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FCC Votes To Subsidize Broadband Connections For Low-Income Households
Mark Wilson writes: Today the FCC voted in favor of updating its Lifeline program to include broadband. This would mean that households surviving on low incomes would be able to receive help paying for a broadband connection. It might not be as important as electricity or water, but having a broadband connection is seen as being all but essential these days. From helping with education and job hunting, to allowing for home working, the ability to get online is seen as so vital by some that there have been calls for it to be classed as a utility. The Lifeline program has been running since the 80s, and originally provided financial help to those struggling to pay for a phone line. It was expanded in 2008 to include wireless providers, and it is hoped that this third expansion will help more people to get online.
It appears the subsidy would help pay for it, but not make it free or mandatory. If the people who persue the subsidy can meet somehwere in the middle on the cost of broadband they probably have some sense to themselves economically and likely are at least marginally techincally competent.
This may even lead more companies to try to compete in the market of providing broadband to low-income areas, which would be a good thing as well.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
How do you first post when there is no link to the comments?
I least hope we good some good YouTube footage from this.
Moving the comments count to the upper right and making it almost imperceptible.
Putting a share < in its place, with manky mouseover links to some networks.
And worse, getting rid of the rounded corner on the upper left of stories on the main page.
Thanks, Slashdot.
Thlashdot.
Libraries offer free internet access.
From helping with education and job hunting, to allowing for home working
All noble and good. But will the government even bother to follow up and see if it makes any difference? It's one thing to help people improve their place in life, but if all this does is provide free entertainment I'm not so sure. Maybe there should be at least some strings attached to it.
> From helping with education and job hunting, to allowing for home working,
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Well, another way to look at is it should help stimulate *cough* the economy. The porn industry will see an uptick in revenue.
I wonder if porn sites accept EBT?
No one wants to see a hard working man injured on the job and thus unable to care for his family.... but there are many abusers of the system who collect monthly disability checks to augment a lifestyle that clashes with making it to work every morning.
Bottom line for me (and YMMV) is that though charity and paying it forward can be abused, that's no reason to punish the well deserving recipient.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
...subsidizing a non-essential good for other people.
The downside is the federal government sticking its nose into something that's none of its business, in defiance of the 10th Amendment.
Let me be the first one to dub this program Obamanet.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
So is this new retarded fucking share button on Slashdot BETA 2. FIRE YOUR DESIGNERS Slashdot and find someone with half a fucking clue.
Can the FCC subsidize the removal of the new share button on slashdot?
What the hell is the bureaucracy doing making these kinds of decisions? Whether this is good policy or not is a separate question, but the FCC should not be taking on additional mandates like this without direction from Congress.
Where do I get my Obamodem?
Okay so you only get 500 megs a month free but if you are lucky you might hit a sale where you can get the hotspot for cheap (mine was $20 shipped free).
and given how many jobs seem to have online only applications this does make a bit of sense.
. o ( Just fill in our online job application! )
"[...] is seen [...] is seen as so vital by some [...] it is hoped [...]"
Anonymous, unquantified strangers say so, so it must be right.
just legitimizes (weakly, but still...) their claim that they're legally allowed to siphon-off data from those connections.. and well, since tom, dick, and harry's unsubsidized connections are on the same provider or connects through the same data hub.. oops, we have to take all the data to get the data we're ''entitled'' to, but don't you worry, your data is in very safe hands.
I understand the reason that people might want to consider this, but on the other side of the fence is a company that will benefit from all that extra cash from new customers who could not otherwise afford the service. What will the company who benefits do in return for all this extra revenue coming from tax dollars? If the answer is "nothing" then I'd be in favor of dropping the idea.
Government interventions where they pump money into markets on behalf of the poor do three things:
1) They help the poor.
2) They harm the middle class.
3) They have no impact on the wealthy.
Education, housing, medical care - government pumping money into the system just drives up prices to the detriment of those with moderate incomes.
Then Wall Street can step and say, "Hey, debt! I mean how much is your life (or your kid's future) worth to you? That's how much it'll cost ya."
"I need a job!" said no guy ever once he figured out how to sign up for all this free stuff.
Musk hurry the fuck up with that Mars Colony already, or somebody get the zombie apocalypse rolling the level of stupid on planet Earth is reaching critical mass.
