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Major Carriers Shun Broadband Stimulus
jmcharry sends word that as the deadline looms for requesting broadband grants from the $4.7 billion available in stimulus funding, Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T are conspicuously absent from the list of applicants. Quoting the Washington Post: "Their reasons are varied. All three say they are flush with cash, enough to upgrade and expand their broadband networks on their own. Some say taking money could draw unwanted scrutiny of business practices and compensation, as seen with automakers and banks that have taken government bailouts. And privately, some companies are griping about conditions attached to the money, including a net-neutrality rule that they say would prevent them from managing traffic on their networks in the way they want. ... Yet those firms might be the best positioned to achieve the goal of spreading Internet access to underserved areas, some experts say." Reader Michael_Curator notes that while the major carriers may be holding back, there were still enough applications to slow government servers to a crawl, resulting in a deadline extension.
They're holding out for more cash later on.
May the Maths Be with you!
"All three say they are flush with cash, enough to upgrade and expand their broadband networks on their own."
I don't know what their real reasoning is, but you can be assured that it is not because they want to be responsible and expand with their own money.
I think they meant to say "we already scam consumers enough to not need the cash" . I hope to see some disruptive technology to circumvent the stranglehold these dinosaurs have.
they don't want real broadband... they only want to offer crappy 256kbps, and pander it off as broadband. which btw isn't broadband anywhere outside the US. time for the US government to start their own broadband service.
This has a simple explaination.
Money is power; simple as that. If you have money, you can get people to do things- it's power. There are other forms of power but money's the most common (and, in many but not all cases, the most powerful).
Restrictions on how you can spend your money devales that money. $1,000 is a nice sum of money for (almost) anyone to receive, but if it can only be spent on peanuts only you can eat? Can you eat a grand's worth of peanuts? What if you're allergic? In this case the money is basically worthless, because it has no power.
Almost all ISPs want the power to restrict the usage of their clientbase. In some cases this is benign- stopping spammers from throwing out millions of spam e-mails a day, for example. In other cases, not so (blocking/disconnecting high usage users then dramatically overselling their network). But want of power isn't a problem; everyone wants power. Everyone. Every individual, every corporation... everyone. So that's okay.
The reason why they are rejecting the money is because it has external factors. It has a stigma of being 'government bailout money'. It can only be used for certain things, and it has strings (a'la net neutrality). The ISPs have evaluated their money, decided that the restrictions limit its power too greatly and that it would be a net power loss for them.
It's as simple as that.
Check out my sci-fi book "Lacuna" at http://goo.gl/MVxX8
How can not taking taxpayer money be chalked up to greed?
I don't know what their real reasoning is, but you can be assured that it is not because they want to be responsible and expand with their own money.
The real reason is because these grants are a Faustian Bargain: there are never-ending strings attached to government money. And it's not just the net neutrality issue. If you take that money, there's a whole host of demands the government can make. I work in aviation, and have seen some of this stuff in action with FAA grants, where you accept money for a project, and then there are costly consequences years down the road.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
The big carriers will ignore the stimulus.
Small Start-ups will take the money and build into new markets.
the start-ups will then sell out to the big ISP's
the start ups get rich from tax money
the big ISP get expansion paid for by the government with no regulations attached.
We get screwed and pay for the privilege
Telecom companies are regulated monopolies. Regulations can changed with a change in law. You don't need to entice them to change with a big gob of money as a carrot. The truth of the matter is that it is easier politically and procedurally to do these changes with telecom cooperation.
It's all about the regional monopolies. With regional monopolies, they are able to control prices within certain regions since there are no other options. Why would they want to spend money expanding/improving service in regional markets where they have no competition?
Those net neutrality rules would possibly threaten those regional monopolies... so they're like "F THAT! I want my control!"
For example, consider the recent obscenely low bandwidth caps in rural areas where there is no other option. That's a prime example of the power regional monopoly gives these companies.
Also as a side note, I find it hilarious that they think they can justify instating bandwidth caps when they apparently have more then enough capital. Wow, where did the argument that they were losing money due to excessive users go?
