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FCC Seeks To Improve US Broadband Access
MojoKid writes "The US Federal Communications Commission
is working on a plan to solve the problem of nationwide access to high-speed Internet service. The three main issues the agency is tackling first are, figuring out how to improve availability, quality and affordability. Acting FCC Chairman Michael J.
Copps held a meeting this week where he asked the public to comment on the national broadband plan, which Congress has demanded be done by February. The public has 60 days to submit comments; the agency and members of the public will be able to reply to comments for an additional 30 days after that."
The Porno for Podunk Plan
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Next time you auction off spectrum that could be used for JUST THIS PURPOSE, stop setting the minimum bids at astronomical numbers. "Public benefit" doesn't necessarily mean "get as much money for the gov't as possible".
Some good 700 MHz spectrum, at cheap to nothing rates, would spur small businesses to be created to provide access at costs much more in line with what people can pay. You know, if the entry costs weren't more than the GDP of a 3rd World Nation it might spur some innovation.
Then reduce the bureaucracy and cost of getting a license to use that spectrum.
Idiots.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
God help us all
Make it harder for companies to have monopolies or duopolies. This is the system that's in place in most areas of the nation outside big cities.
Other companies may technically have an opportunity to join in and provide service to the people, but in practice it's just not possible anymore.
A friend of mine used to work at an ISP in New Hampshire. His company sent letters to all of their customers basically saying "Please support the legislation that will limit Verizon's stranglehold on New Hampshire". The ISPs connection to the outside world (provided by Verizon, surprise-surprise) went down that night. Two days later, they got a Verizon employee on the phone who apparently wasn't "in on it", and he was like "Oh, how did this configuration get changed?" and turned their connection back on.
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Try this already? What..with the billions of dollars given to them already...and monopolies given to them..the tax breaks...etc. This is just buying some CEO a new boat.
'Number-memorizing Chinese people.'-Anon
Fixing the broadband issue is a last mile problem and just about the only method to address that at the moment
is through wireless. Now I am sure that the govt will step right up and give the big telecos a bunch of cash and
tell them to go forth and provide more broadband. Trouble is the big telecos do not provide last mile wireless coverage
mom and pop shops do. This is not a hard issue to fix if the money is placed in the right places.
Got Code?
Uh, February of which year?
Not that Congress can get anything right done by February of any year.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
And how, exactly, are we supposed to comment on this plan? For that matter, what IS this plan?
Can someone translate it into English for the rest of us?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
I thought the Invisible Market Fairy was supposed to handle this??!?!
Isn't this how the internet began? Independant, competing companies all competing to produce a cohesive, compatible online environment? Why is that model not working now?
I don't know about the rest of you, but I don't think this is a proper use of federal authority. National broadband, national healthcare, what's next, nationalized gasoline distribution? It just never stops.
The modern, knuckle dragging, federal government has 3 tools in it's toolbox when it comes to nationalizing any market. The ban, the subsidy, and heavy-handed regulation are the only tools it understands. They either ban it, like illegal drugs, or they subsidize and regulate it, like pharmacological industry. What ever happened to lazziez faire in this Country? The government has no interest in efficiency, or the bottom line. If national broadband costs too much, they'll subsidize the providers and tax the people on the back end, or increase public debts. Either way, the people will still pay the costs. The government has forgotten that the public does not own, and is not entitled to everything anyone else has in this country. The routers, switches, and cables are physical assets of the companies who own them, and it's certainly not up to Congress to decide how those assets are utilized, unless used in a crime.
I'm with the posters above me who would rather see government exercise it's authority properly and break up the monopolies who's anti-competitive practices cause the lack of consumer satisfaction. Instead, the government plans to lie in bed with the very same providers who are currently screwing over said government's constituents.
Be Safe! Sleep with a Marine. Semper Fi!
Assuming all goes well, we Aussies will have better broadband than you lot.
20million people. Same geographic area. 100mbit to the door.
Come on US, you guys are seriously falling behind.
This shit isn't rocket surgery.
All that is required is the political will to recognise Telecommunications cabling as a UTILITY and to recognise that fibre is the way to go.
Personally I'm still dumbfounded that our government realised that there are some things a socialist approach works better for. I guess time will tell whether it will actually happen, but the right decision was made - and that's a pretty decent start for a government.
Demand that all service providers act as common carriers, or "dumb pipes", if you will. To insure access for everybody, the basic infrastructure must be managed by a publicly accountable entity, the government, just like the roads. And these "roads" must accept all kinds of traffic. No tiering, no filtering, none of that. The "last mile" can be leased out to those who will accept these conditions. We need consumer protection with real teeth. They won't do it unless they hear from us. So speak up, and speak LOUD. I am formulating my letter at this very moment. To those of you who want to leave it up to the market, I respectfully remind you of the AM stereo debacle, and American cell phone service.
