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The Cost Of Broadband In Every Rural Home

Posted by samzenpus on from the I-miss-real-internt dept.

dave562 writes "In an analysis of the effectiveness of the the 2009 stimulus program (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 or ARRA), one of the programs that was investigated was the project to bring broadband access to rural America. Some real interesting numbers popped out. Quoting the article: 'Eisenach and Caves looked at three areas that received stimulus funds, in the form of loans and direct grants, to expand broadband access in Southwestern Montana, Northwestern Kansas, and Northeastern Minnesota. The median household income in these areas is between $40,100 and $50,900. The median home prices are between $94,400 and $189,000.' So how much did it cost per unserved household to get them broadband access? A whopping $349,234, or many multiples of household income, and significantly more than the cost of a home itself.'"

63 of 381 comments (clear)

  1. Think harder... by grub · · Score: 2, Funny


    So how much did it cost per unserved household to get them broadband access? A whopping $349,234, or many multiples of household income, and significantly more than the cost of a home itself.

    Why don't they just run a single line into the center of the trailer park and install a switch for distribution?

    --
    Trolling is a art,
    1. Re:Think harder... by Ant+P. · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Because the telecoms don't get to stick their snouts in the pork barrel by thinking.

    2. Re:Think harder... by Wyatt+Earp · · Score: 2

      Nice stereotyping around the rural US, but in the areas they are talking about generally it's farm and ranch country very far from traditional telecom and railroad right of ways.

      If the US hadn't let the regional freight railroad for the Great Plains fail in the 1970s, most likely it would have been much cheaper to get good data connections out there.

      Example - I'm originally from north central South Dakota, the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul, and Pacific Railroad began failing in 1964, was out of Montana and the Dakotas by 1977 with right of ways auctioned and tracks gone by 1985 for the most part. Now the town I am from is 90 miles from the nearest true broadband connections, trenching is very expensive and running lines above ground is problematic because poles fall during winter storms.

    3. Re:Think harder... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      A very old and boring story. City dwellers have been subsidizing rural folk since the start of the county. Think rural electrification, farm vehicle tax benefits, ethanol subsidies not to mention outrageous price supports for important foods such as milk and sugar. Alas these disparities are built into the basic structure of the country for each United States Senator has but a single vote no matter how many citizens he or she represents.

    4. Re:Think harder... by nine-times · · Score: 2

      Yeah, but I would at least wonder about the methodology. Did they pick the most remote houses, difficult to lay infrastructure to, and then figure out what it would cost to lay a 100Mbps fiber line from the nearest facility? Or did they actually analyze the expenditures that have happened and determined what was actually spent? Even if there was $349,234 spent per household in some instance, is that representative of what was spent throughout the project, or is that an outlier?

      It also might not be entirely fair to analyze these things based on the average income and house price. There might be other conditions, like running an Internet backbone to a particular town might enable that town to grow and become more prosperous. It might make it cheaper to run broadband to surrounding areas in the future.

    5. Re:Think harder... by vlm · · Score: 2

      Yes, running cable would be expensive, especially with degradation of line signal over distance being very high, a repeater would need to be placed every half mile or mile to get any real speed

      I think not.

      I've been out of the telcom engineering dept for several years, but back then our OC-192 SONET rings needed a repeater or a ADM every 50 miles or so, and single mode 10Gig fiber ethernet ran 5 or 10 miles without a repeater. You can buy cheapie 10G fiber transmitters that only go 500 feet or whatever at low power, if you want, but that doesn't mean the 10 mile model isn't "off the shelf". I'm sure they can go faster and further now.

      Maybe you're thinking of ancient AMI/B8ZS T1 physical 4-wire lines, that had repeater huts every 6kft, which is still longer than you claim? Some kind of weird DSL? I thought DSL was pretty much dead, like "ethernet over powerline" technology is dead.

      --
      "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
    6. Re:Think harder... by vlm · · Score: 2

      Here, off the shelf Cisco (expensive) plug in 1 gig 1000BASE-ZX SFP single mode fiber 70 km no repeater necessary. Thats over 40 miles of gigabit service.

      Expensive, but not third of a million bucks expensive.

      --
      "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
    7. Re:Think harder... by Zan+Lynx · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Personally, I think the subsidies for farmers should stop.

      Of course, the city folks won't like it much when the prices of food triple to reflect real costs, but that's life and a fair market economy.

      I suspect plenty of "blue" city congressmen and senators support farm subsidies for this very reason, because the current system takes the money from the rich folks and makes basic food stuff more affordable for the poor folks.

    8. Re:Think harder... by Svartalf · · Score: 2

      Nice stereotyping around the rural US, but in the areas they are talking about generally it's farm and ranch country very far from traditional telecom and railroad right of ways.

