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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.
why. why so red.
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.
Why spend so much money hooking up rednecks and bible thumpers?
It won't improve their lives one bit, and will just add more retards to the internuts causing retardedness to overflow, which will destroy the world, and probably the solar system.
kdawson, the google page link links to a blank google news page.
...and will just add more retards to the internuts causing retardedness to overflow, which will destroy the world, and probably the solar system.
You mean Eternal September?
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.
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.
I've seen WAY too many posts lately marked as "Troll" when it is obviously not a Troll comment - it's either a comment that is supposed to be funny (like the above) or a comment that is a discussion continuation with an opposing point. Looking through yesterday's main stories, almost every post I saw marked as troll was wrong. For example, this parent.
Troll means that the person is deliberately trying to be a jerk or derail the conversation, or is posting something off-topic and offensive. Typically before you mark the person as a Troll you want to look at their post history and see if they are a current troll, and if not you may want to consider if that person is really being a Troll or not (especially if their previous post history is quite good). If not, then consider "Flamebait", but only if it is a post that is specifically trying to fan the flames rather than make a point. Posts that are trying to make a point are neither Flamebait or Troll.
For that matter, the "Overrated" moderation is used when a post is moderated way up and the content is obviously not that great or wrong. It is not used to drop a "Score:1" down to 0. When I moderate I try not to drop Score:2's to 1 as well, as most people read so anything 3 and above displays, so they still wouldn't see that post.
I understand most stuff gets caught in M2 (meta-moderation for you new people), but it really screws up the conversation when you mod someone that is contributing in the wrong direction, especially to "Troll". It also makes another mod spend their points to correct you, and many mods either filter out 0's or steer clear of Troll comments and moderate good comments. Like the FAQ says, focus on the good, not the bad.
So let's do our homework and use our brains before we start marking everyone as Trolls, okay?
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
I'm sorry, but do you mean to say that I may have to pay as much as $5-$10/month more in hard left socialist taxes for my broadband speed to increase by 1500%? Not gonna happen, America.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
"The FCC set a long-term goal of 100 million households with connections of 100 megabits per second"
I remember seeing that statement somewhere else (I think it was ArsTechnica.com), and I can't help but wonder how the FCC thinks that will help consumers if the Internet backbones and servers don't also get improved? Here's what I mean - my local Telco recently rolled out fiber to my apartment building, so I now have a 10Mbs/2Mbs Internet connection - not blazingly fast by any means, but a nice bump up from the 5M/768k connection I previously had with DSL. Anyhow, what I've noticed is that, sometimes I get faster download/upload speeds, but with a lot of servers, I'm not coming anywhere close to fully utilizing the available bandwidth on my connection, because somewhere in the connection (whether it's the server, or some link in-between, I really don't know for sure), something is bandwidth-limited.
It seems to me that any governmental push to increase the speed of service for 100 Million households requires that not only do you upgrade the 'last mile' connection, but there needs to be a focus on getting the backbones and servers on faster connections too. Without that, it's kind of pointless, isn't it? I don't think I'd have any *use* for a 100Mbps Internet connection since almost no servers anywhere are going to be able to consistently feed me data at even a significant fraction of that speed.
Also, since ISPs typically give you a very small fraction of the upload speed compared to your download speed (Coming Soon! 100Mbps Ultra-Broadband Internet!* [fine print: upload speeds of 6Mbps]), users can't really even provide content to *each other* at anywhere close to that rate. So, what am I supposed to do with 100Mbps? I suppose if you have 5 people using computers all at once in your home/apartment/small office, it might be nice that they each 'get their own' 20Mbps, but what is the drive for this particular number? What's so special about 100Mbps?
I've been following news and speculation surrounding the plan for the better part of a year now. There were numerous tell-tale signs that this was going to be a flop, like Blair Levin, the head of the NBP team, discounting the importance of line-sharing, despite it being touted as the single-most effective means of promoting competition in the ISP industry by a Harvard-Berkman study commissioned by the FCC.
Also, Dave Burstein is amazing. The guy knows more about telecom than anyone else in Washington. I highly recommend you read his website at DSLPrime.com
some servers are rate limited so 1 download can't max it out and so others can get a good speed as well.
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.
