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Comcast Launching $9.95 Low Income Broadband Plan
MojoKid writes "Comcast is launching 'Internet Essentials,' a new initiative offering discounted Internet access and home computers to families that meet low income requirements. The program was mandated as a requirement of Comcast's acquisition of NBC Universal, earlier this year. In that way, it's very similar to AT&T's Naked DSL program, which AT&T was required to offer as a condition of its merger with BellSouth. Internet Essentials will be available wherever Comcast offers broadband, which means 39 states."
It said right in the summary that this was mandated as a condition of the NBC Universal merger. I'm sure Comcast is more than happy to have people believe that this was their idea though.
Looks like it's a 1.5/384 connection.
http://www.internetessentials.com/faq/index.html
"That which does not kill us makes us stranger." -Trevor Goodchild
Look, if they're going to offer subsidized internet access to low-income households, I think the real move should be to nationalize it altogether. If Comcast and/or the FCC can acknowledge that it is a public right to have affordable internet access for everyone, then it is high time the profit motive were removed from the equation. Oh, wait, you guys completely fucked that up with the national health care plan... carry on with your nihilistic ledger-padding then!
-Billco, Fnarg.com
The long term goal would be to move most, if not all, customers to the new protocol (not architecture). Since these would be new customers, they can start them on this, so that they don't need to upgrade later. Other existing customers can be moved to IPv6 whenever they are ready.
This six month old story on Ars mentioned more details on the program and 2 of the other major concessions they had to make to get the merger approved. Hiring Meredith Attwell Baker away from the FCC was probably a big help also.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/01/low-cost-broadband-key-to-comcastnbcu-merger-deal.ars
If the US had real competition you would have providers offering $10 broadband as standard without any income requirements. The rest of the Western world (ex. Canada) seem to be able to manage it. How long is the US going to let themselves be held hostage by the big two providers?
This six month old story on Ars mentioned more details on the program and 2 of the other major concessions they had to make to get the merger approved. Hiring Meredith Attwell Baker away from the FCC was probably a big help also.
Hiring her was the 4th concession.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
This is sad. Where I used to teach there was absolutely NO verification of income for the free lunch program. In fact, it was expressly forbidden to even question the qualification of any application, no matter how obviously egregious the situation. There were strong incentives for the school to qualify as many students as possible, linked to additional federal funding going directly to the school. Somehow I doubt this will be any better supervised.
Normally I ascribe all life to intelligent design, but in your case I'll make an exception.
I love the comment on the article from a guy who complains that other customers will have to pay for these accesses for the poors.
God forbid these people have access to internet and be able to raise better educated kids to contribute to society!
Well, as IPv4 addresses become scarce, having a load of customers on IPv6 with NAT64 to access v4 sites may be cheaper. Rolling this out for the people too poor to switch to an alternative service first makes sense from a business standpoint.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I think you're confused as to what a "right" is.
It doesn't mean it's given to you. It means you are given the opportunity to pursue it without undue harassment by the Gov. In a sense, things that are rights can also be a privilege if there is an associated cost. Really, all rights, natural and otherwise come at a cost. Even freedom is directly free, but in indirectly has a cost in that at some point you have to fight for it.
I personally think this is bad news bears all around. The infrastructure is already spread thin - at least judging by my internet speeds and costs. Last thing we need is a flux of new subscribers that are low-income (read: jobless or underemployed) who have all the time in the world to suck up my precious bandwidth.
If people want internet, they can work for it just like I have to. It's not a necessity to survive. Last thing these people need is another incentive not to succeed.
Read the details: it's ONLY offered to families with young children. If you're single and down on your luck, you're still down on your luck; if you're an older couple with teenaged kids fallen on hard times, tough luck for you, too.
Ageism strikes again. Think of the children!
you are aware that just because something is declared a right, it does not mean that people must be given it...it just means the people have the ability to freely exercise the right.
That was precisely my point. More simply, a right is something I have b'cos I didn't need to deprive someone else of something in order to get. I don't deprive others of air while breathing, I don't deprive others of speech rights while opining, et al. But if I did, it would no longer be a right. All the things I listed above - despite the fact that everybody needs them - are not rights, precisely b'cos of the zero-sum-game nature of these things. If they were, farmers would have to give food to anyone who wanted it w/o paying for it, businesses would have to give jobs, automakers would have to give cars, et al. Even if people need certain things to survive, that by itself doesn't automatically make them rights. Rights means something that's yours and morally cannot be taken away.
Way to hate. Do you presume that poor people are also stupid people and/or that non-poor people are smarter? Both presumptions would be ridiculous. People in general are pretty stupid and it doesn't matter which income bracket they fall into. A frikken CEO of X-Company could just as easily be hosting a botnet... worse, he might have half a dozen computers where "The Poor family" might only have one. (Admittedly, there will be thousands if not millions of "Poor familes" to each CEO but that's just how the division of wealth goes these days. Do you think you are "middle class"? Think again...
It's not a necessity to survive.
No, it's not a necessity to survive, but in more and more cases it IS a requirement for kids in school of almost any age. Textbooks are disappearing in class, and the kids are expected to access an online version at home.
It would be interesting to see what the "poor" use the Internet for in a years time. Who here thinks the majority of the time will be spent filling out job applications or Khan Academy? I'm pretty sure YouTube, porn sites, and community flash mob organizing will be the major activities.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Access to internet is as essential now as access to drinking water and electricity. Selfish bastards such as yourself can go back in your hole.
