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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."
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
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