      It might be far away from those right of ways...but not the POWER ones. More to the point, many of those selfsame power companies have dark fiber along their high and medium tension runs that were laid down during the dot-com boom, with them thinking that they could scoop up their own ISP type services in many cases.

      Sorry...NOT buying that line. :-D

      --
      I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
    9. Re:Think harder... by smerdyakova · · Score: 2

      An interesting perspective but completely inaccurate. Two good examples are: 1. Sugar costs twice as much in the US as most of the rest of the world. This is due to import tariffs designed to protect US sugar farmers. While this is not a subsidy in the classical sense it does mean that we spend more on sugar than we ought. 2. The US pays farmers to grow corn for ethanol production. Inefficient and a legitimate subsidy which significantly alters the cost of corn to the end consumer in the upward direction through a. higher cost at the grocery store and b. higher taxation.

    10. Re:Think harder... by squiggleslash · · Score: 2

      Nobody's suggesting they should be banned from having the Internet, merely that they should pay what it costs.

      In any case, this isn't really about farmers, it's about people who choose to live in the middle of nowhere because they can count on government to build roads to the middle of nowhere, and for that government to insist that utilities serve those locations, at their efficient customer's expense. We live in a country that mandates the subsidization of suburban and rural living, for no good reason. And we wonder why we're so dependent on foreign oil, and why our cost of living is so high compared to the rest of the world?

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    11. Re:Think harder... by brit74 · · Score: 3, Informative
      Heh. Let's not forget that Republicans are also firmly behind farm subsidies. Heck, farm country is where a lot of Republicans get votes.

      Republicans dodge farm subsidy cuts
      June 15, 2011

      Republicans have quietly maneuvered to prevent a House spending bill from chipping away at federal farm subsidies, instead forging ahead with much larger cuts to domestic and international food aid.

      The GOP move will probably prevent up to $167 million in cuts in direct payments to farmers, including some of the nation’s wealthiest. The maneuver, along with the Senate’s refusal Tuesday to end a $5 billion annual tax subsidy for ethanol-gasoline blends, illustrates just how difficult it will be for Congress to come up with even a fraction of the trillions in budget savings over the next decade that Republicans have promised.
      ...
      Direct payments to farmers have been a frequent target of fiscal conservatives and other critics of farm programs because they are paid regardless of crop price or yield. They have survived for years, along with tens of billions annually in other subsidies for farmers, because a powerful coalition of farm state lawmakers in both parties has protected them.

      http://articles.boston.com/2011-06-15/news/29661688_1_farm-subsidy-cuts-farm-programs-direct-payments

    12. Re:Think harder... by rhook · · Score: 2

      A simple Google search will pull up many citations, it was even part of the storyline in Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_American_streetcar_scandal

      The Great American streetcar scandal (also known as the General Motors streetcar conspiracy and the National City Lines conspiracy) refers to allegations of, and convictions from, a premeditated program by General Motors (GM) and several other companies to purchase and dismantle streetcars (also known as trams or trolleys) and electric trains in cities across the United States and replace them with bus services; a program which has been blamed by some for the virtual elimination of effective public transport in nearly all American cities by the 1970s. The lack of hard information about what occurred has led to intrigue, uncertainty, inaccuracy and conspiracy theories. The story has been explored many times in print, film and other media, notably in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Taken for a Ride and The End of Suburbia.

  2. Warning, not exactly objective research here by elrous0 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Keep in mind that this study was conducted by Jeffrey Eisenach (former head of Newt Gingrich's political action committee and longtime conservative activist) and Kevin Caves of Navigant Economics (a bunch of professional "experts" who spend most of their time testifying in favor of various pro-big oil, pro-energy concerns). The article that cites it is by Nick Schulz, of the conservative think-tank American Enterprise Institute.

    And it also includes some data that I'm highly skeptical of, to say the least--like asserting that all but 1.5% of users in Montana had wired broadband access and all but 7 households in the whole state had access to 3G broadband prior to this funding. Those numbers are better than my own state, and we're not nearly as rural or mountainous as Montana.

    --
    SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    1. Re:Warning, not exactly objective research here by MickyTheIdiot · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Question from a lazy person: does anyone have any idea what was said about the TVA back in the day. Getting rural broadband to me seems to have a lot in common with rural electrification... including all the people saying that it isn't a necessity, people who crying about "market forces" and all that.

      I know everyone seems to have their biases, but it seems like every study that has come out over the last 2 years is two biased to consider no matter what "side" it supports.

    2. Re:Warning, not exactly objective research here by Vario · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This is clearly a study that is not worth much without the raw data open and accessible for everyone.

      Maybe a single household near a mountaintop would cost several million dollar to connect but quite a few others could be done for a thousand. So before someone can make any political conclusions it is definitely worth to look at the actual data behind this.

