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FCC Wants To Shift Phone Subsidy Funds To Broadband
An anonymous reader writes "FCC chairman Julius Genachowski revealed plans yesterday to overhaul the U.S. phone subsidy program and shift its focus to providing broadband access. He said, 'Broadband has gone from being a luxury to a necessity for full participation in our economy and society. If we want the United States to be the world's leading market, we need to embrace the essential goal of universal broadband, and reform outdated programs.' According to BusinessWeek, the program currently 'supports phone service to schools, libraries, the poor and high-cost areas.' Last year it spent $4.3 billion to provide support to over 1,700 carriers in high-cost areas. Genachowski hopes the change will put the U.S. 'on the path to universal broadband service by the end of the decade.'"
In other words, you want to throw more of our tax dollars at broadband companies, which will continue to magically disappear while no improvements are made?
As much as I want a better internet, I'd rather not pay for it and not get it.
Down here in Oklahoma the most available thing out of town(and sometimes in some small towns) is satellite internet, which is claimed to be broadband. I really hope that the FCC doesn't classify them as broadband. 500Mb data caps, 1.3 second latency, download speeds of 60kb/s and upload speeds of 4kb/s (all for the low low price of $80/month for 2 years + equipment). If this thing will just put out more shitty satellite internet to rural areas, I'm flatly not interested.
I'd like to see what carriers would be getting, vs what we will continue to pay.
Fee hikes every year leaves me bouncing between two carriers that I hate, just because they're the only two in town.
Something witty.
Three years ago, the FCC defined broadband as 768 kbps down. Two years later, it was changed to at least 4 Mbps down and 1 Mbps up, which would imply 400 to 500 kB/s downloads.
You know, every time I hear various parties say "get government out of business" and all that, I think "okay... maybe... but some regulation is needed because when there isn't, big business ends up raping the country." But then again, I never heard parties say "we need government to stop giving subsidies to business..."
I think the next time I see the argument "keep government out of business" I will ask what their position is on subsidies to business is.
As it turns out, there are far more subsidies going on than any of us are collectively aware of. I am well aware of corn subsidies and the like, but telephone subsidies? That's news. Seems the phone business is a huge public rapist and they are getting subsidies too?
Yeah, it's time to stop paying the rapists.
How many degrees is that from a 'right'? Will 'three strikes and yer out' be the same as the death penalty?
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
...and the fast-path treatment they're getting from Obama's FCC.
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Have done that like 10 years ago? The landline is dieing. There is no point in propping it up.
This sounds like the kind of thing that should be decided by Congress and the President, rather than by an unaccountable political appointee. We're talking an awful lot of money here, and I'm quite leery of letting a government agency decide more-or-less arbitrarily to redirect billions of dollars in such a manner.
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My in-laws live in rural SC and the only broadband option they have is sattelite (which isn't really broadband at all.) Trying to fix their laptop is a nightmare since they only have dialup. It's not profitable for the cable or phone companies to run out an entire line to one house on the end of a dead end road when there is no guarantee that the people at that road could even afford it, so they don't bother. Extending the subsidies would knock out one more excuse the broadband companies have against universal access.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
What percentage of the U.S. population would not have telephone service without the universal service fund? Both liberals and conservatives would scream if the result leaves a significant chunk of the country without connectivity, since there would be economic, social, and national security issues. For at least 10 years, Congress has been very unwilling to put up the large sums of money needed for universal broadband.
Methinks Mr Genachowski is trying to generate some political leverage. He's too smart too think that he can radically transform the situation by just waving the FCC's magic wand.
Uh oh they found something else to tax, I mean universal access charge. And you better pay it because its for the children!! In a couple of years your broadband bill will look like the old land line bills, 50% tax. Enjoy!! And don't forget to get out there and protest the evil corporations and the man that hold you down and stuff.
Why do you all hate freedom... kidding. I just moved 4 miles out of a town 60 miles west of DC... no high speed internet. 4 miles.....4 god damn miles.
