CenturyLink Takes $3B In Subsidies For Building Out Rural Broadband

Posted by timothy on Sunday August 30, 2015 @11:55AM from the market-for-subsidies-vs.-the-market dept.

New submitter club77er writes with a link to a DSL Reports article outlining some hefty subsidies (about $3 billion, all told) that CenturyLink has signed up to receive, in exchange for expanding its coverage to areas considered underserved: According to the CenturyLink announcement, the telco will take $500 million a year for six years from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)'s Connect America Fund (CAF). In exchange, it will expand broadband to approximately 1.2 million rural households and businesses in 33 states. While the FCC now defines broadband as 25 Mbps down, these subsidies require that the deployed services be able to provide speeds of at least 10 Mbps down.

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Funny story... by pubwvj · 2015-08-30 12:00 · Score: 5, Funny

In January we got Broadband! A whopping 5Mbps. It was amazing. We loved it.
Then the FCC took away our Broadband. They changed the definition to 25Mbps so now we have a paltry 5Mbps! Horrible.
Not.
Re:Running the numbers... by PopeRatzo · 2015-08-30 14:00 · Score: 4, Funny

Can't we save some money and just provide connectivity to Breitbart and Red State and keep these people out of other comment sections?
They tried that, but people kept stealing the wires out of the trailer park and selling it to buy meth and ammo.

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