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FCC Dodges Pointed Questions On US Broadband Plan
Ars covers a series of questions that US senators put to the FCC chairman following up on his appearance before the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee in April. The headline question was a blunt one asked by octogenarian Senator Daniel Inouye (D-HI): "The National Broadband Plan (NBP) proposes a goal of having 100 million homes subscribed at 100Mbps by 2020, while the leading nations already have 100Mbps fiber-based services at costs of $30 to $40 per month and beginning rollout of 1Gbps residential services, which the FCC suggests is required only for a single anchor institution in each community by 2020. This appears to suggest that the US should accept a 10- to 12-year lag behind the leading nations. What is the FCC's rationale for a vision that appears to be firmly rooted in the second tier of countries?" In the FCC's formal response (PDF), Chairman Genachowski doesn't rise to the "second tier" bait, and in fact talks about "ensuring that America remains a broadband world leader," as if he believes we currently are. A blogger over at Balloon Juice is a little more forthright on the "What is the FCC's rationale" question: "The rationale is that this is the best they can do with a legislative branch in the pocket of telecom providers."
We (the U.S.) is a great deal larger and more spread out than *any* of those other countries. However, it is ridiculous that I can't easily get 100Mbs (compared to other countries) in cities like Portland or Seattle. I would expect to only be able to get 25Mbs where I live (and I can and do), as I am 45 from a major metro.
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No other country that is at the top of the broadband list has 100 million homes.
http://top10.com/broadband/blog/2010/02/top_10_broadband_countries/
http://money.cnn.com/2009/10/01/news/economy/broadband_internet_connection/index.htm
It's much easier to throw alot of broadband out when your populations are centralized, or the country is small.
I dislike immensely a system that prohibits someone from speaking openly about a nations problems to it's very legislators.
"The rationale is that this is the best they can do with a legislative branch in the pocket of telecom providers."
*snicker*
Too bad US Senators are unlikely to read such words themselves. It would be fun to see their reactions at being lambasted for being the corrupt morons they are. I doubt they would change their ways over such accusations, but watching them get all puffy faced and dramatic in their excuses/responses to such outright disrespect would be funnier than most of the crap I can find on TV nowadays.
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Approximately 70% of the American population lives in 1% of it's landmass, which I believe is about 100 metro areas. We are not a rural nation, and haven't been for some time. (Here's an article that says 80% of the population lives within metro areas.)
Norway and Sweden have similar population clusters and sparse country areas, and they have near universal broadband coverage, both wired and wireless. The difference is that they spend more money on investing in infrastructure and less on maintaining an overseas empire and a police state.
As far as average population density, America has 83 people per square mile, Norway has 32 per square mile, and Sweden has 53 per square mile.
It's a failure of vision, investment, and will. It has nothing to do with population density.
This is Cringely's take on broadband and the government (from August 2007)
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_002683.html
"The National Information Infrastructure as codified in the Telecommunications Act of 1996 existed on two levels -- federal and state.
As a federal law, the Act specified certain data services that were to be made available to schools, libraries, hospitals, and public safety agencies
and paid for through special surcharges and some tax credits."
"Over the decade from 1994-2004 the major telephone companies profited from higher phone rates paid by all of us, accelerated depreciation
on their networks, and direct tax credits an average of $2,000 per subscriber for which the companies delivered precisely nothing in terms of
service to customers. That's $200 billion with nothing to be shown for it."
"It is on the state level where one can find the greatest excesses of the Telecommunications Act. All 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia
contracted with their local telecommunication utilities for the build-out of fiber and hybrid fiber-coax networks intended to bring bidirectional digital video
service to millions of homes by the year 2000. The Telecom Act set the mandate but, as it works with phone companies, the details were left to the states.
Fifty-one plans were laid and 51 plans failed."
"There are no good guys in this story. Misguided and incompetent regulation combined with utilities that found ways to game the system resulted in what
had been the best communication system in the world becoming just so-so, though very profitable. We as consumers were consistently sold ideas that
were impractical only to have those be replaced later by less-ambitious technologies that, in turn, were still under-delivered. Congress set mandates then
provided little or no oversight. The FCC was (and probably still is) managed for the benefit of the companies and their lobbyists, not for you and me. And the
upshot is that I could move to Japan and pay $14 per month for 100-megabit-per-second Internet service but I can't do that here and will probably never be able to."