Don't get me wrong, I understand that the internet is a great learning tool, but "If we want the United States to be the world’s leading market for innovation" then we should focus more on our failing test scores in the school systems. Giving children access to the internet is not going to suddenly spur their interest in schoolwork and it certainly isn't going to make their parents sit down and do homework with them. Pushing billions of dollars so that everyone can get to facebook faster isn't going to teach math and science, it isn't going to magically create jobs like they kept referring to in the article (without really soundly saying HOW it was going to create jobs), and I really feel that money would be better spent if it were directly funneled into the school systems.
The FCC needs to compel broadband providers to actually provide service in some instances. My parents live a mile off the road in a deep valley. The "mile off the road" part precludes cable because the cable company wants $15,000 to run line. The "deep valley" part precludes cell service and satellite. Literally, their only option is DSL, but BellSouth's local DSLAM has no free ports and they have refused to add a new one for several years.
We've raised the issue with the Tennessee Regulatory Commission (the TN service nominally in charge of overseeing utilities) and even they won't/can't do anything due to our braindead legislators handicapping them.
I can find 24 port VDSL2 DSLAM's on Google for $100 a port. I'm presuming AT&T, with their much larger negotiating power, can do even better. I'd be willing to buy the whole DSLAM for them, but they have no internal way of even handling that.
When the customer has no other option from whom to buy, there is no "free market". In that particular circumstance, the seller should be compelled to provide service.
Let's cut the tax that gives the FCC its subsidy money so that the companies have cash to do this on their own. The FCC is acting like they own this money and are willing to throw the serfs some alms from their carriage as they go by.
No one needed a phone originally, and it was cost prohibitive to get those phone lines out into rural america as well. Then the government stepped in with these subsidies and initiatives to get everyone a phone. Now it's time to replace all those phone lines with fiber lines. Telco and ISP industries are already merging together thanks to VOIP let's just finish the process and mandate a project to officially merge the infrastructure. It might even add a job or two if we're lucky.
...have already been given to the telecom companies to expand broadband to under-served areas. I want to know where that money has gone - because it didn't go into expanding and improving broadband.
I have a wild suggestion and I actually don't believe I am suggesting this, as I dislike interference by the government in general, but... make all telephone and cable transmission lines national infrastructure. Virtually all of the current infrastructure built by the Bells and cable companies runs on or under what is the "right of way" governed by either local, state, or federal authority. Without them being able to run their infrastructure on or under this property they would not have a business - and, yes, the USA would be in the stone age. The idea is still valid - turn all the infrastructure of the telecom and cable companies into a common pool from which ANYONE can dip - small telecoms, large telecoms, competing cable companies, multiple ISPs, etc, etc. Open it up to true competition because every company would pay the exact same amount for each connection to the national backbone. The differences would be customer service,l quality of service, and number of offerings.
Make each company pay $X.00 per connection for maintenance and upgrades and a base fee of $Y.00 for each connection. Also make it a stipulation that NO company can loss lead a connection or charge only what the connection cost. Limited specials to entice new customers can be allowed, but no charging only the connection cost over a long span of time (for instance, limit specials to 6 or 9 months maximum). This would remove significant barriers to entry and actually bring competition to the market. Disband all of the cable monopolies. Decimate the telecom strongholds. Make companies compete on a common ground and let's see who wins the hearts, minds, and wallets of the American broadband market.
Of course, it would need to be legislated that this national infrastructure would be completely OPEN and not running through NSA headquarters or the like. No snooping, sniffing, or tracing without judicial oversight. You know, that whole pesky 4th Amendment thing.
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The Government is our democratic institution FOR AND BY THE PEOPLE and until people realize that and defend it instead of hating democracy it'll die and only represent the powerful (and those they sucker,) as it does today. If you hate government conceptually (as is a popular thing to do today) then you hate democracy. If you hate our corrupt government which is no longer a functioning democracy that is a different matter; too many people get confused.
Public land is the basis for our roads, phone, cable, sewer, water, gas, and power lines.
Government roads serve society quite well despite all our bitching about them and the occasional foolish management (hey, we put them there-- its not like HP hiring 2 horrible CEOs was a public decision...happens everywhere.)