What?
I'm happy with my current DSL service. I just wish it was half the cost and the DSL provider stop bugging me to upgrade to a faster and more expensive package. Shouldn't basic DSL pricing be treated the same way as dial-up (i.e., cheap and slow)?
To eliminate bandwidth caps.
Doesn't do much good to have it if you cant use it.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Comment removed based on user account deletion
No bandwidth caps.
Drop the storage cost to what Japan charges.
And stop whining about it.
This country is so far behind it's sickening.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Trouble is the bi[g] telecos do not provide last mile wireless covera[g]e mom and pop shops do. This is not a hard issue to fix if the money is placed in the ri[g]ht places.
And the telcos have been spending it on 3G (UMTS, EVDO) technologies. Three G, like what I quoted.
IMHO, the telcos and cable companies are why we have some of the worst "broadband" access in our homes. They've been dragging their feet, similar to the way the RIAA has been, fighting tooth and nail to not give the customers what they want.
As much as I'm for better broadband, I'm extremely against giving it to the telcos to implement. We already gave them $2 billion to develop Fiber To The Home by 2000. As of 2009 I know of almost noone who has or even can get this service, it's only in a couple of hot spots where you can get it.
Worse, the telcos seem to see high speed home networks as competition for their business services, so they dramatically limit the outbound rates. 900kbps is a pretty small pipe to push backups of my home systems across, for example.
I personally like the ideas of "homes with tails", the home owners owning the fiber from their houses to a pedestal or "meet me" location, and then the providers can get access in there and users can get different options for that connectivity.
Sean
Eliminate stupid practices like bandwidth caps & metered usage designed to squeeze out competition from online video services while abusing the government-granted monopoly position.
I'm looking at TW in Rochester, San Antonio, and 4 other cities. You know who you are.
Not to mention this is blatantly unconstitutional, a further usurpation of the sovereign States, and self-aggrandizement to the central government. There are no enumerated powers delegated to the Federal government by the several States that include the phrase "national telecommunications network."
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
We need to bust the local monopolies. They don't like to provide service to remote areas. They don't have any incentive to provide quality. And what people usually think when you mention "monopoly" - they charge high prices.
Unfortunately when the government wants to do something like improve service or availability their "solution" is usually to throw money at the monopoly and tell them to do it - which generally doesn't happen and we're out the tax dollars. Remember the extra charges from the phone company to support fiber deployment - didn't happen, and I think we're still paying that. So lets sit down and fuck the public some more!
Yeah right I would like to see them make broadband less expensive. And for their next trick, they can pull a white rabbit out of their ass. We live in an age where likes of Comcast can bundle their service for $100 a month, and make it sound like it's a deal. $100 fuckin' dollars, that's a lot of money.
Really when do they want to do this?
I think everyone reading slashdot wants this to happen, and knows what would make it happen. The only question here is can government ignore the lobbyists long enough to do the right thing.
Think Deeply.
We all want FTTH (fiber to the home). Just do it already.
-=[ place
The US doesn't have a broadband problem. For the few rural areas that don't have DSL or cable modem service, satellite exists. If there is demand for more than satellite, fixed wireless outfits will spring up. But if you think that someone living 10 miles outside of town is ENTITLED to 100mbps fiber connection for $25/month, sorry, but there simply is no justification for a public subsidy on that order. The wireless ISP will charge $50-80 a month for a basic 700-1.5 connection, and they might eke out a small profit. If its not profitable, then back to satellite, or MOVE. Please don't ask the rest of us to pay for your internet. We don't ask you to pay for ours.
You can read the Word or PDF version of the FCC's National Broadband Plan - request for public comment here: http://www.fcc.gov/ I think many of you should take the time. I read 1/3 of it today. Some of their questions they are requesting comments on are pretty politically charged depending on which side of this fence you are on. The section on how best to promote video support on the internet --- The Cable Companies like Comcast, Time Warner etc are doing everything they can to squash that by putting CAPs on monthly bandwidth usage... which pretty much guarantees to stifle Cable's captured market for Movies/TV. Then there are what seem to be simple questions but if you think about them... they are not. How much bandwidth is required to have "adequate" Broadband --- most of us would say unlimited but then that's probably not practical to implement so what is a good answer. The FCC's document is well written. It requests input by ANYONE, just submit in Word or PDF format. They are asking for examples of what works in other countries and what doesn't. They are asking for answers to questions about WiMAX, Cable, DSL etc. Take some time and comment... or only the large corporations will and you'll get what get.
Maybe they can start by stopping Time Warner Cable from slashing the access of about 10 million Americans. That would be a great start.