The "US is too big" argument is specious. How did Americans ever get telephones, gas and water if the country is too big? Why don't high-density cities have 1st-world Internet speeds?
Look, I've lived in Japan through all iterations of Internet connectivity, from x.x modems, through ISDN, Adsl and fiber. I don't live in a city, I live an hour drive from a major city, but I've had 100Mbps fiber for eight or nine years now. It's so long ago, I can't remember, but it costs me about the same as a couple of pizzas per month.
I actually have 1Gbps wired, but I don't need that capacity yet. I have HDTV through my connection and the infrastructure is so solid, I have never had an outage in 15 years - not one. I lived in a rural area 8 years ago and still had 40Mbps Adsl.
There are few technological or geographical hurdles affecting your Internet connectivity in the US. You have only market hurdles. The biting reality is that local monopolies are stifling the market, as they are intended to do. If you really want state-of-the-art connectivity, you have to embrace a free market. Recall local and state politicians who vote for monopolies, or defeat them in elections by voting in people who will repeal monopoly legislation made in collusion with the provider.
Why can't we do this in a logical organized manner.
1. The government builds out infrastructure
2. The telecoms lease infrastructure
3. Individuals buy service from the telecoms at a regulated rate
4. The regulated rate has enough buffer to subsidize service to those under the poverty line
5. The lease rate has enough buffer to pay for the original build out, maintenance, plus further innovation
6. Innovation money is funneled back into colleges for research into next gen technologies
The build out could be done with contractors through the telecoms, or contracted on a state by state basis giving states control of where and when to build but the federal government own the spec of how to build out so that it remains consistent and interoperable from a interstate trade perspective (i.e. some broadband may be shared over boarders like in the case of St. Louis). The telecoms still get to profit from the infrastructure albeit at a reduced profit due to regulation and people below poverty get the opportunity to take part via subsidy, library, schools, etc.,. You could even due partial regulation where it's regulated up until some minimum standard and anything over that is considered "gold plan" allowing the telecoms to charge higher rates for higher usage.
"Do not be swept up in the momentum of mediocrity." - anon
Claiming US is a broadband world leader is complete and utter bull and quite well shows the ignorance of the speaker. Even Finland isn't at the top but still we have a broadband coverage of about 90% of the whole country, including rural areas, and the downtimes in broadband services are rare and don't last long.
There was discussion about this on OSNews a while back and I think it was South Korea where a 100mbit/s broadband connection costs like 10 euro/month, and it covers the whole country. THAT'S more like a broadband world leader tbh.
The difference is that American society has been led to believe that the only form of investment that's worth anything is one with a high ROI. Infrastructure simply doesn't work that way.
Let's say you have a country with one million people, mostly concentrated in a capital city. Let's say the richest 10% of that country mostly live in the capital, and 70% of the population does as well. There is little incentive for a corporation to spend the same amount of money connecting 70% of the population on connecting the other 30%. The ROI is too low.
Furthermore, they have little incentive to provide a reasonable price to everyone, instead of a high price to the richest 10% who can afford it, and a middle price to the top two quintiles of income, and just forget about the rest. If this were just some luxury product, this is all to be expected, and not exactly harmful to the economy at large. Have a look at any South American country that was forced to follow these stupid rules: a two tier economy, with the top doing extremely well, and 90% wallowing in poverty with little access to infrastructure to help them get out.
When it comes to infrastructure, privatization is the quickest way to destroy an advancing economy. What if lobbyists decided in the 30s that electrification was a luxury? Or decided that a national road system was a luxury? Without widespread and reliable infrastructure, you simply have no foundation for a good economy. If I want to open a business, the first thing I'm going to look for is the place that has the best infrastructure for it: ports, railroads, reliable electric grid, and of course, a population that can actually do the work.
In 30 years, if the libertarian pretenders have their way, America will have a lopsided two tier economy, degraded infrastructure, and perhaps less public debt. But not one of the corporations is going to give a shit about the debt. They're going to take one look at our uneducated population, poor internet connectivity, unreliable coal-fired electric grid, and oil-dependent transportation network, and ask if we're willing to work for Ugandan wages, because the Chinese middle class is looking for a new textile manufacturing base.