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Rural Broadband to Replace POTS As Beneficiary of US Gov't Subsidies
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."
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?
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.
That is just as much a strawman. Living in a society means one way or another people are always subsidizing one another.
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.
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.
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