FCC doesn't regulate Time Warner's High Speed Internet. Each State does it individually. So talk to your State's regulatory commission
Oh, come on! The guy that's always claiming this is a population density problem hasn't replied yet. I always like making fun of him. Where are you, Mr. Density guy?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
It's infrastructure, privatized albeit and more often than not acting as a monopoly in most areas. Some legislation should be put in place to ensure that isp's don't stagnate the growth of digital delivery services through things like Time Warners 40 gig bandwidth cap. Even Comcasts' generous 250 gig is soon going to look paltry as content-dense traffic becomes more ubiquitous on the internet.
/rant
New business models for entertainment and software industries will be cut off at the legs when consumers can't stream their movies through perfectly legitimate services like Hulu or download games over clients like Steam. Keep in mind that intellectual property has become an exceedingly large portion of the American Economy as manufacturing jobs have been outsourced to countries with cheaper labor.
The only thing these bandwidth caps are going to do is raise the barrier of entry for less wealthy individuals to interact with an increasingly content-rich and relevant source of information. As railroads and highways were an important part of creating an infrastructure to facilitate the trade of physical goods across the country so will the internet come to become the same in translating information-based products in the coming century.
ISPs should stopped from putting overly excessive restrictive premiums on consumer access to a market that will come to compose increasingly large portion of the American economy. Nobody, neither the producers nor the consumers will be able to benefit otherwise.
Bring back the '96 telco reform act which helped quite a bit in leveling the playing field with the monopolies of phone companies. It forced the ILECs to allow interconnections with small upstart phone companies. It wasn't perfect - it included things like the Communications Decency Act within it - but it opened the way for many of the thousands of ISPs to be able to offer service.
Bush and Powell's kid running the FCC did away with essentially all of the changes. Since then all the baby bells are bigger and stronger than Ma bell ever used to be. Many CLECs are gone, the non-monopoly ISPs are almost all gone. The monopolies are stronger than ever.
Or even simpler, just demand that previous agreements made with the telco companies would be met by the telcos. We'd already have huge patches of fiber to the home if the telcos did that.
Broadband must not become a one-way pipe.
The value of the network is based on the peer to peer nature of the communications it enables. Unfortunately, and perhaps intentionally, the p2p moniker has become synonymous with sharing mp3's; rather than being properly understood as the motivating intention of the Internet's original creators, and the very foundation of its architecture. The media conglomerates are more than happy to encourage this kind of confusion, because ultimately, they want to regain control.
We bought it, we paid for it, the network belongs to we the people.
What needs to happen is the one that provides the connection to the house should not provide the service. The government then regulates the infrastructure provider/maintainers. The service providers then sit on that infrastructure.
For example, here in Utah we have UTOPIA (Utah Telecommunication Open Infrastructure Agency, http://www.utopianet.org/). UTOPIA themselves provide the fiber to the premise. Then you sign up with the providers on the network. There are a handful of different ISPs that provide service over it (including Qwest!). You can choose based on whatever meets your fancy. ISP too oversubscribed? Choose another one.
The fiber delivers internet, phone, and tv. Here at my office we have a symmetric 30Mbs connection for about $110. Makes me hate to go home to my Comcast connection...
The problem is the only motivation for the infrastructure provider is to keep the ISPs and governments to off their backs. The government should own the infrastructure and then private companies should compete for the maintenance contracts. Hopefully somebody in the city knows something about an SLA... /br
In the year 2155, the FCC will discover ... [drum roll ... cymbol crash] ... TCP/IP!
If they have ANY common sense, and are aware of the problems going on now, they will include stipulations that:
1. Service providers CANNOT oversell their bandwidth on the new networks,
2. Service providers CANNOT throttle customers on the new networks,
3. Agree and understand that the public owns the infrastructure, and NOT THEM,
4. That they can be fined for poor customer service,
5. Service providers CANNOT change contracts or force customers to sign new contracts when they change them that customers have already agreed to,
6. Cannot impose cap limits.
7. Rent the infrastructure from the public at a reasonable, publicly agreed rate,
8. Are not allowed to hold a "municipal monopoly",
9. Infrastructure cannot be purchased from the public, and can only be maintained and rented from the public.
10. Service providers cannot restrict content, inject advertising, prohibit ad-blocking, or record activity.
Although the chances of these being proposed, let alone accepted, are next to nil, there is bound to be SOME service provider that will notice the opportunity to offer services that no other major ISP will agree to, thereby nailing the market because large ISPs will not want the conditions. It's the same principle as satellite radio: People do not like commercials instead of music, and will pay a reasonable monthly fee to avoid having to listen to them. The terms are very hostile to large ISPs, and will allow smaller providers that are not as financially unstable and profit-centered as the large providers. Smaller companies tend to be more focused on service and reputation, while larger companies are focused on profit.
Seeing as how the Obama (Mis)administration has demonstrated its lack of concern for consumers, I highly doubt that it will require anything even *remotely* close to such conditions.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
Most of your modern reality that makes its way to your ideal urban pad with your high speed connection is heavily subsidized in order to happen. Your water is brought in with public maintained pipelines, and the cost of the water itself is laughably low, because it is government seized and provided to you. Your electricity comes from rural areas where the transmission lines and towers are just plunked onto private land where they receive no transit fees, it is just seized from them, and you get to enjoy much cheaper electricity from that government "subsidy" of outright theft. Your food is brought to you over publicly built and maintained roads, imagine what that would cost if all the roads were privately maintained toll roads, where a new fee had to be paid to each owner as it crossed property lines, etc. Your natural gas for heating and hot water, again, it comes from rural areas and is brought to you at an extremely low cost compared to if the pipelines had to negotiate transit frees from every property owner between you and the gas well head. And so on, there's a rather decent list there.
So when are you going to pay a reasonable fair market rate for all that stuff, avoiding the public subsidy you currently enjoy, or when are you moving to where all of that comes from? Why should the rural areas provide you with those necessities for cheaper than fair market rates or outright free when it comes to water?
I know this is "news for nerds" and us nerds have just GOT to have broadband, but is this really a problem?
Believe it or not, there are still places in this country that don't have telephone service, or just got it. Do you think their lives were less full or less meaningful because of this absence?
I really see this as an entitlement problem. Sure, broadband internet access is great for certain things, but almost all of those things are something people can easily survive without. You are not entitled to a cheap, all-pervasive internet backbone just because it's something you want.
I'm sure it provides some brief little endorphine kick when you log onto twitter or your blog and scream at some ahole because you're right and he's wrong, but isn't that really an activity that can be done without? And it certainly can be done in 5 minutes on a dial-up instead of 5 seconds on DSL.
I know this is hard for some of us nerds to get through our heads, but high-speed internet access is really just a convenience. And while we may consider it highly necessary for some of the things we do day-to-day, it is not fundamentally necessary for everyone in order to have a fulfilling life.
So go ahead, I'd love to hear an actual rational argument for why money should be taken by threat of force or incarceration and used to force people who may not even want a given service to at the very least accept a "hook-up" for that service so that the future owners of their home will be able to become subscribers to some internet service.
You are looking at the sad FCC limitations on WiFi. The low power restrictions make it useless for Broadband Access. In that regard You are correct. I will add that he current Broadband providers want to push this misconception! Are you one of them?
The truth of the matter is that Apple Computer Co.(remember them?) know better and have tried to get spectrum allocated for Broadband Access a few times. But Broadband providers seem to lobby the FCC and we lose.
Also Broadband is not TV. If you want TV get a cable. I want Email, web content, and to play MMOs. Oh and I bet your cable does not actually give you a 10Mb data path. proper WiFi, not the FCC trash we currently have will give us a around 10Mb per user. So Apple's claimed in its design for a metropolitan area.
So WiFi should be better then cable or Fiber. Since the providers will offen not provide that much through put.
Ref: Kutztown Pennsylvania.
I'm sending this over 10 mbit fiber from the town that costs less than your 4 mbit cable.
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
There is nobody better-versed in Internet speeds and access than slashdot readers. And the FCC is open to comments for the next sixty days. In my article, I am urging people to comment to the FCC during this period and I am hoping they have lots of really good suggestions from people who are well-informed rather than ill-informed.
I do note that the FCC has an "acting" director, which means Republicans in the Senate have held up confirmation of yet another Obama appointee for political (read not-useful) reasons.
Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people.
How in America, we seem to have lost the concept of continously upgrading our own infrastructure? When was the last time anyone can remember a significant (>50 miles) of road being constructed where there was no road before? It seems like we've lost all motivation to make America any better in a sense of infrastructure and I think even this will end up being just talk because A.) The cost alone to offer broadband to the "boonies" will be enormous and B.) the people in "rural" areas, when surveyed, didn't much care about getting broadband internet access, since they all seemed to have the mentality that since they don't have it now, they can't miss it.
Also, do a side by side comparison of our Cellular networking compared to countries like China or Japan. Hell even countries like Ukraine, Italy, Spain, Brazil, etc have better/faster/more efficient Cellular networks then we do in America.
Part of the multi-hundred billion dollar bailout, should have been geared towards updating our infrastructure and had it writtin in a way that would force the construction to begin, before a $ of the bailout reached anyone's hands.
"This is the value of a summer spent and a winter earned"
But but if it doesn't go through AT&T how can Obama monitor me?
This is ironic in the wake of the Time Warner cap announcements, specifically the "affordability" part.
"I hope you know how very lucky you are to know me, because I am so incredibly incredible."