Why we must have private corps build/design new infrastructure POORLY when we have a long history of successful government efforts defies reason! Its not like these private efforts don't bribe some government subsidizes at our expense then pad their profit margins pulling every trick in the book. Their management is always biased towards maximum profit not the public good. Trying to regulate the beasts without being bitten is always foolish in the long term; its like playing with fire. (fire has many good uses but also has many downsides.)
Government should run all the lines that go over our public land. It is done NON-PROFIT. I have cable AND phone lines over here which DOUBLE the cost as two monopolies maintain their mildly subsidized lines... running on the power company's subsidized poles. We have old gas lines which need replacing and every year we have a few explosions ("accidents") because the corp is too greedy to invest in a system upgrade so they only insure themselves and fix messes... A government system would have been slowly upgrading the system already and investing in something that would LAST LONG TERM (something MBAs can't comprehend.)
Internet is a perfect technology for sharing services. Many DSL companies are forced to allow other ISPs share their network. Just as ROADs provide the MARKETPLACE for businesses to run upon it. Wireless can't compete with a huge singular network that digitally splits services vs the current analog bandwidth splits we do now (which lower capacity each time we sell off another bandwidth monopoly.)
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...the reason companies aren't investing in customers that they probably can't make a profit on is because they don't have enough cash laying around. Funny how whenever a corporation is caught screwing their customers, we're told they have to do that because they're required by law to maximize profits, but when we suggest regulating them we're told that if we'd only leave them alone they'll gladly do the right thing out of the goodness of their hearts.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Then let them have satellite!
Why wold any one have a phone. Land lines are replaced with VOIP. And who would pay long distance with services like skype where calling around the world is like $0.08 cents UDS. to make the connection on the far end.
Then with the air waves stolen away. We all should be boycotting cell phone air time. Until we replace the piracy with our own roof top infrastructure.
So in reality there are no phones so it foolish to pay money for that.
The government has never met a dollar it didn't feel it owned and wanted to be sure it could at least capture part of that value, say, in a tax, a fee or some other method.
I was at a dial up client a few weeks ago in a major metro area. (she was moving soon and did not want to sign a contract)
The service was horrible. she was getting connection speeds below 28.8 most of the time. frequently as slow as 4800.
Also websites are really designed much more for high speed now.
OK,"No Taxation without Representation" is not exactly what I mean. What I really mean is this: No subsidies without quid pro quo. If we're going to recognize it is a necessity and start handing them our hard-earned money, I want the public to get a big fat return on its money: I want common carrier restored -- the same level of protection from scrutiny and interference, public and private as mail or POTS.
Well, on the public side, the same level we would have if the Bill of Rights were still being observed.
Yeah, yeah, I know. I want a pony too.
How about this: Julius, at least show a little bit of balls here: Trade the money for net neutrality. That is what is really going to piss me off. We're going to give them these new subsidies and they're still going to sue to be allowed to turn the Internet into television.
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A past FCC person and a telco guy followed the money trail and found agreements were made, taxes and subsidies were given to the tune of a 300 billion telco scandal. Just hold the past agreements accountable. But of course that won't happen. Hell my local congressman was head of the telecommunications subcommittee and always sided with his top donors - big telco, go figure.
Or put the 1996 telco reform back in effect, the one that demanded opening up the government mandated monopoly to competitors. This was stripped of power under Bush Jr when Powel's kis was put in charge of the FCC. Verizon sold their landline operations to Frontier. It's still a mandated monopoly, but Frontier did just put in the first DSLAM in this area. Some minor innovation a decade late. Those changes which initially allowed the local ISPs to open killed them when they were removed. Thousands of local ISPs dead because they couldn't compete against government mandated monopolies.
Subsidize LTE build-out. The best of both worlds. Cheaper, too, to reach the remaining masses.
The right way to overhaul these subsidies: eliminate them. Why should the federal government be paying for people's Internet access?
If there are truly issues in particular localities, then it's a job for the towns, counties, or even the states. The federal government has zero business interfering here...
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Retire the damn subsidy, then retire Julius and the organization he heads. I hate out of date bureaucracies that spend most of their time trying to justify their own existence.