...nuff said
I am already a slave for 2/3 my life to the leachers in society. WTF!
That all may be partially true, but in the end; whether you like it not - were all in this together.
Get up!
Mark my words. Internet service will get more expensive because of this. Just like everything else that receives subsidies.
Typical government thinking it can make things cheaper just by waiving a wand...
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
More free crap thanks to our over generous welfare system. Free food, free health care (not), free cell phones, free cable, free housing. Instead of making lazy ass people get up off their asses and work, we just let them sit on their butts, playing video games, smoking/selling drugs, having more babies so they can get even more money. Time to cut off the freeloaders and make them work for some of this free crap. If you aren't physically, medically, or mentally handicapped, there should be some kind of work that you should be required to do, to get the "free" stuff. Taxpayers are tired of funding your lazy asses.
I would think that DSL wouldn't be subsidized, since it no longer satisfies the "broadband" criteria? If so GOOD, AT&T doesn't deserve any more federal money for their ancient DSL crap.
OH NO! MORE FREE SHIT FOR THE POOR!
-- Except it's not. The poor now have the CHOICE of applying a Lifeline subsidy to a landline OR a cell phone OR broadband.
OH NO! THIS WILL COST TAXPAYERS MORE MONEY!
-- Except it won't. The subsidies aren't any larger, and there aren't more of them, they can just be applied to one more thing.
And it's not taxes. It's a fee on phone service, collected and managed by the telcos. If you don't want to pay it? You don't have to. Drop your phone service. Look at your phone bill. See the 'Universal Service Fund' charge? About 20% of that charge covers Lifeline. The rest mostly goes to subsidize landlines in rural areas, rich or poor.
OH NO! THIS IS A WASTE OF LARGE SUMS!
-- The subsidy is $9.95 a month, whether it's for landline phone, cell phone, or internet.
-- OH NO! THIS WILL BE ABUSED!
Of course it will be abused. Everything is abused. But the rate of abuse in Lifeline isn't terribly high and frankly, we could fund the entire program for decades for the cost of one F35.
If it was taxpayer funded. Which it isn't.
Gods forbid we let people choose what sort of communication best suits their needs.
Lets not stop there. After we give the low income their free porn and Xbox connections, lets keep taking money from those that have it and give it to those who want it for other things too, No downside there, after all, the supply of money to give away is infinite. We can never run out. And we don't have to worry about America's crumbling infrastructure. Once we realize that that is really a problem we can take more money from those who have it. We can just keep taking and giving.
Of course, a slight negative, but not really a downside is that the truly rich can afford lawyers and accountants and even politicians to help them keep their money, and maybe even get some more for not growing something or some other cute tax dodge. But no problem, we can just squeeze more taxes and "fees" from those not making as much and trying to feed and raise their family. And great news for them, by the time we are done they will be eligible for free Internet too, although they may be more focused on just staying alive than on using that government benefit.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I'm not entirely sure any of the stated goals *requires* broadband.
One can easily job-hunt on the web at 1meg.
-Styopa
I don't know about landline internet and as someone pointed out, most library systems offer some form of internet access for free.
However I have some need for low speed WiFi but really can't justify the costs of plans these days.
Things I need it for. Mostly our public transportation system. The vehicles are outfitted with WiFi and GPS. They have a site where you can enter your location and it will tell you when the next available transports will be there and what routes they run.
Of course Google maps is useful too.
When people operate on the "ends justify the means" ideology, they simply cannot be believed (lies, after all, are just another "means").
Early in the so-called net-neutrality debate, people on the right argued that putting the net under these FCC rules would inevitably lead to this additional wealth re-distribution (forcing rates up for already squeezed middle class customers to give "free" service to Mr Obama's voter base). It was consistent with past similar regulatory actions and with the ideology of the President. People who predicted this were called liars.
This was just like when people on the right predicted Obamacare would end up providing "free" healthcare to illegal aliens and were repeatedly called liars by Mr Obama and his supporters - so much so that one Republican famously/infamously broke traditions in the House and called Obama a liar during a speech. This past week, the governor of California added illegal alien kids (the Democrats in the state legislature wanted to add ALL illegals, but that was deemed too much - for now) to the state's Obamacare program.