      Of course it does not increase trust, that the website (Social science research network) is currently down.

    3. Re:Warning, not exactly objective research here by Wyatt+Earp · · Score: 2

      There is no way you can get 3G across Montana, even on the I-90 corridor its very spotty outside of cities to even get decent EDGE data.

    4. Re:Warning, not exactly objective research here by iceaxe · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I think the problem is there in your last sentence: "every study that has come out"

      Where "come out" means reported on by various popular media, with varying degrees of selectivity and 'spin'.

      There's actually quite a lot of good research going on in the world. You just don't have it thrust in front of you unless it can be twisted or abused to support someone's political or financial agenda.

      --
      WALSTIB!
    5. Re:Warning, not exactly objective research here by hjf · · Score: 4, Interesting

      In a modern capitalist world, the role of the state is making sure that minorities (not in the racial sense, but in the economical sense) have access to the same tools and benefits the "majority" has. The problem with corporate thinking is that it tends to concentrate its resouces in developments that will offer an assured AND short-term return of investment. While this is an efficient policy for corporate, it leaves outside the game to basically everyone not living in a big city. Mid-sized are second, and small cities and towns are often ignored - but can easily be served by a small individual with enough capital.

      But rural areas are vast extensions of nothing. Long range WiFi access has been a blessing to many of these communietes - all over the world. These are often working with "lower" grade equipment. Sometimes MikroTik or many other economical wifi solutions (NanoStation), others run on off the shelf hardware. Very few run in true long-range outdoors solutions like WiMAX or Motorola Canopy, because the initial cost is too high for individuals to afford. And this is where "stimulus" funds should go.

      The growth (explosive growth) of the internet was ONLY due to the ease of access available through simple phone lines. It was an already-installed network, across the nation. HIGHLY REGULATED, which resulted in a service that was available in even the most remote locations. Broadband was never regulated that way, and as a result of that, there is a huge breach between people with access to broadband, and people still on dialup.

      Some argue if there should be stimulus funds at all. Leaving aside that most big companies receive money from the govenrment one way or another (tax breaks to money from their military/aerospace branches, to subsidies), there shouldn't be a discussion IF people in remote locations want or need broadband. They might not want it now, but they surely need it - or will, eventually.

      This is an online world. For most people in cities, Internet is a part of their lives, just like electricity and phone service. Do we want people from rural areas coming to the Big City for a better life, because we couldn't provide them with a good life where they lived? Do we want mom and pop farms to disappear because their kids and grandkids got fed up with the country lifestyle? Do we want all farms to be property of Monsanto? Because that's where we're heading.

      Disclaimer: I'm not american but here in Argentina we have the same problems. Big cities have good internet and phone service, while smaller cities often have 1 ISP, and small towns either don't have anything or have a single 1mbit connection (that cost $500 a month, really) shared between 100 people over wifi. Local farms either have been bought by corporations, or their owners have been pushed to plant only soybean (which isn't consumed in the country, but exported to China) instead of wheat (which, because of our italian roots, is heavily consumed: bread - which the chinese don't seem to eat), which is missing in supermarkets. Bread price has gone up considerably, and there are days when you just can't get flour.

      Pay no attentiont to anti-government conservatives. They all want what's good for companies - not for people. You have the right to bear arms, the civil rights, why can't you have "the right to broadband access" too? Oh yes, because it's the government spending money. We better spend it in warfare, right? Cause the US doesn't really have a big enough budget for "security" and military.

    6. Re:Warning, not exactly objective research here by coolgeek · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I don't care if the numbers are real or not. It costs between $1,000,000-$9,000,000 per lane mile of highway out to those rural homes. If we're talking 2-4 homes/mile, the road costs many more times than the cost of the homes too. And $350K to give them broadband is pretty cheap by comparison. Broadband deployment should be viewed as a similar infrastructure to homes, power lines, etc.

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      cat /dev/null >sig
    7. Re:Warning, not exactly objective research here by coolgeek · · Score: 2

      That's just a silly argument. The comparison would be, do you expect them to pay for your roads, and of course, the answer is they already have.

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      cat /dev/null >sig
    8. Re:Warning, not exactly objective research here by Grishnakh · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Shhhhhhhhh! This is part of the Republican 2012 election plan - the old story of painting Democrats as wasteful of tax dollars

      The problem is, they're exactly right: Democrats ARE wasteful of tax dollars. Just look at all these stupid stimulus programs that amount to handing giant piles of cash to giant corporations, thinking they're going to do something useful with it, and then being "surprised" when instead they just take the cash and keep it.

      But the other problem is that the Republicans are ALSO wasteful of tax dollars. Did Federal spending go down during Bush's term? No way. The Republicans want to get us involved in as many wars as possible, so that their buddies in the defense industry can make more profit. Strangely enough, Obama is also a big fan of giant defense spending.

