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Verizon and New Jersey Agree 4G Service Equivalent to Broadband Internet
An anonymous reader writes with news that Verizon and New Jersey regulators have reached a deal releasing Verizon from their obligation to have brought 45Mbps broadband to all NJ residents by 2010. Instead, 4G wireless service is considered sufficient. From the article:
"2010 came and went and a number of rural parts of the state are still living with dial-up or subpar DSL. And even though the original deal was made in the days of modems and CompuServe, its crafters had the foresight to define broadband as 45Mbps, which is actually higher than many Verizon broadband customers receive today. ... In spite of that, and the thousands of legitimate complaints from actual New Jersey residents, the BPU voted unanimously yesterday to approve a deal with Verizon ... According to the Bergen Record, Verizon will no longer be obligated to provide broadband to residents if they have access to broadband service from cable TV providers or wireless 4G service. ... Residents who happen to live in areas not served by cable or wireless broadband can petition Verizon for service, but can only get broadband if at least 35 people in a single census tract each agree to sign contracts for a minimum of one year and pay $100 deposits."
So how long until the BPU commissioners get their nice cushy jobs as lobbyists for Verizon or a Verizon supported trade group?
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Customers, have the responsibility to know what they want and be willing to shop somewhere else.
Consumers open wide and ingest whatever is shoved down there throats.
Then of course there is New Jersey. I can't help you with that.
If you have a contract that says you need to install fiber/cable, how the fuck is NOT installing fiber/cable fraud?
will be a bunch of cynical comments about this being just the way it is
but there are countries like canada and the nordic countries that, while not perfect, do a much better job of keeping money out of politics than the usa
cynicism is common, but i don't like it because people use it to think they have to lie down and accept this sort of legalized corruption
in many ways, i think the cynicism is worse than the malicious corporations. because there's always people who are robbing you in this world. you have defend yourself and fight them. but what can you say about people who roll over and take the abuse?
we don't have to accept it
and we start by changing the lame cynical attitudes out there
that might be you
that might mean speaking up when you hear cynicism and people snickering or nodding in agreement with it
for speaking up and say wallowing in mindless cynicism is a form of accepting the abuse and is part of the problem, you may get ridiculed and flak for that. but think about what kind of mindset is mocking you, and take it as a point of pride
we have to be the solution here. all of us. i didn't say it was easy. but i and many others are not going to continue to accept this, and i would hope more people would join us
start by losing the cynicism
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Verizon was given a shit load of cash in tax breaks, rate hikes, etc in return for providing 45Mb broadband to all state residents.
sign me up. i can get more than that many neighbors to agree to those terms. alas, we don't even have that option. we'd pay many times more for the chance.
Sure thing... they'll be happy to install a 4G tower in your area.
By the way, the fee for going over the 250 Megabyte data cap has been increased to $25 per Kilobyte of data transferred.
Not one single Cellular network in the United States offers TRUE 4g.
What they offer is relabeled, bastardized 3g+ (4G LTE is an enhanced 3G - long term evolution standard, it is not by definition 4g)
Look at the specs.
Verizon isn't out of the woods just yet, they actually have to bring in TRUE 4G first.
Good on New Jersey for forcing them to upgrade their networks :)
I'm getting really tired of this shitty argument. We currently have a system in which rich people and corporations can donate nearly unlimited amounts of money to all political candidates, essentially buying them all out and you insist that the problem is with the voters. When every candidate is bought, there is no one left representing US! Stop acting like there is always a perfect candidate and somehow we pick the wrong one 100% of the time.
It isn't quite as good as people think with regards to money and politics, and certainly not with regards to the Internet. Canada's 'net speeds vs costs do not compare all that well to the US's.
Canada is a very nice (if cold) country that I visit every summer (I'm a dual citizen) but it isn't the utopia some Americans seem to think it is.
Everyone has the government they deserve. This is apparently the government that New Jersey residents deserve.
What good is 45Mbps when you hit your monthly cap in just under 12 minutes, and then get charged $1.50 per minute of full-rate data after that?
When compared to AT&T, Verizon wired, Comcast, and TW, the cost for wireless "broadband" (even capped at 250GB/mo) is astronomincal, running over $1000 per month.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I *do* insist that the problem is with the voters. If the voters were that irate about the politicians, they'd vote them out. Even if the new ones were just as bad, the voters would express their ire by voting them out, too.
Political donations don't buy votes. No politician is going to risk going to jail for taking bribes.
What political donations buy is the election of candidates who are sympathetic to you without having to be paid. They can't give money directly to the candidates anyway. The unlimited funds go to "uncoordinated" separate groups who spend it not on limousines and fact-finding tours to tropical islands but on campaign ads.
That's the point of connection. They're not buying the politicians. They're buying the voters. And they're buying them not with money, but with whatever tools of mental manipulation the ad-makers can dream up. They spend the money to blanket the airwaves.
All the voters have to do is to think, question whether the ads are telling the truth, and wonder why if they can form an objective picture from two biased, manipulated sets of mutually contradictory ads. That doesn't seem like a lot to ask, but the fact that the incumbents are repeatedly returned to office is a strong clue that they're not.