Some say taking money could draw unwanted scrutiny of business practices and compensation, as seen with automakers and banks that have taken government bailouts.
Ha! You mean like finding out how profitable broadband really is and how that caps and traffic shaping would be largely unnecessary if the carriers spent the money doing the upgrade? Money we all know they have. Or would that be finding out how a few people at the top of the corporate pile are enriching themselves at the expense of everyone else? Extracting revenue without adding any real value and justifying it by saying their compensation packages are "in line" with industry norms?
Hard to figure out which one of those topics they're not interested in having become public knowledge. It would probably be wise to select "All of the above". And probably a couple more we don't know about.
Maybe we need a public broadband option? The our Congresscritters could start raking in millions of lobbyist money from the major carriers. It would give those hordes of fat, old people screaming at public health care meetings a new opportunity to get free bus rides and box lunches. And then they could accuse Obama of trying to take over the internets.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Remember when the telcos claimed that net-neutrality would harm the industry by preventing them from collecting enough money to upgrade the infrastructure in the US?
This proves their previous anti-net-neutrality arguments were BS.
From http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-148385.html
"Republican backers, along with broadband providers such as Verizon and AT&T, say it has sufficient Net neutrality protections for consumers, and more extensive rules would discourage investment in wiring American homes with higher-speed connections."
From http://www.freedomworks.org/publications/the-problem-with-network-neutrality
"By contrast, mandatory network neutrality is bad for business. Unlike the narrowband phone lines of the twentieth century, broadband pipes are being built with billions of dollars of unsubsidized investment in a competitive environment. ISPs make this investment on the assumption they can recover the costs and profit. As such, broadband lines are not the "public resource" that monopoly networks were in the past. Companies that own high-speed lines have a right to recover the costs that other parties impose when they wish to use those lines to transmit high-bandwidth, revenue-rich services of their own. If network neutrality is enacted, ISPs will have no incentive to build new pipes. Consumers will therefore get less choice."
These companies don't want to take the stimulus money because it has strings attached to it and also they don't want to be on the hook for what they did in the 90s. They know that when given the money, they will not do anything substantial with it, and it can potentially look for them. Besides they have invested the hundreds of millions we had given them and made a wild amount of profit off of it. Taking government money again will mean actually treating the customers and citizens fairly and with respect and they are not about to budge and inch on that. Since most of these companies also have cell network departments, they would do the same exactly thing if cell carriers were given the money. They hate the idea of a free and unregulated internet and are doing everything in their power as gate keepers for customers to keep it a walled garden with a toll booth to get over the wall. I swear the rules change when you become a multi-billion dollar conglomerate...
Does it even matter why they aren't taking the money? If the application system is being flooded, that means that the market will potentially be flooded with companies that are required to respect net neutrality. Since they will by default provide a service that is better than the incumbent monopoly, then assuming that it is not a true natural monopoly the market place will become competitive. That can only be good news for consumers and companies that rely on ubiquitous broadband.
Let the small players have a chance to provide what the big ones won't.
so either they need this money to finally upgrade their networks or they have plenty of money so they should already be upgrading their networks.
What i would like to see is a commitment that a Minimum bandwidth be available per account. Having "Up To 70megabits per second" speed is all well and good but what good does that do you if 99.99999 percent of the time
you are stuck at 0.7 megabits per second because they have 400% of the pipe allocated.
Also it should be forbidden for a carrier to cut off a connection because the user is running %protocol
(unless of course actual "court of law" evidence exists that something illegal is happening)
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The Carriers just need more Vespene Gas.
P2P Anonymous Distributed Web Search: http://www.yacy.net/
If the telecoms take this money, they will most likely be required to actually upgrade their infrastructure. The telecoms do not want to upgrade their infrastructure, as this would allow their competitors to eat away at their marketshare. What's the easiest way to stop people from using Skype, Netflix, Hulu, etc? Give them shitty internet speeds with low bandwidth caps.
If the buggy whip companies had owned the roads, they wouldn't take a government bailout to pave them for cars, either.
Yet people are perfectly willing to let the government fund, control and direct the military
Because we have to have one and it has to be centralized.