      What's the solution? Well, I think it should be fairly obvious the answer isn't electing more Democrats or more Republicans, but apparently this concept is beyond the ability of the voting public to grasp.

    9. Re:Warning, not exactly objective research here by es330td · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You have the right to bear arms, the civil rights, why can't you have "the right to broadband access" too?

      You misunderstand the definition of "right." In the US Constitution it means a person has the choice to do something free from government interference. You *may* own a gun, if you so desire. You may say, or write, whatever you wish without restriction. You may associate with whomever you choose. Nowhere in there does it say that the method to exercise that right will be provided, only that it is allowed without interference. I am free to publish a newspaper but I have to pay for it. A "right" to something that requires delivery of a service or product places everybody but the receiver in a position of slavery. If a person has a "right" to medical care, some doctor or medical profession MUST provide that service. If a person has a "right" to broadband, some company must string wire, another must provision access to their networking hardware and yet another must provide electricity to run it all.

    10. Re:Warning, not exactly objective research here by QuantumRiff · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Keep in mind, ISDN (and partial ISDN) is available almost everywhere.. and according to the Feds, 128Kb/s is broadband..

      --

      What are we going to do tonight Brain?
    11. Re:Warning, not exactly objective research here by wagnerrp · · Score: 2

      The study was on how the money was actually spent. Yes, there were some households in Montana which cost as much as $7M each to connect to. So, how does that make the spending better? In my opinion, that actually makes things worse. It's not like those areas were even lacking broadband, as they had 3G cellular access, and if nothing else could use Hughesnet. Because of how far those handful of families skew the average, that $50M spent on them could have instead been spent on some 250 other families.

    12. Re:Warning, not exactly objective research here by PeanutButterBreath · · Score: 2

      You misunderstand the definition of "right." In the US Constitution it means a person has the choice to do something free from government interference. You *may* own a gun, if you so desire. You may say, or write, whatever you wish without restriction. You may associate with whomever you choose. Nowhere in there does it say that the method to exercise that right will be provided, only that it is allowed without interference.

      Not so fast. True, in certain instances, the understood "right" is as you describe. However, take the Sixth Amendment:

      In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

      Every "right" guaranteed in the Sixth Amendment is provided by the government to the citizen exercising them.

      Where does that have to do with broadband? I don't know. If The Constitution has anything to do with it, it is certainly going to be open to interpretation.

    13. Re:Warning, not exactly objective research here by ChrisMaple · · Score: 2

      If you expect to be taken seriously, speak in serious terms instead of using gratuitous sexual slurs.

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    14. Re:Warning, not exactly objective research here by mrsam · · Score: 3, Funny

      I'm using a perfectly valid term to describe a group of people stupid enough to support Sarah Palin.

      It's no worse than "Democraps", "Rethuglicans", etc.

      There was a show on the Discovery Channel, I think it's off the air now, because my Tivo hadn't found it in a while, "Dirty Jobs". The host, Mike Rowe, went around the country, talking to folks whose jobs are the menial, thankless tasks that actually make civilized life possible for the rest of us. Like garbage collectors and people who work in sewer treatment plans. People who build highways, or maintain the nation's bridges and tunnels.

      I can't help but to notice a somewhat curious thought experiment here. What happens if we try a word association game, here. What would be the first thing that comes to one's mind, at the mention of the word "Tea Party". I'd bet that if you were to ask this to the average, salt-of-the-earth people that I've seen profiled on "Dirty Jobs", the typical answer we'll hear are things like "Boston Harbor", "The Liberty Bell", "George Washington crossing the Potomac", "taxation without representation", and many other historical images that relate and recall our nation's violent birth.

      But if the same thing were to be asked of you, or many other left-wing extremists, the first thing that comes to their mind is their face being slapped by a hairy scrotum.

      Just some food for thought.

    15. Re:Warning, not exactly objective research here by mrsam · · Score: 2

      Left-wing extremists are morons too, but at least they came up with a funny name for the Teabaggers.

      Yes, I'm sure they find the experience of having one's face buried in a hairy scrotum amusing. Whatever lets them get their kicks, I suppose.

      "Tea Party" used to mean something good, recalling the things you said. But then the Teabaggers came along. At first, they seemed like they had some good ideas, but very quickly they showed their real stripes: they supported twits and morons like Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann,

      Sure, and there's no reason for you to show any proof that you're smarter than either Palin or Bachman, here. Your intellectual powers are beyond dispute. In fact, they're so overpowering, that mere mortals like us can never hope to understand the logical reason you've concluded that Mme Palin and Bachmann are "twits and morons".

      and they showed themselves to care more about gay-bashing and other religious issues than any economic matters,

      Sure -- would you care to refresh my memory with some examples of "gay-bashing" and "other religious issues" that you've heard from either Mme Palin or Bachmann? Thanks! Sorry to have to force you to go back and search Huffington Post, or the Daily Kos, for some material that you can repost here, but I haven't checked up on those left-wing kookblogs recently, so I'm kind of curious to see what they've been up to, recently.

      So they don't deserve the honor of being associated with our Founding Fathers, who have absolutely nothing in common with a ditz like Palin, so "Teabagger" is a good substitute.

      Certainly, I have no problem accepting the fact that you truly believe that. Really, can't really expect much more from the radical Left. I mean, running an entire state is just peanuts, compared to the difficult task of posting frothing rants on Slashdot. Any "ditz" can run a state government, we all know that. But there's just no way Mme. Palin could possibly hope of matching your contributions to Slashdot. Not even close!

  3. Re:Think even harder... by bunratty · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Your idea will get broadband to trailer parks, but what about farmland where there are a few homes per square mile? I would think that satellite or other wireless access would be more cost effective than wired Internet access in sparsely populated areas.

    --
    What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
  4. Why? by Normal+Dan · · Score: 2

    Is it really that necessary? Really?

    --
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  5. Unnecessarily expensive by ichthus · · Score: 2

    This is what happens when you send a government to do a man's (or woman's, or group of private citizens') job. We could stand to learn something from the successful, small WISPs and other small-time broadband providers (one of which I am a happy subscriber to).

    Check this out for more information about how it's getting done Europe.

    --
    sig: sauer
    1. Re:Unnecessarily expensive by blair1q · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yeah, because Europe is entirely government-free.

  6. As someone who is looking at rural homes.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I live in Canada, but we also have this same sort of pledge to bring high speed internet (not broadband specifically) to rural areas. I've been looking at rural homes, and to be honest, it's a real pain.

    As someone who torrents heavily, games a lot, and generally uses about 300gb/month at least in traffic, I need a fast connection. There is literally nothing in most parts of rural Ontario that exceed 3mbps down / 1mbps up, and with unlimited (or at least, overage charges that won't make you go broke) caps. If you go the 3G/4G route (which I would love to), many areas don't actually have coverage even if they claim they do, and the caps are 5gb if you're lucky. If you go satellite.. well, it sucks. Latency is awful. And if you go Xplornet or something (wireless antenna), they all block torrents, are known to be highly unreliable, have low caps, and the speed is 3/1 at best.

    It's kind of sad, because I don't want to live in the city, yet there's no real options out there either.

  7. Re:I think we're overthinking this by dbc · · Score: 3, Informative

    Hang on city boy, that's not true at all. My brother has been paying high fees for a satellite feed out on the farm so that he can get weather and market reports and trade commodity futures in a timely fashion. An internet connect is as important to progressive farmers as it is to any other business these days. The sad thing is that his satellite feed out in an area with less that one family per square mile is a better connection than my DSL connection here in the middle of Silicon Valley in an area of $1M+ homes.

  8. but... by TheCarp · · Score: 2

    I am sure that the resident of montana really appreciated it.... both of them

    --
    "I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
  9. the circle of pork by CrAlt · · Score: 4, Insightful

    1) Comcast/ATT/Cablevision/COX/etc all get their lobbyists push for this in the bill.
    2) The Gub-ment pays these mega corps billions to build out in the mountains.
    3) The people in these areas now have "access" to broadband... for only $79/month.
    4) They don't sign up... Comcast/ATT/cablevision/etc don't care. They already made $300K per house passed in the build out already.
    5) PROFIT!

    --
    I have to return some videotapes...
  10. Make them pay more! by imemyself · · Score: 2

    I'm moderately liberal, but ultimately, why shouldn't people who want to live in rural areas have to pay more for services? It costs more to provide services to them.

    If people choose to live out in the sticks, they should be forced the understand and pay for their services. The reality is that it's a hell of a lot more efficient and less expensive to provide services (water, power, Internet, phone, cable, etc) to people in high density urban areas. That's what we need to be moving towards - not making it easier for people to live out in the middle of nowhere and subsidizing their services to prevent them from knowing the true costs of living out there. Country people talk about how expensive cities are - well living out in the sticks would be more expensive as well if they had to pay the true costs of obtaining phone and other services.

    --
    Every time you post an article on Slashdot, I kill a server. Think of the servers!
  11. What was the trillion dollar stimulus spent on? by xzvf · · Score: 5, Interesting

    While the source of this data is obviously biased, I wonder where the stimulus money was actually spent. Think what a trillion dollars actually is. A new aircraft carrier costs ~10 billion dollars, planes double that cost, meaning that the country could have purchased 50 with the stimulus (we currently have 11). In todays dollars the Apollo program cost 150 billion meaning that we could duplicate it six times with a trillion dollars. A highway bridge near where I live is being replaced for a cost of 300 million, thus a trillion dollars could have replaced that bridge 3000 times. It could have paid the 14 million unemployed, $35000 a year for two years. Where did it go, and what did it do?