Infrastructure spread thin? Your speeds and costs are direct result of the lack of competition in the US ISP market. Here, on the right side of the ocean nobody can even remember the time, when the internet was volume limited or when you had to pay for it more than 20-25 euro.
But hey, what do I know? I'm sure your problem is not the greedy corps trying screw you over, but the poor cloging your tubes...
PS. Purposely ignoring your definition of "rights", because it would only start a flame war.
Absolutely! The deal for buying NBC should have been to get Comcast to either get out of the ISP business and maintain the network for independent ISPs to compete with a lease rate that covers cost to maintain the lines at the bandwidth the ISP uses, or hand the ownership of the lines over the communities.
He's partially right, though. Your hypothetical CEO will have a dozen boxes, yeah... but they'll likely be top-o-the-line or relatively new stuff, or something his kid may be tinkering with.
As a former poor person (in my case a struggling student), I remember what it was like to scrape up a box out of spare/cast-off parts, running an OS 'borrowed' from someone else. (props to the owners of nwark.com for selling me the bits, and to the idiots at my former employer at the time for clinging tightly to their Windows 3.0 licenses, but giving me a valid SCO UNIX kit).
Back then, and even now, most poor folk get their computers much the same way - big-hearted geeks bang together boxes and make sure the underprivileged kids have something to do their homework on - and these things aren't going to run the latest/greatest OSes. If you're lucky (like in Free Geek's instance) the boxes have Linux on them, but most of the time there's a copy of Windows ${old} installed because the hardware won't run the latest. Then there's the flea markets, where enterprising folks bang together similarly old boxes, selling them with a copy of Windows-something (maybe XP, maybe 2000, probably 98).
Unless the recipient is a geek (or a budding one), odds are perfect that the OS will never get patched, and that the users have just enough knowledge in using them that they can do some basic bits online, but not really do it safely.
Now sure, your typical CxO with a ton of machinery may be similarly ignorant of patching and such, there are a *lot* more poor folks who are prone to becoming bot-fodder than rich folk who are... especially once you consider that the further you go up the money ladder, the more likely you're going to see something with a stylized fruit stamped on the lid/box/monitor and running OSX.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
If they can afford $10/day for cigarettes, then they can afford a lot of things. The poverty line in the USA is $10,890 for an individual. Someone spending $3,560/year on a luxury item is not poor by any standard measure.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
A right is whatever society defines it as. As technology improves, what we define as a right can be expanded. The question you're getting at is: should it be? By defining a right as the opportunity exercise it without government interference you're saying that it shouldn't. You're advocating a society without progress. This makes sense. You're doing well yourself, and another man's progress risks yours. That's what conservatism is all about. A handful of super rich manipulating frightened people desperately trying to hold onto what little they have.
Oh, and if the infrastructure is spread thin, BUILD MORE OF IT. Jeez, it's not complicated. We could use some public works projects anyway. Internet may very well be necessary to survive. For many it's becoming their only access to education and networking opportunities needed to maintain their communities and livelihoods. There are other forces for evil besides the gov't you know.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Most poor people already have internet, on their smartphones that they pay $100 a month for.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Amen. There is very little real material need in the USA. My wife's work in the public schools has put her in contact with the "parent" type that always has a $35 nail job but "can't pay" for her child's subsidized medication ($1/day or something like that) which is essential for their psychological well-being and ability to learn and avoid becoming a delinquent. We've gotten so bitter about giving to charities that we've basically decided it's got to be some legitimate organization in a foreign country that we know will make sure people are fed (i.e. not anything UN oriented) when giving to poverty-relief groups.
And you know what ? We're simply not able to pay for them. Seriously, if you raised taxes to 100%, and *somehow* this didn't affect the economy, we wouldn't be able to pay for what we currently have. So it's going to disappear"
Numerically, that isn't true. In the Netherlands for example, everyone has access to cheap and high quality medical care, generous family support and free pre-school, access to massive job-retraining programs that have kept unemployment below 4% even in recessions, as well as access to generous crime-free public housing projects. And they do it all with efficient government and slightly higher taxes, while maintaining a smaller debt burden as a percent of GDP and faster GDP growth over the last 20 years. More on topic, they also have faster and cheaper internet!
Conservatives spend so much time fighting the ghosts of hippies from the 70's that they fail look around and realize that other countries have largely solved the public policy problems facing this country and have done so in ways that made their countries stronger. But unfortunately, a lot of the political establishment is more interested in acting tough and serious than they are in actually solving problems.
I know a lot of poor smokers and they simply switched to the filtered cigars when the prices got nuts. At a pack a day that is $75 a month or $900 a year. Not anywhere close to what you are quoting friend. Sadly in some neighborhood it is getting cheaper to smoke dope than it is to smoke cigarettes. Didn't we learn anything from prohibition?
As for the Comcast thing? Good luck folks. I know plenty of poor and older folks that tried to get the naked AT&T DSL and for all intents and purposes it don't exist. by the time they got done tacking on fees and requirements and hoop jumping most gave up. I don't think I ever met anyone that actually managed to get it. When the government makes them offer something like this they make sure the bullshit and flaming hoops are so high that you'll just give up. Yeah good luck folks.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
If you have a computer, you're richer than 95% of the world.
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