The side effect is that we have $600 toliet seats.
You are so eager to let something that does not by nature have to be centrally controlled, and coordinated - so the next time you go to a hospital your posterior is on a $600 bed pan?
It's not like when I go to an ER they have to synchronize operations with a team in another state, or even the next county...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Let smaller companies have it. We have too many big oligopolies (the cousin of monopolies). Big companies tend to "win" by playing games using their shear size instead of outright compete. And they are more likely to bribe congress than smaller ones per portion.
Table-ized A.I.
Look up the Civil Reserve Air Fleet. More or less what happens is you sign an agreement with the government. For their part, they give you money in the form of business contracts, and sometimes loans for planes and such. Your part? Oh nothing much, just that if the government needs your planes for military transport, they can call them up.
Now, for many companies, it is worth it. The government doesn't use the ability often, and you get good financial benefits from doing it. However it is for sure money with strings attached. If the government decides it needs your planes and crews, they can call them up in a day or two and use them for as long as they need.
That is often how these things go. The government is willing to give you money on favorable terms, financially speakings, but they want something for it. Now sometimes that is worth it. However, sometimes it isn't. Individual companies need to decide if the strings attached to a particular set of money is worth it or not.
An analog in your life might be say you need $1000 to get your car fixed. You bank will make you an unsecured loan at 12%. I offer to make you a loan at 3%, however if you want that I say you have to spend it all on car repair and are going to have to let me borrow your car whenever I want. Which do you take? There isn't a simple answer. The bank's money costs a lot more, but there are no strings attached, you do what you want with it, even if that isn't spend it on the car. My money is cheap, but has provisions. It is really up to you if my provisions are worth the money you'd save.
that all of that stimulus money goes to local governments, and small companies. (not necessarily "small business" per se, but small companies) The government shouldn't be rewarding monopolies. Let's see real competition for a change.
I hated to see multi-billion dollar banks being bailed out, I hated seeing the big 3 automakers being bailed out - but I will actually LIKE seeing 20 million homes in America finally getting that "last mile" of real broadband. My 256k for $75/month sucks almost as much as 56k did. Latency is just as bad as 56k, and, of course, I seldom actually SEE 256k - generally, it's somewhere between 170 and 230.
Broadband? God, I'd LOVE to be able to watch a Youtube video about a new Linux operating system, and not hear the son yealling "LAG!" at the top of his lungs!
Stimulate me, Congress!!
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
By taking government money, they will have less control over what they do. There are contentions about net neutrality, about uneven deployments of broadband and all manner of things. However, the various states are the government entities that should be writing more mandates related to uneven deployments while the federal government should be mandating network neutrality.
Seriously, the problem of "cherry picking" the broadband deployments was really bad 10 years ago. It is beyond that now. They don't want to build infrastructure that doesn't yield really good returns. That makes perfect sense for them. But it doesn't make sense for the public, however. It is the public utilities commissions that set the standards for deployments of the infrastructure, however, and they have been bought off pretty well so far and haven't been requiring broadband everywhere as they should have been. I hope no one is confused about the role and responsibility of the public utilities commissions. It is precisely the unwillingness of the PUCs and the utilities themselves that have led to municipalities deploying broadband themselves. Some serious reforms need to get put into place and most of it should be in the form of cleaning up the corruption in the PUCs and to put people in place with some backbone.
Either give us municipal broadband (not my preference) or give us wider deployments from the cherry-picking utilities.
Oh yeah, and lest I forget, we need ISPs to be officially considered to be "common carriers" as other communications providers are. The fact that they aren't is a huge part of the problem with enforcement and regulation.
And we still don't have the promised speeds or nationwide fiber network.
between those who say stuff like "wow, those guys make a lot of money, I should buy their stock", and those who say "wow, those guys make a lot of money, the government should come in and put them in their place..."
This is a really good summary of where we are now with this whole mess.
Now if only we could find somebody willing to grow a spine and slap those big ISPs around to remind them how they got to be where they are! (Like you said: They didn't get here with only their own capital)
Net-neutrality is Gov regulation of Speech
It is as simple as that. The government is regulating what an ISP can and cannot say.
