live in town houses or condos, you have a much better chance of getting FIOS because the connection-density potential is higher.

As noted in another post, the physical plant (fiber, copper, wet string, etc.) shouldn't be a sanctioned monopoly, but should rather be a municipal resource. If you can't stomach that, then require universal access for services. Enforce that. If you're offering FIOS in the state, Verizon should be obligated to deploy it to *any* customer who orders it. If Verizon squeals, tell them to stop using the government-mandated right-of-way access through private property.

A final note - one of the reasons this issue torques me so much is that Verizon has run fiber through my yard. They're more than willing to expect right-of-way through my property, but they steadfastly refuse to provide me with a service I'm more than willing to pay for. The State mandates that I allow this, so I don't have any recourse short of getting elected Governor. And before you comment that I get indirect benefit from the fiber, no I don't. The fiber in question isn't a backbone, it's a last-mile bundle installed to service another community.

Full House

[suffix tree monkey]

Full House, eh? Three Democrats and two Republicans?

Get the providers out of the last mile

[wkk2]

We need to get the providers out of the last mile. Any new housing developments, larger than 20 homes, should be required to star wire single mode fiber to all homes from a common equipment vault. Let the providers give access at that point and contribute to a local maintenance pool.

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.

Dear Politicians

[nuintari]

Dear Politicians,
I work for a small, but growing, ISP, so bear with me, as this subject annoys me to no end. Not every problem can be solved by simply throwing a bunch of money at it and hoping for the best. All the wrong people are going to end up with that money, either corrupt individuals, or large carriers who are more interested in squelching small competition so they can continue to shaft their customers left and right. They don't want to improve, improvements cost money, big cable wants to maintain the status quo. Either way, none of this money is going to be used to service undeserved areas. Keep the money, please, don't give anyone a single dime.

You say you want to see internet delivered to the undeserved? Have you looked around? Some of us are doing just that. We are using part-15 spectrum to deliver 5+ megabit service to residents with no cable or DSL service available. Do you know what part-15 of the spectrum is, in reality? It is the useless chunks of the airspace that no one else wanted, 900 mhz, 2.4 ghz, 5.8 ghz, and a few others. Despite the severe limitations imposed on us all by the FCC, we have delivered magic to customers and businesses in these so called undeserved areas. We have used the crap airwaves no one else wanted, served the customers that big telco called profitless, and we are financially solvent. Keep the money, we don't need it, and the big companies don't deserve it.

So, I hear this tremendously useful band of data is going to be free from use soon, and that its fate is largely undecided. I have already mentioned that we have taken some of the worst air space in existence, and delivered an amazing service to our customers. What do you suppose would happen if you let us use that band to deliver broadband? Interference free, crystal clear transmissions of a massive amount of data to every nearly home that wanted it, Keep the money, give us the spectrum.

So you want to see the entire nation lit up on the broadband map, who do you think is going to do that? Verizon? Comcast? AT&T? If they could have, they would have done it by now, lord knows, you have thrown enough cash at the big players already, and I still get phone calls from happy new customers, glad to have service, because no one else offered it. No, broadband is going to come from the small business, there are thousands of us out there, we call ourselves WISPs, and we are doing what the Bells have told you cannot be done: We brought broadband to rural America. We have delivered affordable, quality service with a smile, with the worst tools we had to use. Now, imagine what we could do if we had 700 mhz. I am not asking you to give it to just me, I am not asking you to hand it over to only small companies, no, let all internet service providers have a fair crack at 700 mhz, and watch us deliver. Let Capitalism rear its blind, careless head, and watch the strong survive, and the weak fall. I already know I can win my own spot in the national broadband market, because I have been beating the telecom giants at their own game for 5 years, and winning. Keep the money, give us 700 mhz!