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FCC Wants More Time To Craft Broadband Plan
adeelarshad82 writes "Julius Genachowski, Federal Communications Commission Chairman, has sent out a letter to Congress requesting more time for the commission to deliver its national broadband plan. According to the stimulus bill passed in early 2009, the FCC was to come up with a plan to provide all citizens with access to broadband services and deliver it to the committee by February 17, 2010. Even though an outline of the plan was released last month, FCC is requesting till March 17, 2010 to finalize the plan."
The FCC is still using a 56k modem and it will take them a month to upload the plan.
This is the government. They will start shooting for 100%, budget cuts will cut it to 85%, lobbyists will cut it to 80%, and by the end of the program only 65% will be helped.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Why should the government subsidize Internet access for somebody that lives an an "exceptionally remote area"? When I bought my house, I checked first to make sure the Internet access I wanted was available. If you choose to live in an area that doesn't have certain services available, why should you be able to demand taxpayers provide it to you later?
I agree, it's a rip. And why should the government provide subsidized access to provide much cheaper food, water delivery, electricity delivery and natural gas deliveries to those remote densely packed areas where none of those valuable resources occur naturally in the quantities those densely packed areas demand and use now? Why should they be allowed to "vote" to take from other people far away in the rural areas, or to use any public tax monies collected to help provide these goods and services?
Should go to a pure profit, supply and demand based model, no government interference? All private roads, no more government mandated free "right of ways" for pipelines or electrical towers. Let private corporations negotiate with each individual landowner for transit fees and access fees, etc. If they want to move products to these "broadband rich" densely populated areas, those people there should also pay what it is really worth. Then all of our goods and services will be more fairly priced.
Works both ways, man, so do you want that trade? That's what you indicate you want, so are you willing to pay the real free market no government interference/ no tax payer ripoff price of your existence, or do you want to keep the government tax payer help in setting some "commons" that you get now?
No they hit there download / upload cap and need to wait for next month.
Segment the data transport and data service industries?
A T1 is data transport. Cable is data transport. These things get bits from a to b.
TCP/IP, DNS, email, web hosting, etc etc .. these are all data services.
I'd simply declare you can't be both, or you can't be the data service if you're near-monopoly data transport, at least in that area/segment/etc.
This would foster .. competition.
It's so hard for the corporatists to grasp that regulation is often a positive economic force.
-josh
...But if no one is living there, do the "crimes" committed there really harm anyone? Really, if someone was, say, 5 miles from anyone and it was all their own property and they got high, publicly drunk, did every type of drug imaginable, discharged low-power rifles with a range of less than 5 miles, set off fireworks, played music cursing at a very high volume, and did just about every type of crime able to be committed in that time, would it harm anyone other than themselves? No.
Slave Trading, Drug Smuggling, Drug Manufacture, Terrorist Training Facilities, Anti-Government Organization Headquarters; these are actual examples of things going on in otherwise developed countries that can't patrol their entire area.
How do you kill that which has no life?
As debated in this slashdot thread.
The good people of Wilson, NC pay $99/month for 10/10 Mbps internet service, 81 TV channels and telephone service. How'd they manage that, you ask? Well, the city-owned and operated cable service called Greenlight came into being when the City of Wilson approached TWC and local DSL provider Embarq and requested faster service for the area. 'TWC refused the request. And so Greenlight was born,' says blogger Peter Smith. 'Now Time Warner Cable and Embarq are upset that they've got competition, and rather than try to go head to head with Greenlight on price and service, they've instead been lobbying the state government of NC to pass laws to put Greenlight out of business.
As I have read about this case local businesses and private citizens lobbied and organized and eventually got the project financed by the issuing of bonds. Quote from their FAQ "The funds for constructing the fiber network come from bonds issued by the City of Wilson. Tax revenues are not being used to fund this project in any way."
With large ISP's fighting local democracy I can understand why public pressure for better broadband infrastructure arises.
The Long Now Foundation
You just don't like it when your little insular urban centric "oh so superior" bubble gets burst. You exist at cheap affordable rates for basic life necessities in the larger cities from the government using a LOT of eminent domain seizures and mandated "right of ways" and massive centralized infrastructure building using tax payer dollars over the generations and regulations to keep your costs down. And the government seems to not pay much to the actual rural owners for this transit action, as in zero. Pure taking.
I bet you've never even thought before about how much your life is economically stealth subsidized because of that. Just imagine if all that "commons" action was gone and it was all private, your big city "wall street rules". All private roads, people charging whatever the market would bear, to get food to you..heh. Electric delivery companies having to negotiate transit fees. heh. Municipal water service and pipelines just taking water from the rural areas when this would be private water, where they could charge a sales fee per gallon before it even entered the pipeline, and then have to keep adding to the fees as the pipeline crossed a lot of private land and boundaries, heh. Tons of examples there.
You have no idea *at all* how cheap you have it from that "commons" and subsidized access. Just go back in US history and look what urban costs were before commons access. Every step of the way as the commons developed, starting with such things as the "post roads", your costs for food water and energy have dropped radically as a percentage of your income, and your comfort quality of life has gone up. But now that we would like a little more modern commons access to better communications, wow, what a reaction! See it all the time here. "Oh noes, string some better copper on already existing poles, OMGWTFBBQ, break the bank, we can't afford it, wah, no subsidies, how dare those people want modern communications, as if their chintzy water and food and power is so valuable!!"