No wealth re-distribution program in history has ever made people equally wealthy, nor moved the poor into the middle class, nor has such a program ever truly hurt the rich and powerful. All such programs ever do is make middle class people more poor and the poor more comfortable. Instead of making the rich billionaires who support this stuff like George Soros, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffet provide lots of people "free" internet, this makes already-squeezed middle class families pay higher monthly cable bills on top of their already artificially higher monthly telephone bills (for "free" phones for the poor) energy bills (for "reduced rate" service for the poor) water bills (for "reduced rate" lifeline supplies for the poor) etc. Before all this "tax the rich" stuff was implemented, a middle class American family could have a home, a car, two kids and a dog on one blue-collar salary. Now, the rich are still rich but middle class families are struggling on two salaries.
That Paul Krugman?
The recipe is that if we give all humans the same access to the basic requirements to live, we are making life easier to all of us.
And by supporting differences between humans (i.e. a small number of people using most of the resources, denied to the rest of the world) we are calling for trouble.
If you are willing to accept a sufficiently low enough quality of life I suppose that is true. But how are you paying for your utilities and entertainment equipment?
I've got a few friends and relatives who are currently on various government assistance programs, and working minimum wage jobs. I'm a pretty lazy guy and I'd love to be able to stay home and play games all day. But there is no way I'd be willing to accept their quality of life and living conditions to get that.
I agree. I'm all for those who followed the procedures and became lawful immigrants and give zero fscks for those whose want to immigrate into the USA is greater than their willingness to follow the immigration laws. What other laws are they going to decide are unimportant?
Look, either citizenship is important or it's not. If you choose to think the US is a giant economic house party that can keep inviting in cool kids from around the world then you plainly don't care about citizenship. Fine, lead with that.
Myself, I think it DOES matter, even if most of us are US Citizens by birth. I vote, and pay taxes, and contribute to worthy causes in my community, and try to be a good American. Those other cool kids are likewise citizens of their birth countries, and they ought to be celebrating that and working to fix their own countries, not coming here because things are better economically.
Hmmm. Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
While I'm all in favor for getting people to work to support themselves, Republicans have been working hard to make it not worth it to work, by killing minimum wage increases, encouraging outsourcing, and generally constructing a rent economy where people make (far!) more money by owning things than by doing actual work.
Silly me, I thought the legislative power of the United States was vested in the Congress, like it says in the very first sentence of Article I, Section 1..
One of my many absurd notions.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
how about we just go with the Constitution.
Yeah, how about it? Look for a moment at this excerpt from Article I, section 8:
So Congress has the explicit authority to tax and spend in the interest of promoting commerce or moving the mail. An Internet access subsidy could be justified under either criterion.
Desler, LateArthurDent, sqrt(2), BiIl_the_Engineer, Anonymous Coward, Sarten-X, another Anonymous Coward, karnal, and sjames think it's so impractical to "live like a nomad chasing ISPs" that "only a raving lunatic" would do so.
Most towns already have free internet access at the local libraries
But do they have sensible hours for both the local libraries and public transportation thereto and therefrom?
I'll use Fort Wayne, Indiana (pop. 200K), as an example. Citilink buses are closed at night, on Saturday evenings, and all day Sunday, and the "Flexlink" lines that go to the far west and north sides of town are additionally closed all day Saturday. Allen County Public Library is closed at night, on Friday and Saturday evenings, and on Sundays during the summer. Branches other than downtown are additionally closed Sundays all year, Saturdays during the summer, and on Thursday evenings. This effectively leaves Monday through Wednesday for the working poor.
Most people "need assistance from the government to make ends meet", even if said "assistance" is roads, bridges, and fire and police protection. By that measure, everyone who's not a millionaire (or, in certain markets affected by a housing bubble, a multi-millionaire) is poor.
Microsoft's Skype(SM) service has text and voice-only modes. The Opus codec, a collaboration between Xiph and Skype, offers high speech quality at 16 kbps each way. If you require video, 1 Mbps each way ought to be more than enough for a bidirectional video stream. For example, 240p on an AVC or VP8 class codec is about 350 kbps, plus some extra for protocol overhead. (Source) And this target bitrate is for general subject matter, not a talking head which is typically simpler to encode.