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FCC's New Broadband Plan Prioritizes Competition
adeelarshad82 writes "The Federal Communications Commission has released an outline of what might be included in its upcoming national broadband plan, and encouraging competition was a top priority. The FCC statement said 'Competition drives innovation and provides consumer choice. Finding ways to better use existing assets, including Universal Service, rights-of-way, spectrum, and others, will be essential to the success of the plan. The limited government funding that is available for broadband would be best used when leveraged with the private sector.' The stimulus plan provided $7.2 billion in broadband grants and $350 million for a broadband mapping program, but also directed the FCC to deliver a national broadband plan to Congress by February 17, 2010."
Cause she might show you her tits?
Didn't we do this in the 90's, throw a lot of money at the providers and all they did was give it out to the shareholders?
If we do this there had better be significant strings attached.
--
BMO
Seriously. I'm just waiting on it.
When you have an industry with high entry costs due to infrastructure needs, you are going to end up with only a few companies after the shakeout occurs. Therefore, any policy that is designed to enable consumer choice and universal access is only useful to create an environment where competition will briefly flourish before degrading to the same old 2 or 3 dominant companies own the entire market.
If the government truly wants to encourage competition, they would provide funding to under-performing companies and startups. This would lower the entry costs and provide a balance to the giants who would normally run roughshod over the smaller guys.
Wow, tax & spend? What is this 1992-2000 when the government was fiscally responsible?!?! In the new millenium, the government is all SPEND SPEND SPEND. You best check yo'self!
Their president has said, "Nothing in the outline presented this morning would increase competition. Reforming universal service and supporting municipal networks are worthwhile goals, but they would do nothing to reverse the slide caused by eight years of misbegotten telecommunications policies that have crippled most meaningful broadband competition for consumers. There was no discussion of opening telecommunications networks to competitors. There was no discussion of structural separations of carriers into wholesale and retail components. These are the factors that Harvard’s Berkman Center told the FCC in a study a mere two months ago were the reasons other countries have surpassed ours – they are using policies we discarded."
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
remind anyone of a bailout?
I'd like to see private individuals -- the everyday people who share their wi-fi with their neighborhood -- included among those qualifying for these government-funded 'subsidies.'
Oops.
Fixed that for ya.
There is nothing to FEAR but NOTHING itself; and I fear there is a whole lot of nothing going on. --scorpivs
It's very simple: open the lines back up to CLECs. They've been hurt by being shut out for the last decade, but they're still around. They'd be happy to pick up where they left off and resume reselling lines successfully.
Dumping money on politically important municipalities for "wireless", or something, isn't competition. Competing carriers is competition.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
FCC Takes on Cable But Not Carriers With National Broadband Plan
The actual presentation from the meeting is included in the article.
I am anxiously awaiting for this to be approved: "Mandate a home gateway device. Require MVPDs to provide a small, low-cost device whose functionality is to bridge the proprietary MVPD network elements (conditional access, tuning & reception functions) to common, open standard, widely used in home communications interfaces; enables a retail navigation device to operate on all MVPD platforms."
I'm hoping that means unencrypted channel streams in-house over Ethernet.
And of course it was only the evil Republicans that kept broadband out of the hands of their largest supporters in the rural parts of America where even the cable companies fear to tread for lack of money making ventures. If the govt. wants broadband everywhere, then they need to pony up the money and build the damn lines themselves. The phone companies have consistently shown that they will not do it, no matter how much money we send their way. Now that's a stimulus package I could support, one where real American will be put to real work to help spread broadband everywhere. Stop giving my tax money to people that only want a profit. I pay them enough money every month for broadband and cell phones. I don't need to give them money out of my tax money too.
21st Century Renaissance Man
Oh don't you worry. The TAX TAX TAX part is coming. Just you wait!
Life is not for the lazy.
why -1
Too bad the CUT CUT CUT part will never come.
Also the real issue is the people who own the lines are the same ones who 'use' the lines. It needs to be 2 different companies. The company who owns the wires and rent them out to anyone. Then the ISPs compete on price and service. Then the company who owns the wires is insensitived to build better wires to sell higher service. The companies who sell the actual connections to the consumers are insensitived to sell at a competitive price. This will never happen like my first statement.
I really want this to work out. Unfortunately with the US government, this is an investment opportunity for tube manufacturing and installation.
lol: You see no door there!
Well, who was it that demanded less regulation and fewer measures of oversight to the telecoms? I don't seem to recall deregulation of the telecoms as a huge Democratic cause in the last decade. The largest cause of that sort of problem has been the conglomeration of telecoms into ones which only cover areas of the country which are profit rich and to do so in the most minimal fashion possible.
What you're forgetting is that these same rural voters go crazy for corporatism and for the misguided deregulation that leads them to not have decent access to quality broadband at reasonable prices.
The president of wha....oh, the publication you're quoting. Hmmm. Er, ummmm.... yeah, nope. Not impressed.
I don't seem to recall deregulation of the telecoms as a huge Democratic cause in the last decade.
That's funny because it was a Democratic President that signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996 into law as I recall.......
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Oh no, that wouldn't be possible. The dems are spending us into oblivion, but they have all the answers for saving America.
21st Century Renaissance Man
There's no "insensitived". It's "incited".
Last I looked they stopped publishing it.
For that matter the data I see shows you to be mistaken. M1 up about 21% sense 96, M2 up about 24%.
Cite: http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/money-supply
Their guess for M3: up about 40%.
The real danger is having those same morons in charge when the printing presses get kicked into high gear.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
As long as there is no barrier to anyone else laying lines, they could lay better lines and charge the ISPs less to use them.
What we need is a National Broadband Plan.
We are going to put the U.S. Government in the ISP business to foster competition by those greedy and money grubbing private ISPs.
The way it works is, the U.S. Government cuts all broadband traffic down to 80 Kbps and then expand the U.S Government broadband bandwidth to 160 Kbps or more.
ISPs can only offer 160 Kbps or more bandwidth, if their broadband plans meet certain government criteria. However, unlike the current health care reform bill(s) floating around, the ISPs are authorized to A) disconnect anyone even suspected of illegal file sharing or any other reason, as they see fit, B) cut of any and all access to such hate sites as "www.usconstitution.net" and any other sites the current Administration deems "objectionable" and finally, C) dramatically raise prices to help cover the onerous regulation and reporting requirements that result form the National Broadband Plan. The procedures for determining who gets put onto the "No Net List" are classified and by statute are not subject to FOIA laws.
Oh, and your excise and any other taxes related to accessing the Internat are all being increased 100 percent, across the boards, to help pay for the program. Yeah, we know, sucks to be you, huh?
Remember, this is helping our children, you money grubbing capitalist pigs!
... is there anything you can't do?
That is all.
I don't seem to recall deregulation of the telecoms as a huge Democratic cause in the last decade.
That's funny because it was a Democratic President that signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996 into law as I recall.......
Clinton signing it doesn't mean that it was an important issue for him, most likely you can say he either didn't disagree with it or his signature was part of some larger political compromise. He certainly didn't make deregulating the telecommunications industry a major part of his campaigning or other political rhetoric.