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Obama's Goal: 98% of US Covered By 4G
alphadogg writes "Ninety-eight percent of US residents would have access to high-speed mobile broadband service within five years under a plan that President Barack Obama detailed Thursday. Obama's proposal, which he alluded to in his State of the Union speech last month, would free up 500MHz of wireless spectrum over a decade by offering to share spectrum auction proceeds with current spectrum holders, including television stations, that have unused airwaves. The cost of the proposal is likely to raise questions from lawmakers, and some backers of government broadband spending have already raised concerns that the plan would give money and spectrum to large mobile carriers."
So I have to wonder if this will be very similar to the wired broadband initiatives done years ago which have only started to provide benefits to the people many years later and at a much higher cost than our tax dollars should have required?
And what is '4G'? Is this wireless broadband definition going to be rooted in 2011 or will it be an ever increasing amount which will be viable in 2025 or 2050?
The spectrum is owned by the PEOPLE Mr. President, not you, not the government, and certainly not those you license it to. If they are not performing up to the very flexible definition I am sure you won't create because it wouldn't be at all advantageous to the wireless carriers, can we remove that license from them immediately?
Yeah, I didn't think so. Let's rethink this before you do something insanely stupid and let 'broadband' history repeat itself.
How about taking that money, building out the fattest/fastest fiber network you can and then turn around and let any carrier/company lease it to resell. I'm not sure why you are trying to make "mobile" broadband the thing to invest in, when wired broadband options suck just as much.
The real Sig captains the Northwestern. This one captains
Actually it is - just like federal highway administration. There are certain things that just can't be done on the small scale local government level. I am curious what you think the federal government's purpose IS if it isn't to take on national scale projects.
Coverage for 98% of the US is different than coverage for 98% of Americans.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
This is not the job or purpose of the federal government.
And I suppose the next thing you're going to say is something crazy like it's also not the federal government's job to use the IRS to sieze your wages because you haven't paid the penalties you've racked up for refusing to buy the insurance that you will now be required to buy so that you can use that to get your constitutionally enshrined human right to services from a podiatrist because your feet hurt from standing in line for your new iPhone.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
You've got the wrong Roman reference, actually. Communications access is economic infrastructure, like roads and aqueducts. Economic infrastructure pays for itself and increases the wealth of the nation.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
You're either not familiar with smartphones and the costs associated with internet access (here's a clue - that landline you propose people replace with a smartphone is mucn MUCH cheaper than the wireless data plan) or you are one of the middle-class employed people that doesn't really understand how expensive this stuff actually is, and how unaffordable for the poor. If you do the math, you might find that a landline + an old modem (remember those?) is still more cost effective for internet access. Yeah, you don't get to stream 1080p video over a modem, but the expensive smartphone data plan can barely manage that either. You'd still be able to access essential services, though (if they haven't succumbed to bandwidth-consuming web 2.0 b.s.)
Your experience in India may be relevant, but you probably missed the part where the goatherders weren't being bent over a barrel by domestic telecoms to satisfy "maximizing shareholder value". I bet their costs were a fraction of what they would be in the U.S. In other words, your experience in foreign lands was largely irrelevant to the reality that people have to face in the country that the original post was referring to.
Why is it that every time an initiative is launched to modernize the country and bring us up to speed with the other countries that have far surpassed the US, people cry foul? Why do they never do that when, oh I don't know, a WAR is about to be launched on a country that has nothing to do with anything?
Yes, these things cost money. And yes, that money is probably going to come from the people who pay taxes. But as far as subsidized plans go, this is a good one. This will actually help people. Not like subsidies for oil companies to drill up our oil and then sell it back to us at a massive profit. Or subsidies to private armies to fight our wars for us without those nasty checks and balances. Or subsidies to Israel that go straight into their oppression efforts.
I can totally get your reluctance to pay for things like this but it just strikes me as rather awful that we can spend THAT much money on right-wing causes and nothing on good initiatives like this.
More people need to read Atlas Shrugged.
No. No no no. No no no no no no no. Nononononononononononononnonononono.
Ayn Rand was a decent novelist, and a travesty of an economist and philosopher.
>>>5-7% of it.
Well I googled it. POTS copper line leads into 95% of Alaskan homes, mainly due to FDR's universal service fund subsidizing the lines. In other words - you were waaaaay off.
Information wants to be expensive AND wants to be free. So you have Value vs. Cheap distribution fighting each other.