    1. Re:What was the trillion dollar stimulus spent on? by blair1q · · Score: 2

      Or did they?

      Only if they're building HOV lanes on all the freeways in my town, because that's been going on since last year. Every freeway intersection is getting a new set of curves in its stack, and miles of new lanes are being laid down. So on a busy weekend I'm probably eyeballing $3-4 billion of that total.

    2. Re:What was the trillion dollar stimulus spent on? by jedidiah · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The auto manufacturers and airlines and banks that were bailed out NEEDED TO DIE.

      They were diseased things that really should not have been allowed to live any longer under anything resembling a true free market economy.

      Actually rebuilding some of our crumbling infastructure would have been a great idea. Too bad not much of that actually happened.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    3. Re:What was the trillion dollar stimulus spent on? by Svartalf · · Score: 2

      I contend that most of that you're shrugging off was wasted (I'm sorry, I'm supposed to shoulder the fiscal irresponsibility of a bank that should have known better, whose executives should have done a perp-walk, and the like - just because the SOB is "too big to fail"? Not buying it. We got NOTHING from the Stimulus spending- while many lined their pockets with it for all intents and purposes...not just the "damn Saudis". At least when FDR did idiot things that prolonged the Great Depression (he didn't fix it...they know this for certain now...and that we'd have been out of it quicker had he not done the WPA stuff...) we got a lot of AWESOME infrastructure out of the deal. This? NOTHING. Seriously. Nothing.

      --
      I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
  12. Re:Do not call it Broadband by king+neckbeard · · Score: 2

    Broadband does describe the bandwidth. However, I'm pretty sure congressional lobbying has changed the meaning a few times.

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  13. Broadband is infrastructure, so stop complaining by Quantum_Infinity · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Broadband should be considered as an infrastructure and not as a luxury. Good infrastructure leads to economic development. The cost of providing infrastructure might be high initially but in the long run it has tremendous benefits for the economy of the area where that infrastructure was provided. Providing broadband in rural areas will attact outside businesses, help local businesses grow, make easier to provide education. The benefit will far outweigh the cost in the long run. Oh and what about steaming HD pr0n? Don't people in rural areas have needs?

  14. It's infrastructure by Applekid · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So, how did the roads get built? How is the mail delivered? How is power transmitted? How about Plain Old Telephone Service? There used to be some bonafide investment in infrastructure in the US, so where did all that go?

    Granted, I understand that water and sewer isn't too common in rural areas, but it's not like it's a backpacking adventure through the rainforest we're talking about.

    --
    More Twoson than Cupertino
  15. Re:I think we're overthinking this by Duradin · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How do you think they got those phone lines out there? It wasn't the invisible hand.

    There were probably people saying "Can't those things be done through the mail?" when they got wired up for phone service.

  16. Re:What about power? by FunkyELF · · Score: 2

    So... then you get interwebs to that 1 power plant (if it doesn't have it already) and leverage the existing power transmission system.
    Then you're not running wire for every address that you want to deliver to.
    You need to connect 500 houses.... you can run 500 wires, or 1 wire.

  17. Thank you for volunteering by overshoot · · Score: 2

    We all appreciate your offer to raise your share of food for your neighborhood, but right now we have a more pressing need for minerals. Please let us know when your quota of copper ore is ready for shipment to the smelter.

    --
    Lacking <sarcasm> tags, /. substitutes moderation as "Troll."
  18. Re:What about power? by coolgeek · · Score: 2

    Maybe someone could invent some kind of a routing box that would take traffic from one broadband network and send it on to another one, and vice-versa.

    --

    cat /dev/null >sig
  19. ARRA: where did the money go? by overshoot · · Score: 2

    I wonder where the stimulus money was actually spent.

    Not exactly hard to find out (per Wikipedia):
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Recovery_and_Reinvestment_Act_of_2009#Provisions_of_the_Act

    Almost half ($288B) went to tax cuts, about half of that went to direct aid to the States ($144B), the rest in dribs and drabs to other things.

    --
    Lacking <sarcasm> tags, /. substitutes moderation as "Troll."
  20. Re:Fake numbers by dnahelicase · · Score: 5, Insightful

    First of all they're dirt poor and not going to pay for broadband or own a computer. The critical part is the ratio of income to house price. Somewhere around 1:2 is OK but not ideal, 1:4 means extreme poverty, like 99% of your legally declared income must be going toward the house and you never eat anything but ramen, at least until the inevitable foreclosure and bankruptcy. Even commissioned cheerleaders for the home sales/building industry don't have the guts to ask for more than a ratio of 1:3.

