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."

Comments

Re:Scam

[h4rr4r]

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

Always make your installation look crappy

[Medievalist]

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.