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Rural Broadband to Replace POTS As Beneficiary of US Gov't Subsidies

Posted by timothy on from the hello-sir-wondering-which-bribe-you'd-prefer dept.

IDG reports that "The U.S. Federal Communications Commission has voted to overhaul a decades-old system of telephone subsidies in rural areas, with the funding refocused on broadband deployment. The FCC's vote Thursday would transition the Universal Service Fund's (USF's) high-cost program, now subsidizing voice service, to a new Connect America Fund focused on broadband deployment to areas that don't yet have service. The FCC will cap the broadband fund at $4.5 billion a year, the current budget of the USF high-cost program, funded by a tax on telephone bills." That cap, says Reuters, is "the first budget constraint ever imposed on the program."

9 of 208 comments (clear)

  1. Good, Now Make it Bigger by RobinEggs · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The changes will cost U.S. residents paying less than $30 a month for telephone service an additional $0.10 to $0.15 a month

    This sounds great. Good for people without broadband, insignificantly more expensive for people who currently get a POTS subsidy from the program.

    Now how about an urban broadband fund, to replace the worthless service tens of millions of us still have, service so bad it isn't even legally 'broadband' in any other industrialized country, with something usable?

  2. Scam by glrotate · · Score: 0, Insightful

    Why should I have to subsidize the internet cost of someone who chooses to live in the country?

    Should country dwellers pay extra property tax to subsidize my mortgage?

    1. Re:Scam by h4rr4r · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Why is that my problem?

      I agree with building out ISP service, but handing the money to private companies is not going to work. They will just steal it and still demand to not be regulated.

    2. Re:Scam by h4rr4r · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That is just as much a strawman. Living in a society means one way or another people are always subsidizing one another.

    3. Re:Scam by bws111 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Why should people with no kids pay school taxes? Why should people with no children in college fund public universities? Why should people who live outside the city pay tax on their cars to subsidize a subway system 90 miles away? Why should I fund state or national parks if I don't use them?

      People in my area (100 miles from NYC) have an extremely heavy burden in the form of draconian land-use restrictions in order not to harm the water supply to the city. Is that fair?

      You do realize that the people who 'choose' to live in the country are the ones providing YOU with your most basic needs, like food and energy, right?

      It is called society. Every one gets to pitch in. Get over yourself.

    4. Re:Scam by Pence128 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      That's already happened, to the tune of $200 billion dollars. You were supposed to get 45Mbits to 86 million homes for that. Instead they just redefined "broadband" to mean 200kbits.

      --
      404: sig not found.
  3. Re:Make broadband a tariffed, regulated utility by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I'm not going to scroll through ALL the responses and see if someone else already suggested this, but...

    Have you considered trying to acquire some land closer to, or even adjacent to, the road? If you could just get 100sq ft or so, you could perhaps convince the companies to provision to THAT location and then run the rest of the cabling yourself. This has the advantage of solving the "we have to run it all the way to the property ourselves" problem, you've brought the mountain to Mohammed!

  4. Re:Make broadband a tariffed, regulated utility by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Bury a damn conduit. Pull whatever you need later.

  5. Always make your installation look crappy by Medievalist · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Bury conduit instead?

    Just choose a diameter that will accommodate anything you might expect to pull in the future and be sure to have some intermediate weather-tight boxes every few hundred feet.

    The problem with that is that the provider will know you did it, because it's been done right.

    If you do a half-assed looking job you can just call 'em up and when they say "we don't have a cable into your house" you can reply "yes you do, what are you talking about, I'm looking right at it!" and make them send a truck out to check. The guy on the truck will say "hmmm, looks just like one of ours" if you do the job badly enough, and you'll probably get hooked right in.