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Comcast Gives 6 Months Free Internet To Poor and Unpaid Bill Amnesty

Posted by samzenpus on from the have-some-internet dept.

An anonymous reader writes with news about a controversial Comcast program designed to give internet access to the poor that just got a little better. After complaints about a program that offers cheap Internet service to poor people, Comcast today announced it will provide "up to six months" of free Internet to new subscribers and an "amnesty" program for families with unpaid bills. Comcast's Internet Essentials, mandated by the federal government when Comcast acquired NBCUniversal, gives $10-per-month Internet service to low-income households with schoolchildren. Critics have argued that the program is too hard to sign up for, that eligibility criteria should be less strict, and that further requirements should be implemented if Comcast is allowed to buy Time Warner Cable.

5 of 71 comments (clear)

  1. Google Fiber by darkain · · Score: 5, Interesting

    And this is exactly why I wish Google Fiber was deployed in more areas. They have a simple solution: a FREE tier for life.

    https://fiber.google.com/citie...

    And as far as the $300 setup fee, I'm not sure about other cities, but Portland is working on subsidies to cover this cost as well, so it is $0 for low income families to have basic 5mbps internet service.

  2. Rather than Google Fiber, let's have municipal. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I'm sure Google is your friend, but I'd rather have a solution from my own municipal government that provides the service for us. The internet is a public utility like water, sewer, and given the infrastructure requirements with running fiber, I'd rather it be kept in house.

    Not the exploitative franchising of the cable industry, which just lead to private companies lobbying for the laws that they want, but real systems that are run and operated at home.

    1. Re:Rather than Google Fiber, let's have municipal. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      We had a municipal fiber in Provo before google. It was terrible. The speeds were all over the place, it was mismanaged, any profit it made was constantly raided as another source of income for other projects. It was so bad that they sold it in entirety to google for $1. Since, its been great. Sure google has issues, but making the internet a utility isn't a silver bullet and has its own share of problems. I also don't want to be charged "per bit". And no Im not downloading TB of data every month, but having that hanging over my head would not be something I want to think about before starting a stream. Especially when it becomes a tax source and I get petitioned to raise my streaming "rates" by 10 cents a kb to pay for a new fire truck, and another 5 cents for a new school in the mayors neighborhood.

      What we need is to break up this idea of internet "markets" giving comcast and their ilk a bunch of small monopolies. Since google moved in, comcast has sent people door to door "explaining" to people why google fiber is terrible and having that fast of a connection "isn't a good idea" and offering to double their speeds and give them tv free for 3 years if they promise not to switch. Amazing what a little competition does.

    2. Re:Rather than Google Fiber, let's have municipal. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Provo was poorly managed, then. I'd hate to see what they did with other city-run utilities.

      I have seen great models of city-run utilities from all over the country, both from the perspective of wholly-owned city utilities, non-profit corp spinoffs and city managed private contracted utilities. The benefit of the spinoff is that the city can't raid the coffers for revenue, and the utility has to be self-sufficient to cover maintenance and charge rates appropriately. The private contract model forces the contractor into a position where the city is the customer and not the consumer.

      If it needs recapitalization for expansion, then the city is responsible for coming up with the money to fund the expansion, and then the utility charges appropriately until the city has been reimbursed for the expansion. Most cities float a bond issue past the constituents to fund such endeavors, such as new water mains or sewage expansions to newly developed areas.

      It sure beats the for-profit model where the regional monopoly ends up wringing the customers dry since they have no viable alternatives for reliable fast internet.

  3. Re:a bit of a copout by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I am a pretty liberal guy. And I have to agree with the parent. I have also worked with the poor on occasion and cable is like a staple: food, shelter, clothing, cable, water, ....in that order.

    I actually had a guy complain how his children "hadn't had TV in TWO WEEKS!" (the very thick south Georgia accent made it sound very funny)

    I struggled to stifle my laugh because he said in all seriousness. And I bit my tongue from saying, "Maybe it is a GOOD thing and maybe your kids should pick up a book. They have them for FREE at your library!"

    Social conservatives usually talk out their asses when they talk about the details of the poor (like they just love to sit around and collect welfare and drive their pink Cadillacs), but in general, they do have a point about the poor have this mentality. And I have to wonder about my own "mentality" about things too often.

    Introspection can be depressing.