Net-neutrality, while it sounds great, is an attempt by the government to impose government regulation on the Internet and therefore take away the 1st Amendment on the Internet. Just look at the censorship ideas floated by European governments and the UN. Look at the way the Fairness Doctrine was used in this country.
It's a brilliant tactic by the Left. Why exert all your energy attempting to reimpose "fairness" mandates on broadcasters alone when you can capture them, and much more, by regulating the entire Internet? After all, in a world of media convergence and abundance, bright lines dividing distinct media sectors or their products have vanished. Everything from TV shows to text messages run on multiple networks, making the old, broadcast-oriented Fairness Doctrine a less effective means of reestablishing a liberal media monopoly. So the liberals got smart and came up with the perfect solution: use net neutrality as a backdoor way to reimpose the Fairness Doctrine on the entire media marketplace.
That liberals would support such a Fairness Doctrine for the Internet is no surprise--they have long favored government regulation of media and communications markets.
When government censors, it does so in a sweeping and coercive fashion, prohibiting the public, at least in theory, from seeing or hearing what it disapproves of and punishing those who evade the restrictions with fines, penalties, or even jail time. Not so for Verizon or any other private carrier, which have no power to censor sweepingly or coercively. A world of difference exists between a private company's exercising editorial discretion to transmit--or not transmit--certain messages or types of content and government efforts to censor.
Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe made this point eloquently at a recent Progress & Freedom Foundation event. In his view, those who would impose net-neutrality regulations on First Amendment grounds fail to appreciate "the fundamental right of editorial discretion. For the government to tell that entity that it cannot exercise that right in a certain way, that it must allow the projection of what it doesn't want to include, is a violation of its First Amendment rights." The principle that Tribe articulated would apply equally to the New York Times's editors if they decided, say, not to run an advertisement from the Ku Klux Klan. That's why it's particularly puzzling that the Times ended its editorial about the Verizon incident by arguing that "freedom of speech must be guaranteed, right now, in a digital world just as it has been protected in a world of paper and ink." Does the editorialist believe, then, that government should regulate what ads the Times may run in its own pages?
This twisted theory of the First Amendment cannot support net-neutrality regulation. The First Amendment was intended to protect us from tyrannical, coercive government power, not the silly mistakes of private companies. And a new Fairness Doctrine for the Internet would have the same chilling effect on the vibrant exchange of ideas--especially conservative ones--that the old Fairness Doctrine for broadcast TV and radio did.
This is good for the Net in general - it means more money for competitors. More competition means better service, more choices for end-users. The monopoly telecom companies are the *worst* option for spurring overall economic recovery in the networking market.
Nice rant, man, +5 "right on, preach it"!
If these big telco skunks were really interested in running something decent out here in rural land, instead of milking 100 year old repurposed telegraph wires or whatever that chintzy stuff hanging on the poles is, they could and would have done it years ago. They ain't interested, low hanging fruit only. And even the chintzy stuff they had to get ordered to provide, they sure were never going to do it on their own. And because they took all that loot in the 90s and burned everyone, they should have their big fat pipes seized immediately and nationalized.
I am not in favor of too much government or that sort of action as a general rule, but it is obvious as all get out we will as you say fall further and further behind the rest of the planet if we let things sit as they are with those companies, so a lesser of two evils approach is needed in their collective cases. The internet now is a utility, like roads, water, sewage, electricity delivery etc, and should be treated as such. I would prefer it to be run like a big public non profit co-op.
Seems to me like good ol government wants to have every major facet of our lives in their control. See, look at it like this. Obama makes it so that telecom "owes" the govt by giving them stimulus, which they will be obliged to pay back, when they cannot do so in the way the gov wants, they snatch em all up and make em government owned and run. Then, if good ol uncle sam so desires, he can completely and totally turn off what he wants, when he wants.....its shaping up to be quite the regime.....looks like 2010 just became the new 1984.
Oh poor little bankers and telcom monopolists, cry me a river because they might be expected to do the public a service and keep their word. We can only imagine what the world would look like if $23 trillion dollars were spent on education, parks, housing, medicine, and reasonable regulation of the predatory industries that have left the US fat, cancer prone, broke and ignorant. Telco companies are in a position to refuse this money and it is in their best interest to leave customers paying per byte of third world service. It is in every one else's best interest to regulate the piss out of these theives.
It is instructive to study what happened to the last broadband stimulus. Had these vultures carried through with their promisses, the US would already have the best network service in the world. Instead, they pocketed the $200 billion dollars that we all gave them and have done trillions of dollars in damages to the US economy. The tide was so turned in the 90's, that by the time the Clinton administration was over, the US government was overseeing corrupt auctions of spectrum for cell phones to the highest bidder. Yes, we now have cheap, 3rd world grade cell phone service as well as copper lines but we could have had much more. The greedy people responsible for this fraud deserve jailtime, not more money.
The public has a right to regulate these companies because they make use of public assets. You own public servitude and the public should put it's regulatory foot down on the Bells with it. More importantly, we own the spectrum which can and should be liberated. All of our communications goals can be met this way. Let the telcos refuse the money, we don't need them.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Businesses don't want the government meddling in their business...film at 11.
Twitter is a Twitter sock puppet. No shit.
The user "Anonymous Coward" is a known anonymous coward sock puppet.
That said, i thought Twitter was supposed to be a well known Microsoft sock puppet? Sure, some of his activities are annoying as hell, but sometimes he also has valid points, this being one of them. I really don't care WHO you are, I rarely even look at the user string of these posts, I care more about WHAT you are saying. Who you are, and what you say should be disconnected, as long as what you say is valid, and has good facts going for it.
If your worst enemy said the sky is blue, would you decide the sky was in-fact NOT blue, just because it came from someone you don't like?
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
Oh, and I forgot to say he does this obviously to bring attention to his -1 posts. An AC comment is always ranked higher than the ones he makes with his accounts.
Perhaps he did, and perhaps he didn't. Perhaps YOU are Twitter bringing attention to Twitter, AC. Perhaps I am Twitter bringing attention to Twitter's AC call to attention to Twitter. Perhaps Twitter is everywhere, and we are all but merely his sock puppets working his terrible twisted will.
My comment still stands, falling for it or not. I really don't care who said it, he had a good point. Just because he is the reviled Twitter doesn't matter much if he had a point.
If it was just Twitter posting AC to make Twitter look better, sobeit. I admit, I don't much like his tactics, and he does appear to be a dubious individual, but this is Slashdot, and a lot of our "minor celebrities" fall into this mold.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
I'll bet you they are required to pay "prevailing wage" which means union rules and benefits and fill out 30 page certified forms under penalty of imprisonment that the employees have been properly classed under the rules.
Funny how nobody wants government subsidized health care but everyone wants government subsidized internet access. What ever happened to free enterprise?
Seriously, how many is that? Five?
Currently hooked on AMP
This is normal behavior for Grants.gov and may or may not be related to BIP and BTOP, the two major broadband programs; for earlier examples of Grants.gov problems, see this post and its references to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on Grants.gov problems, as well as "From the Department of "No Kidding:" Grants.gov Warns of Outages at High Service Period."
Sometimes Grants.gov problems result in an extension, and sometimes they don't, as detailed further at the links.
I love how the administrations flunkies spin things to make it look like there side is winning...
Government servers are sllllloooowwwwed to a crawl, not because a bunch of scam artists or ACORN are trying to get more of our tax dollars...
Government servers are being hit by the American People telling them to take the Health care bill and stuff their own ballot boxes.
Look at the data, from last week...
Spin is the job of the administration and congress, at this time. America does not need spin. The fact, just the facts. (Something not well represented by spinmngers and admincurs
The CEOs of AT&T, Verizon, et.al. saw what happened to the former General Motors chairman, and would rather keep their jobs, thank you very much.
Chip H.
...of South Carolina gets sued and MUST take the stimulus, yet companies that really should take it won't. I just don't get this country.