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FCC's Broadband Plan May Cost You Money
At ten minutes past midnight the FCC released their National Broadband Plan. Judging by the available coverage, few reporters spent the night poring over it. The BBC at least posted something in the morning hours, but it quotes Enderle, so that gives you some idea of its sourcing. Business Week notes the plan's cool (not to say frigid) reception among broadcasters. Dave Burstein of FastNet News did some real digging. His take as of 4:00 am Eastern time is that the plan will cost most Americans money, and won't provide much if any relief to the poor. We'll see many more details and nuances emerge over the day. Update: 03/16 19:53 GMT by KD : The FCC plan (PDF) is here.
The government tries to "help" and only ends up costing taxpayers money without really solving the problem they don't have the business solving in the first place.
Of course it will cost us money. Any time the "government" says they can do something at zero net cost, you know they are either lying or unreasonably optimistic. That is one of the rules of government spending - it always costs more than stated. A $750 billion stimulus will not cost $750 billion, it will cost $1 trillion. A $3 million bridge will cost $4 million. A 'brief' war will cost 5X what you think it will.
You may or may not like big businesses but businesses are usually very good at reducing costs, governments are not (the reason that isn't true with ISPs or cable companies is because they don't have any competition - most people live where there is a de facto ISP monopoly). I don't know why so many people - Republicans and Democrats and Independents - want the government to do more and spend more for us.
As an atheist who lives in rural Illinois, where there are plenty of bible thumpers, I would be happy to have a much faster internet connection. It would also hopefully educate the uneducated masses here about such evil sites like the pandas thumb which would help them become less thumperish.
The Government provides a service - in this case, asking/forcing someone else to provide a service - and people are shocked that it will cost money? What kind of Communist paradise do these people live in where Government doesn't cost anything?
Everybody wants services (public schools, Medicare, military, etc), nobody wants to pay taxes.
Consider that wiring urbanized areas is quite straightforward due to the availability of labour as well as the preexisting infrastructure. Wiring rural areas is a tough task, where often services are provided for an outright financial loss. Even in countries such as New Zealand where the enlongated geography and coastal towns mean that in principle there is only a short distance for cable to run, laying infrequently used cable in remote areas makes it unattractive.
In such cases broadcasters ought to accommodate wireless services, and probably a good argument can be made for compulsory acquisition of airwaves.
When they talk about the warring parties, there doesn't seem to be enough discussion of the death of free (ad-driven or public, but no access fee) broadcasting. Much of the focus, with some lip service to expanding access to broadband, seems to be on wringing as much profit out of the limited spectrum as possible rather than the maximum benefit to all of us from what is basically a natural resource. I don't like the idea of private industry snapping up control and then renting it back to us. How long before the old rabbit ear antennas are quaint and $50/month service is required? The Internet is a vital alternative for many things, but it is far from cheap or independent itself. I for one am feeling more and more "owned" by the access providers and would like to hear a lot more about ubiquitous free Wifi -- in the cities and the boondocks -- and such, as common and cheap as electricity.
Having lived in and visited countries with largely state-run telecom industry and then come home to the USA, I think it should be painfully obvious to all that government does not do a good job at running telecommunications. I know this isn't an attempt at running a telecom, but it sounds like they are going to screw the pooch just by trying to influence the market. The power of the FCC to f-things up is just that immense.
And I'm going to punch the next person that tells me "Broadband is a right". The hell it is. It is a good, a service that must be paid for, same as healthcare. You can not have a right to something that is non-free. Now I'm open to discussion on whether the state should pay for people to have a certain good, but see the above on how well states run telecoms.
"Cheeze it!" - Bender
If there is one thing that the internet helps, its ensuring that no one ever has to find this out if they don't want to. If someone only watches Fox News, listens to talk radio and reads the WSJ in print, all they're likely to do is add foxnews.com, redstate.com and/or stormfront.org ("white nationalist" forum) to their reading list, group up with more and more people who agree with them, then eventually find Alex Jones and then its over. The same thing can be said of the person who doesn't watch anything but PBS news, listens to NPR and reads nothing but the New York Times... or the people reading Daily Worker or whatever.
The internet, for most people, really just helps to ensure that they never have to step outside of their comfort zone insofar as information is concerned. Once they've "discovered" so many comforting sources, then it'll just legitimize their entire world view, solidify everything in their mind, give them comfort in the virtual crowd and make them even more dangerous. I have first hand experience with this myself, and I had to drop off for a while and go read real books, multiple media sources, etc, to ensure that I gave myself a well-rounded view of things again and got back towards normal.
Don't get me wrong, I love the internet -- it makes my life a lot easier, provides the infrastructure within which I make my living, allows me to keep up with friends from high school and college, and get information from all over the world whenever I want it. But for a very large subset of the population on either side of an issue, all its going to do is help entrench their views and help them think "look at all these people who are saying what i've been saying for years! what's wrong with people who can't see what I see?! It's all right there, on the internet!" But, as a poster said above, Democracy has drawbacks. This is one of them.
Since when is broadband internet a right, and the government has to intervene to make sure everyone has it. That is total crap. It's literally stealing my money, and giving it to someone else.
So the text has been out for several hours and this guy flipped through it (you can't honestly read 357 pages of children's fiction in that time, let alone government policy) enough to find a few stated ideas for taxes, and all of a sudden it's a net loss for consumers? When are those taxes going to take effect, and what is the inflation-adjusted amount in today's dollars? It's a lot easier to suggest taxes than to try and tell congress how to budget or regulate companies, so this statement of policy cannot honestly take into account any kind of subsidy that might be dreamed up by congress (save your complaints about how taxes pay for that, that's not the kind of cost we're talking about), nor any kind of price regulations that would decrease charges. A substantial part of the plan is supposed to be paid for by auctioning another part of the broadcast spectrum, and there's no way of knowing anything other than a ballpark estimate for that amount. It's not like this is anything other than the first public rough draft; items will change and funding will be battled over every day until the relevant budgets are passed.