    Umm. That's wrong. 1:2 is great, 1:4 is still good. It is certainly not extreme poverty. I don't know if you realize this, but those in extreme poverty generally don't own homes at all.

    A good explanation of ratios based on interest rate

    I own a home and my income:home price ratio is 1:3.2 I comfortably pay for expanded cable and a 20/3 fiber-to-the-home internet connection, and I live in a rural community. Most of the community has access to 3 broadband choices -including fiber from an independent/non-big-telco - which are not payed for through subsidy or tax credits.

    I'm not sure where you are from, but $40-50k / year is certainly a livable, comfortable, not-anywhere-near poverty condition for most of the country.

  21. Re:Think even harder... by yacc143 · · Score: 2

    Well, living in a country with more than 80% of it's area being mountains, I can only wonder. The normal expectation is that I have HSPA mobile access anywhere, no matter if I'm sitting in the subway in the city, or skiing somewhere crazy. I mean how do you keep your kids quiet if they cannot surf youtube while you drive?

    So if you have no highspeed mobile access on some mountain in the Rockies, your mobile providers are cheapskates. Or more correctly your politicians are better bought. Our carriers not only paid a ghastly sum for the UMTS frequencies, the license also included a condition that they have to bring coverage to 95% of the population (after a number of years for sure), or loose the license and forfeit the license fee. Guess your politicians did not think about including such a condition, right?

    (The expectations are so that my daughter's school for her last school trip explicitly noted that the shelter on the mountain where they will be staying has no mobile coverage. That's kind of a definition that they'll be going to the end of the world and beyond, ..., here around.)

  22. Um... by rsilvergun · · Score: 3, Funny

    you do know what subsidies are for, right? They're to ensure a steady and affordable food supply and prevent starvation. Unless you're really, really rich, you want this.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
    1. Re:Um... by shentino · · Score: 2

      I know that subsidies give ethanol corn and beef and other inefficient goods a leg up on what farmers would otherwise be making.

      It distorts the incentives.

      Let farmers grow whatever they want to and decide for themselves what's efficient.

      The ramp down period is so we don't starve.

      Failing that, a general across the board subsidy that doesn't play favorites by food type wouldn't be a bad alternative.

    2. Re:Um... by Kittenman · · Score: 2

      you do know what subsidies are for, right? They're to ensure a steady and affordable food supply and prevent starvation. Unless you're really, really rich, you want this.

      Not true. We don't subsidize farmers in NZ, and we're not really, really rich. Unless I missed that bit.

      --
      "The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
    3. Re:Um... by rsilvergun · · Score: 2

      It sounds like your complaint isn't with subsidies per say, but how they're applied. An across the board subsidy wouldn't work. What was happening was certain types of crops would, due to random chance of crop harvests, become worthless. Farmers would lose their shirts and then nobody would make the crop. It takes a long, long time to gear up to make a certain type of crop. You can't just just go, 'Hey, today I'm gonna grow strawberries'. Farm subsidies ensure that farmers keep growing what we need, even if, just this year, it's not profitable.

      Again, the goal is a stead food supply.

      --
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    4. Re:Um... by Required+Snark · · Score: 2
      Crap.

      The subsidies are not about farmers, they're about agribusiness. The farmers are just a front for the corrupt big corporations like Monsanto, Archer Daniel Midlands, and Cargil.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agribusiness

      Adding corn ethanol to gasoline or using palm oil for biodiesel makes the fuel burn more cleanly, stretches oil supplies, and perhaps most attractive to some politicians, provides a nice boost to big agribusiness.

      For another example, subsidized corn produces artificially cheep high fructose corn syrup. This is used in almost all soft drinks in the USA, which is why you can buy a gigantic soda for such a low cost. Even so, soft drinks are one of the most highly marked up food items, which is why the sized are so large. This ends up being an indirect subsidy to the fast food industry as well.

      No where else in the world do they use corn syrup for soft drinks. It does not taste as good as cane sugar. In Southern California many places now stock Mexican produced soda, like Coca Cola, because they want a better taste. Although recently I have found imported Mexican brands that also use US supplied corn syrup. (I read the labels because I want to avoid high fructose corn syrup.) This is what NAFTA was really for.

      All this extra sweet corn syrup is a major contributor to the obesity epidemic in the US. It is most likely worse then cane sugar for health, although the lobbyists and TV propaganda commercials denying any problems are now in full swing.

      So it's not about reliable food supplies, it's about entrenched special interests that literally don't care how much damage they do. And all the subsidies mean that we are paying them to harm us.

      --
      Why is Snark Required?
  23. Then live in the city??? by brunes69 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Seriously. People think they can have it all these days.

    Why should you get to live in the country, pay super low taxes, and have someone else in the city pay super high taxes to subsidize YOUR high speed?