Does that mean that soon if you lose 'net access your house is deemed uninhabitable and are kicked out? Much as they will do now in several cities if you get your water and/or power cut.
Even tho people lived thousands of years without electricity or running water. ( and still do, even rural America )
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People who ride bikes often complain about lack of bike lanes, but rarely ask for an annual assessment on bicycles to cover the cost of those lanes and maintenance.
Hell vehicle drivers don't pay for the cost of roads, try to tell people their fuel tax is going to be raised and see what happens. The US has among the lowest gasoline and diesel fuel costs because the taxes on them are among the lowest in the world. If drivers don't pay their full costs why should bike riders pay, especially when cars, SUVs, and trucks cause much more wear and tear on roads?
I've proposed before and will again now how to pay for roads. Raise the fuel tax as well as a tax on tires, so bikers pay too, but lower income tax. If the average person sees their fuel cost rise $100 a month cost their income tax $100 a month. Those who don't have income tax, or have enough income tax to cover it, deducted from their pay then give them a credit. For cash and food support, ie Food Stamps (oops it's now called Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), governments give recipients Electronic Benefit Transfer or EBT cards. These cards are used like credit and debit cards with many stores accepting them. Just add the credit to the EBT cards.
Fuel tax may only pay part of road maintenance costs, so also start a mileage fee. Every year car owners have to renew their license plate tags, well when they do have the car's miles driven recorded and have a fee due based on that. Then those who own more fuel efficient cars will pay some too. An added benefit to higher fuel costs is that it can spur people to get more fuel efficient vehicles thus reducing the use of fossil fuels.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
problems
As are you. In her book "The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression" the political economist Amity Shlaes argues FDR's economic policies lengthened the Great Depression. Economist Milton Friedman goes further, he argues "The Great Depression Could Have Been Avoided if the Fed Had Not So Badly Botched Its Monetary Policy". Why the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act practically shutdown international trade in 1930. In retaliation other nations passed their own protectionist and anti-trade laws. The US was a great exporter but new tariffs drove US employers out of business.
the only entity that can truly stimulate demand is government.
Again BS!!! If you're so dense you believe that then how do you explain Al Capone and all the other MAFIA figures who became rich, and dead, during Prohibition and the War on Drugs going on now? No, people stimulate demand by wanting to buy, and by having the money to do so. People will even steal from others to get the money. Witness the gangland warfare south of the US/Mexican border, which is spilling over into the US. Legal, and taxed, drugs would end most of the violence. And releasing all those non-violent drug offenders will turn them from a drain on taxes to tax payers.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I see no reason why those of who choose to live in urban and suburban areas should have to subsidize those who choose to live farther away.
The middle of nowhere is where a lot of food is grown. If those living there have to pay more for "power, phone, cable, gas, etc." then those who eat pay more for their food. Government should end all subsidies, as well as monopolies. Let markets deliver cable, phone, and power. And food.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
but it is a painful one to those dependent upon the Nanny State and her tit.
Precisely. Whether corporate or social, those on welfare don't want it to end.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
and many conservatives would agree with you.
Only if that were true. Facts though show Red States Feed at Federal Trough, Blue States Supply the Feed. Red (conservative) states get more of the money blue (big government) states pay the federal government.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
since rural area aren't profitable enough to corporation
One reason providing rural broadband is not profitable is because of licensing. Abolish licensing of the airwaves which cost billions of dollars then SMBs (Small and Medium Businesses) can offer wireless broadband.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Randian drivel with no basis in reality. The two main problems with the New Deal was that it 1) wasn't big enough and 2) FDR listened to people like Shlaes and cut government spending in 1937, and that is what brought a second bump in the Great Depression.
Which was caused in the first place by speculators inflating a bubble economy and a lack of regulation - pointing a spotlight at trade laws is misdirection to ignore the actual problem.
You BS. When you have 25% unemployment, the only entity that is capable or willing to reverse that is the Federal Government. As was finally and utterly proven with the start of World War II, when universal war time employment put a complete and utter end to any vestiges of the Depression.
Deal. With. It.
I see we've reached the part of the conversation where you start babbling incoherently. WTF do black markets created by Prohibition have to do with Kenisian economics?