Some of the people on here are acting all high and mighty, like the only people that can't get broadband don't deserve it or are too poor to afford it. I would guess that these people live on the coasts and very densely populated areas. There are parts of the country where large portions of towns and their outlying areas can't get any service. Companies like Qwest do not care. Qwest wants to charge 12.95 per month (beginning rate) for DSL, when your community tells Qwest you would pay $50 or more per month forgoing the introductory rate they say "I don't want your money."
My last hope has been for the government to step in where all of the local companies (telephone, cable, wireless) have refused to.
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]
You make it sound as if corporate interests will somehow drive down the costs and that the current corporate-only approach is a great benefit to consumers through low costs. There needs to be a balance between government intervention and long-range planning and the corporate view of the next quarterly earnings report.
Yes the plan will cost money, but then so does the current system, which is greatly stacked against the consuming public. Presently, media companies use the airwaves as if they owned them. With this attitude one gets 38 minutes of commercials for 22 minutes of programming and news you can not differentiate from Comedy Central. If you buy cable then you pay $100-300/month to watch the 38 minutes of commercials and 22 minutes of programming. With the current system extraordinarily tilted to the benefit of media monopolies one gets limited choice and lot of pro-corporate propaganda and filtering for one's viewing dollar, with costs continuing to go up each year, like health-care premiums. With a shift to internet broadcasting, costs will go down dramatically over time and scarce spectral resources will be used more efficiently and cost effectively by providing additional wireless services. The wider the penetration of broadband the more variety of services can be provided that will promote much needed competition and greater programmatic and content diversity. This is especially important now that America is steadily abandoning its educational institutions from K-Post Graduate to the altar of tax-reduction for the wealthy. By forcing competition onto a relatively neutral transmission medium of the internet, we will likely see much greater competition that will over time GREATLY reduced costs. It is only when the consumer has tremendous choice will one see lower prices. This is the primary reason so many in the media-elite are eager to line up and argue against the proposal and ANY plan that threatens their cozy system. This plan will force greater competition and reduce the influence of the most dominant players in what have become a patch-work of segmented monopoly markets that have been created through thousands of quietly or in a few cases, not-so-quietly negotiated contracts among media companies at the expense of the consumer. Keep in mind that few of the existing media-telecommunications-technology companies are independent of one another. Rather they are interconnected via a network of negotiated arrangements that typically extract the maximum cash from the consumer. If the US is to retain a functioning, competitive system, it must insure that the overall result is at least in someway beneficial for the country as a whole, not just those best situated to profit from it.
Also, its time for the US to once again reclaim the lead in telecommunications and internet services. The current system is only seeing other nations vault ahead of what was once a US dominated industry. At least the Obama FCC has a plan that includes some role for the consumer, other than being at the wrong end of every corporate media-mogul's wish for personal enrichment and monopolization of markets. Hats off to Obama for grasping the importance of improving the underlying technological infrastructure of America. Its nice to see an FCC that at least can do something besides protect us from Janet Jackson's breasts.
Why spend so much money hooking up rednecks and bible thumpers?
Because they grow the food that you eat.
Blast the outlying areas with our strongest wireless signals (WiFi, WiMax, cellular, etc, etc) and let them each buy the wireless receiver of their choice.
The monthly transfer caps on 4G probably won't be much better than what rural customers can already get on satellite. We're already seeing caps of 5 GB per month on MiFi 3G service from both Verizon Wireless and Sprint while city folk on Comcast get 250 GB per month.
Buying video games may cost you money
Eating food may cost you money
Having indoor plumbing may cost you money
Riding a bike may cost you money
Upgrading your video card may cost you money
Using toilet paper may cost you money
"...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?
Exactly!
I love how Democracy has allowed manufactured consent, a big part of which is "teaching" us in school that we live in a Lawful Republic, and thereby legitimising the store-bought laws that we get invoiced for.
I've given it a lot of thought, and really see a lot of promise in a monarchy, I especially like the defenestration model of checks and balances.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
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 do realize all those things you listed are perfectly free? As are the right to not be subject to unreasonable searches and the right not to incriminate yourself.
I had no idea that there were no lawsuits or legal battles over this, or that the ACLU hasn't spent millions across the country defending the Bill of Rights, or that equal protection under the law just magically happened, and we didn't have to send federal troops across the country to destroy Jim Crow laws.
