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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States to be the world's leading market, we need to embrace the essential goal of universal broadband, and reform outdated programs.'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.'"
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.
I guess it's okay for the FCC to give money to telephone but not to broadband? But you know, I guess this will help to end the argument that "the FCC doesn't have jurisdiction" over the internet in the US.
Agreed. I'd go for this plan on one condition: That large ISPs (e.g. Comcast sized or so) are forced to do what AT&T was forced to do back in the 1950's or so - string out a reasonable broadband speed to even the most remote rural area, upon request, at a fixed price ceiling. Then I'd demand that independent and random sampling be done (both in-town and out) to insure that speeds and quality are consistent nationwide. Finally, set up a hotline or similar means by which consumers can lodge complaints, and for each valid and provable complaint, the ISP has to pay back a fixed sum of money to the FCC - low enough to not kill the system immediately, but high enough to get their attention.
No improvements, no money.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
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
I guess you've never heard of the tiny towns in the Louisiana swamps that still don't have landline telephones?
Those towns are so out of the way, there's no profit in providing phone service. The idea of the universal telephone fee was to save up enough money so towns like that get connected to the rest of the world. We did the same thing with electrification in the 30s and 40s. It works. Every now and again, there are news stories about some small podunk town getting phone lines for the first time.
Switching those fees to broadband is supposed to serve the same purpose. Since landline telephone service is no longer as important, it makes sense to shift the priority from giving those people landline phone service to broadband internet access.
Subsidies are not universally a bad thing. This is a service that would not otherwise be provided because of the high cost. It's not like with farm subsidies, where farmers will probably plant some kind of crops no matter what. There are some folks who will never get broadband service of any kind unless we spread the costs of providing it across society. Whether or not that's a good thing or not is a more philosophically complex question than the one you seem to pose ("giving" money to companies to do what they would do anyway.
Indeed. Libertarians have the solution, but it is a painful one to those dependent upon the Nanny State and her tit.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
The libertarian side of me disagrees with this. Why should the people in the city be subsidizing the lifestyles of the people in the country? It means higher prices for everyone. If the people in the country want broadband service, they should move to where there IS broadband service. Same goes with phone service, electric service, etc... All these policies ended up creating a society where the population is widely spread out, horribly inefficient, and highly dependent on automobiles.
People in the country want the benefits of living in the city without the negatives of living in the city, and they want the people in the city to pay for it.
Now the socialist in me says that if you didn't "spread the wealth" in this manner, you'd end up with huge swaths of poor people in the country not unlike what China has today. That's a pool of workers that would work for low wages and depress wages for everyone. But I guess the broadband would be cheaper.
Maybe the country wants food, and figures that the people who grow it ought not have to do without modern necessities in order to do so.
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.
The problem with that argument is that VERY few people who live in the country are farmers (about 1.4%). And nothing is stopping them from paying for these services themselves (i.e. satellite service). Who knows what kinds of technology would have evolved to serve rural populations if we hadn't mandated this socialized approach?
I know- not the main argument here, but:
satellite internet != broadband
its marginally better than dialup for a couple of very select things.
BULLSHIT. Complete and utter bullshit. I found out from a lineman how much it would actually cost to run the cable the TWO block to my mom's house, it was $1600. I offered them $3500 to run the line just so my mom could something better than sat or dialup. you know what I was told? I would have to come up with $50,000 and a guaranteed 10 year contract (at 40% over what everyone else was paying) or it would be "too risky" to run a line TWO BLOCKS.
Moral of the story? THE SYSTEM IS BROKEN. There is NO competition and the duopolies have NO intention of running shit, it called cherry picking, look it up. We should NATIONALIZE THE LINES and we even have a legal reason...fraud. they took 200 billion from the American people for nationwide broadband and ALL we got was the finger. They pay it back with 20% compounded since 1996 in 90 days, or we take the lines, simple.
so quit with the free market bullshit because in natural monopolies it DOES NOT WORK. the ONLY way to get nationwide broadband, which we seriously need to help grow the economy, is to nationalize.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.