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New US Broadband Projects Get $795 Million In Funding
snydeq writes "The Obama administration has announced nearly $795 million in grants and loans to 66 new broadband projects across the nation. The subsidies — to be doled out by the US NTIA and the US Rural Utilities Service — will bring broadband service to 685,000 businesses, 900 health-care facilities, and 2,400 schools, according to officials. The NTIA will award $404 million to 29 projects, and the grants will finance 6,000 miles of new fiber-optic lines. Most of the money will finance middle-mile broadband network projects. The RUS will award $390.9 million, with $163 million in loans and the rest in grants. Most of the RUS money is focused on last-mile broadband projects."
I really wish people would stop spreading this myth.
It's as bad as those who keep repeating the "Betamax lost because it wouldn't allow porn" myth (holds up copy of Playboy on betamax). If you actually read the 1996 Telecommunications Act the money was allocated for upgrades to fiber -or- upgrades of poor quality telephone lines to 56k -or- upgrades quality (which was considered damn fast compared to the 14k modems most people at the time were using). The 56k upgrade from analog-to-digital telephones is where most companies chose to spend the cash. If you think that was a mistake, well then blame the 1996 Congress who wrote a poor law.
This act was somewhat similar to the "100,000 New Cops" that Clinton used to brag about. It sounds great until you read the actual bill, which allowed the money to be spent on cops -or- cop equivalents (computers, radios, et cetera). Most police departments used the money to buy new gadgets not actual cops.
AS FOR NOW: I was wondering where the money would come from: "In the Recovery Act, Congress allocated $7.2 billion to the NTIA and RUS for broadband grants and loans." In other words this new project was passed over a year ago but its only getting spent during the next few months. I wonder why they waited so long to act?
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Yeah right. The tens of thousands of people who would otherwise have starved beg to differ. And we're still living off much of the infrastructure they built.
Nicely cherry picked data. I like how you conveniently left out that the top 10% have seen their income rise from $172,000 in 1980 to $339,000 in 2005 - that's a nice doubling of their income. The top 1% did even better - from $517,000 in 1980 to $1,558,000 in 2005. That seems like pretty good economic progress.
And how did the middle class do? From $51,000 to $58,000. Lower Class? $34,000 to $37,000. Lowest Class? $15,700 to $15,900.
So we know why the top 10% are paying all the taxes: they make all the money. And they pay lower tax rates! From 37% for the Top 1% to 31%, the top 5% from 31.8% to 28.9%.
http://www.econdataus.com/efftax05.html
How much of this will end up in the pockets of a telco exec and leave us with nothing to show for it?
In the US? I have no idea, but in the UK Blair managed to get this to work with the deal he did with BT when he came to power in the 90's. He vastly inflated BT's share price by handing them a virtual monopoly for most of his reign but he did also vastly improve he quality of broadband connection available to people at a lower price who were not in the capital.
Some vary rural areas still suffered but people like myself who lived in run own inner cities where ADSL would never normally have been offered cheaply found we were being offered a service that was comparable to that which was on offer in the capital. This was no mean feat being that at the time I lived in one of the most run down areas of Britain (Moss Side).
I am not saying that his will turn out the same but these projects can if they are planned correctly and if the correct level of control is put in place to stop the sort of profiteering you describe. In the UK situation this was done by guaranteeing BT a virtual monopoly at the end of the subsidised period. They willingly were forced into selling space on their backbone to many other companies for a reasonable rate in return for being treated preferentially in the bidding for several nationwide contracts.
This resulted in many small businesses setting up as BT resellers of ADSL products and being able to compete with BT on price even though they did not have a national backbone like BT. Now they are able to do the same by renting space in BT exchanges for servers and buying routing bandwidth from BT.
Maybe this is only possible when big business and governments can actually work together as they realise it is in both their long term interests. Blair wanted every child to grow up with internet access and BT realised this would give them a shit load of extra customers down the line. Blair new it would help the UK service economy he was trying to build if we were all PC and internet savvy before we entered the job market, even if we were destined for no IT roles that still involved a small element of PC use like writing an email or using excel to figure out if we have any money left to spend.
I dont read