Or in fact, that under the guise of protecting freedom, we spend upwards of a trillion dollars a year on defense of those freedoms. (Which is nonsense, but an off topic subject.)
Earlier, you said: "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."
Why didn't you specifically tell us which countries you are talking about?
I used to work at Worldcom before Bernie got arrested...many cubes had little signs that said something like:
"How do you know you work in telecom? Same desk, same office, five different companies in three years"
Maybe we DID take the blue pill. You wouldn't remember anyway.
I have the right to buy a gun. I want the right to put a router on my roof with the range, 4 to 7 miles, to be useful.
We have seen that poring money at the industry telecommunications has not worked.
This will give me free local, +-100 mile range, cell phone / texting / email. It will also level the field for ISP's so that there can be 100's not 1 or 2 in any given area.
15 years ago Apple computer asked for part of the spectrum that would provide many 10Mbit channels, in a design for a metropolitan area.
Ya I have to pay for hardware, and power. I have to hope other people will do the same. I will perhaps want to pay an ISP.
Ya, its not free, but I bet its a lot less then that people pay now.
Its long over due for the FCC to give us this Right. And to define fare use, so that compliant hardware can be built to deliver the last mile to the consumer.
You know you are dealing with a US solution to a problem when it takes a huge bite out of your wallet as it helps you!
We are a country based on free enterprise after all.
And the assumption is that all Americans can all afford to pay more.
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Standing tall in the land of the rich and the poor.
I'm going to assume your post is not pure sarcasm, and is merely a true expression of extreme libertarianism. Its not genuine conservatism, if that's what you think it is. If this is a mistake, sorry, but it was the poorest attempt at sarcasm I have ever seen.
First, get over the "right" hangup. The debate should be framed in terms of whether it should be an entitlement. And knock off the dismissive term "poor people."
Discounting any argument based on social contract, please consider that it is in the interest of anyone who wants wiser, more enlightened, more efficient, and more effective government to have voters who are well informed and able to readily interact in the true, cross section of society, commons -- for which the internet is ideally suited. Anything that effectively acts against the establishment and perpetuation of a turned-off, resentful, disadvantaged underclass is good for everyone. And, sheesh, the per capita expense involved is so small. You had better worry instead about burgeoning, crippling health care expense and national indebtedness on an insane, unsustainable level, which can only lead to a future of unimaginable inflation and poverty.
If you really want a worthwhile debate, think about whether the Great Society and the War on Poverty has led to an improved situation with respect to the social underclass, or a hopeless perpetuation of same.
Really??? Internet for the poor??? Really? I like how people are arguing or debating about this. So instead of housing the poor or getting them jobs or the real necessities the FCC is missing the target by a few light years by trying to provide the poor internet and in turn hiking up the cost over all. Good game FCC. It's nice to know that you're looking out for the people by providing them something that's pretty trivial in their lives. Good game.
Whenever someone mentions how essential the postal monopoly is, I love to point them to Lysander Spooner's American Mail Letter company:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Letter_Mail_Company
He challenged the postal monopoly when the post office kept jacking up rates, and successfully got them to lower them through honest competition. Read up on him, he was truly an interesting man.
We're talking a technical term here natural monopoly:
Your account of history is a bit flawed. The local monopolies came to pass because they were more efficient. In this case, the best way to manage the situation is to either create a thicket of regulation to prevent the local monopoly from abusing it's position, or to just let the government run that natural monopoly.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
The problem is businesses fighting to keep from offering decent service we've already paid for. Charge me $100 more a month but give me freaking fast, reliable, uncapped service. Tell the telcos to fsck off when they sue community efforts to roll out their own Internet. Stupid anti-consumer anti-competitive behavior needs to stop. If the taxpayer pays for strong infrastructure it enables business growth which of course provides jobs and a higher quality of life. Being cheap is a bad idea.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Sadly, the teacher who taught math was a normal public education teacher.
Free Martian Whores!
Free as in unicorns.
Cynicism, like dogmatism, can be an excuse for intellectual laziness. - Susan Shirk
All I can get is dial-up just to download the PDF to read it will take me 1 hour +, I live in California to