What's so special about 100Mbps?
Its "a couple TVs worth of Hi Def video" aka competition for the cable providers.
Its a nice simple power of ten of a number. You can get into long tedious arguments about specially recoding feeds into H.264 at this parameter and that parameter blah blah. However, 10 Mbps is pretty borderline, and 1G is way the heck more than necessary, the convenient power of 10 in the middle happens to be 100 Mbps.
Also the folks involved are all slow moving dinosaurs. You know that bit about hit the brontosaurus tail and it takes 5 seconds for the slow nerve response to go to the brain, or whatever it was we were taught as kids? Well, when these clowns got started fast ethernet was widespread and gig-E was too new to bother considering. So with the home computing infrastructure we had, it seemed pointless to request anything above 100M. Much like it would be silly to daydream of requesting 100-Gig for home use at this instant, since there is no 100-Gig gear marketed for home use (made in china for $5, sold at best buy and walmart for $50, drool proof configuration, zero maintenance, etc)
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Here's what I would do: cities and towns provide the infrastructure for the last mile. They connect fiber to homes, schools, and businesses and run it to a neighborhood hub. In rural areas, counties could build towers for 4G wireless. Then the big carriers would connect to the hubs (multiple carriers per hub for maximum competition) and charge for service. Local government would be responsible for deploying and maintaining last mile service, private carriers would compete to supply internet connections and other services (telecomm, video) at the best possible prices. Of course, I don't expect any of this to actually happen ...
[Insert pithy quote here]
The same argument was used when the US Interstate highway system was built decades ago. We already had highways linking the various major cities; why do we need these big limited access highways? Decades ago when the first bypass Interstate highways were built in the middle of open county around metro areas the discussions were equally argumentative -- who would ever need such a highway? Who would provide services for travelers on these roads?
Decades may be required before the average person needs 100Mbps. And some of the original architecture and 100Mbps equipment will fail to meet future needs [ analogy attempt: compare a cloverleaf intersection in Ohio with the newly built High Five intersection in Dallas]
One of the functions of government is to provide very long term goals and infrastructure measured in decades which private industry cannot meet -- and which most people cannot comprehend.
Every mans' island needs an ocean; choose your ocean carefully.
"...that the plan will cost most Americans money, and won't provide much if any relief to the poor."
When does the U.S. government do something that doesn't match the above?
A Republic with Laws to protect individual rights is superior to a Tyranny of the majority (democracy).
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Privatization! All the same mistakes the government makes, plus the cost of profits, administrative overhead, plain old greed, no transparency, and no incentive to make things right.
The Pentagon’s reliance on outside contractors in Iraq is proportionately far larger than in any previous conflict, and it has fueled charges that this outsourcing has led to overbilling, fraud and shoddy and unsafe work that has endangered and even killed American troops. The role of armed security contractors has also raised new legal and political questions about whether the United States has become too dependent on private armed forces on the 21st-century battlefield...
“This is unprecedented,” [Charles Tiefer] added. “It was considered an all-out imperative by the administration to keep troop levels low, particularly in the beginning of the war, and one way that was done was to shift money and manpower to contractors. But that has exposed the military to greater risks from contractor waste and abuse.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/12/washington/12contractors.html
"Right now the government is paying health insurance plans that administer Medicare Advantage, on average, 12 percent more per person than it spends on patients enrolled in traditional Medicare," said AMA Board Member Cecil Wilson, MD. "With Medicare payments to doctors who care for seniors slated for a 10 percent cut next year, Congress must put the money used to subsidize the insurance industry to better use."
At the AMA's Annual Meeting late last month, America's physicians sent a resounding message to Congress - eliminate the Medicare Advantage subsidy. AMA policy clearly states that subsidies to private plans offering alternative coverage to Medicare beneficiaries should be eliminated, and that these private Medicare plans should compete with the regular Medicare program on a fiscally neutral basis.
"While groups that truly represent physicians fight to preserve all seniors' access to health care by stopping Medicare physician payment cuts, the insurance industry and its partners are solely focused on preserving their $65 billion government subsidy," said Dr. Wilson.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/76805.php
Engineers hired to investigate the cause of September's massive Big Dig tunnel leak have discovered that the project is riddled with hundreds of leaks that are pouring millions of gallons of water into the $14.6 billion tunnel system.
While none of the leaks is as large as the fissure that snarled traffic for miles on Interstate 93 northbound in September, the breaches appear to permeate the subterranean road system, calling into question the quality of construction and managerial oversight provided by Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff on the massive highway project.
Finding and fixing all the leaks will take years, perhaps more than a decade, said Jack K. Lemley, an internationally known consultant hired by the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority to investigate the problem. Just repairing the section of wall where the September leak occurred will take up to two months and require closing of traffic lanes.
The engineers also said they have discovered documents showing that Bechtel managers were aware that the wall breached this fall was deficient from the moment it was built in the late 1990s, yet did not order it replaced and did not inform state officials of the situation.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2004/11/10/big_dig_found_riddled_with_leaks/
You went from agreeing with Paul to agreeing with Obama? You really have no idea what to think, do you?
And a zealot of the worst kind, just like many of the Bible thumpers you abhor, apparently. Good job failing Philosophy 101?