    Move to the country and pay for your own broadband hookup. Or live with satellite access. Or stay in the city. But don't ask for my tax dollars to pick up the bill for your personal choice to live in an inefficient location.

  24. Re:Think even harder... by rickb928 · · Score: 2

    Having hispeed data for your kids while you drive seems to imply you were on a road. Even the major (and some minor) roads in Vermont get coverage. The problem is serving the small town of 5-600 residents, when it's 12 miles off the main highway. Even in Europe this may not be as common as you seem to be claiming, but I'll look for your assessment of that.

    And ski areas have surprisingly good access. Again, look for service 30 miles away, in the woods, in those very small towns.

    In Montana, some ranches are more than 60 miles apart. No cell tower reaches that far, and probably not WiMax. There are clever ways to leverage WiFi, but that requires creativity and cooperation amongst the locals.

    And true, our government fails to elicit coverage commitments from carriers when they auction off spectrum. We are aware of this shortcoming.

    --
    deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
  25. Re:Think even harder... by hairyfeet · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If that were true why was there parts of downtown Nashville with No cable or DSL when I was there a few years back? is the middle of music row in a cornfield?

    No friend it is called 'cherry picking" and something the teleco duopoly has done for years. When my mom built her home more than 20 years ago the cable stopped exactly 2 blocks from her house. Now more than 30 households live on this small 2 mile stretch and how far is that cable now? Exactly 2 block from my mother's door, same as it was more than 20 years ago. They haven't moved a single inch in ANY direction in more than a decade here, despite ever more houses being built, because that would mean they would have to invest rather than put the money into their pockets and in the USA it is "damn everything but the quarterly report!" and has been for ages.

    No we are gonna have to open up the last mile to competition and we are gonna build it ourselves if the companies won't, just as they refused to run electrical lines and water to most of the rural areas. And how much of that "cost" is private contractors and no bid contracts? If one would let the cities and the states build instead of having them buried in teleco lawsuits which is ironic since they are suing for customers they refuse to serve even if they win, well then I bet you'd see that price plummet.

    The problem is the current system like the "stimulus" bullshit was done classic government style, which means it doesn't get done if Sen Porkus and Congressman Kickbackus don't get to throw some to their cronies who promptly raise their bids by 600% and act like they won the lotto. We should do it ourselves and demand that the 200 billion we gave the telecos back in 96 for nationwide broadband (who said "Gee thanks! and then gave us the finger, just like GE who took a bailout and used it to send another factory to India) be paid WITH interest in 90 days or we seize the last mile.

    The ONLY way we are ever gonna catch up with the rest of the world is to stop tying the hands of the local and state governments and bust up the teleco monopoly on lines. They want a monopoly? Fine we'll give you 20 years for every currently underserved or unserved neighborhood you give FTTH. Make it 15 for every large city you change out, 20-25 for every small town. Otherwise all we are gonna get is ever nastier caps while the CxOs get extra hookers to snort blow off of while we get the short bus to the information superhighway.

    --
    ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
  26. Re:"Minorities" by choice by damnbunni · · Score: 2

    There are a crapload of people who were BORN in rural areas who don't make enough money to MOVE to the city.

    And even if they did move to a city, are there jobs there?

    I'm in a suburb (not a rural area!) with no wired broadband. I'd love to move somewhere else. But it's just not financially feasible.

  27. Re:Think even harder... by wvmarle · · Score: 2

    Yet they pretty much all have telephone cables leading right to their homes. And electricity. And possibly water, sewage and gas pipes. How come that is affordable, and broadband not? It's not that the cables are that more expensive, and you guys tend to have most of it above ground anyway. Just hang another cable on those phone poles.

  28. Re:Think even harder... by hairyfeet · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Oh you want to hear a story that'll piss you off? In early 00 I had a decent amount of money from a settlement (rich asshole playing with his cell instead of watching where he was going, took the entire side out my car and laid me up for a couple of months) so I decided "fuck this I'm gonna help my mom and these folks out". So I went down the road and got EVERY house to sign they would be happy to have service, in fact most wanted the full boat, all the channels and every package they had.

    So I march down there to the cableco with this petition and the knowledge of how much it would cost to run the line, as I talked to a linemen that actually went out and measured and the cost was $12,000 to run the entire length at the time. so I tell them "Here is the list of people that want it, i'll pay for the line, just hook it up" and you know what I got? They wanted $30,000 just to consider it and contracts for FIVE YEARS with a 25% markup. They said unless I could "guarantee the profit potential of the area" then they couldn't do it!

    So I say it is time We, The People, whose land their wires cross, take back what is ours. it is time to seize the last mile and open it up to REAL competition! sadly if we don't those like you and my mom will NEVER EVER get service, just the finger while they raise rates on those of us that have it and give the CxOs more bonuses for hookers and blow.

    --
    ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.