Maybe it would be futile and ineffective to keep turfing out politicians in favor of new ones. But it's not an experiment the voters have tried. If they did, maybe the politicians would change the way they operate; I don't know. I do know that your picture of how the process works is deeply flawed, and most voters seem equally uninterested in actually learning how it does work.
Your outrage at the politicians is too easy. They're doing what the voters tell them to do. If the voters are doing what the money is telling them to do, don't tell it to the politicians, or to me. Tell it to them. If you can figure out how to get them to listen, I'm all for it.
There's no technical reason that good LTE coverage isn't going to give you a broadband experience. I've got 50/10 meg VDSL2, and three-bar LTE coverage provides similar downstream and way more upstream.
The problem, then, isn't the technology itself. The problem is the 1GB data cap and $15/GB overage fees. My VDSL2 connection comes with 300GB of data, on an LTE connection that'd cost me $4,500 a month. At those prices, even if LTE is capable of acting as broadband, you can't use it as such.
If you don't know why our current system tends to favor only two viable candidates, then you are part of the reason that, in your words, "there is no one left representing US!"
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
You call that an increase?
Signed,
Canadian cellphone providers.
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I'm getting really tired of this shitty argument. We currently have a system in which rich people and corporations can donate nearly unlimited amounts of money to all political candidates, essentially buying them all out and you insist that the problem is with the voters. When every candidate is bought, there is no one left representing US! Stop acting like there is always a perfect candidate and somehow we pick the wrong one 100% of the time.
If anyone has a shitty argument it is you. Votes are politics true currency, money is just a tool to influence voters in order to get their *vote*.
A 1% has *one* vote. A 99% has *one* vote. The 99% have the power but they squander it, to believe otherwise is to be a denier of reality like climate deniers, to let politics blind oneself to reality.
Look at the two most powerful lobbying groups in the country, the AARP and the NRA. They have so much power not because of political campaign contribution but because ***their members show up on election day*** highly motivated to vote based on a single issue. Their opponents often fail to understand this, think it is simply political contributions, and in the NRA case raise huge amounts of money for anti-gun groups and then fail and fail again.
Politicians value votes beyond all other things. It is votes that put them into office and keep them in office. The secondary nature of money is easily illustrated. No amount of money spent on TV and web ads by Bloomberg will convince NRA member to vote in favor of restricting guns. No amount of money spent on TV and web ads by the Koch brothers will convince Occupy Wall Street members to vote against banking restrictions. Only the ignorant or ambivalent voter is persuaded.
To deny that the real issue is the ignorant/ambivalent voter is to doom one's efforts at reform. Only when the 99% insists on politicians representing their interests, and voting out those who do not, will politicians change their behavior. Reelections communicates to politicians that their actions are OK with voters.
Voters *are* communicating to politicians that it is OK to cash in. Until *voters" say otherwise nothing will change. Don't fool yourself into thinking otherwise.
And what do you suggest knowing about it can accomplish? The number of politicians who are the ones to benefit from the broken system barely even constitute statistical noise.
This bullshit about it being the voters' fault is because morons DON'T understand Duverger's law and still cling to the delusion that everything would be unicorn farts and fairy semen if everyone would just "catch on" and vote for fringe 3rd parties.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, the Hen Housing Project still just gets to choose from two choices for the Vulpine HOA.
SCOTUS just told us that it's only a bribe if you can prove quid-pro-quo. Which essentially means bribes *are* legal.
Besides that, the idea that "buying a politician" and "buying an election" are separate is absurd. If you want to call them independent contractors feel free, but the flow of money and control are unaffected by such labels.
So, ma & pa down on the farm, are suppose to pay for overprice 4G service?
Might as well give up trying to watch netflix, amazon or do anything useful!
There is some (relatively) good news on the rural front... there's enough competition among Sat providers to give Verizon and such a very hard incentive to drop their costs. Even though most sat providers (Dish, HughesNet, etc) only provide around 7-10Mbps, they've started bringing down the prices just to keep ahead of the competition (for example, not even a year ago, it used to cost around $100+/mo just to get a 5Mbps connection from HughesNet with a ridiculously low bandwidth cap. - own it's dropped to $60/mo for 10Mbps and no cap, $45/mo for the same from Dish ($30/mo if you already have their TV service), etc.
Now consider that in the some rural areas, *if you could get DSL*, you would pay a mint to get DSL installed plus $70/mo for 3Mbps from CenturyStink. If you were really lucky, you could get cable Internet (but you had to live in a small-to-mid-sized town to get that). The only advantage DSL had was that you could game on it, but that was about it.
I suspect that as more players get into the rural broadband game, the costs will drop even more while services go up... Sat/wireless ISP service is one of the few places where you can get a decent deal, and since there's no monopoly, they have to compete.
As for Verizon? I just saw their rural 4G offerings/plans, and quite frankly, Verizon can go eat a dick - 4G and Sat are almost equally laggy for gaming, so no advantage there. Maybe someday they'll figure out that they can't run the same scam as they do in the smartphone arena, but that day isn't today.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
The only advantage DSL had was that you could game on it, but that was about it. [...] 4G and Sat are almost equally laggy for gaming
A high-latency connection works fine for games so long as they're turn-based instead of twitch-based. Moving also works, though I grant its impracticality for many.
Yeah, but that's OK, he's a Democrat.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison