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

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.

Comments

Re: Running the numbers...

[kenh]

Maybe just maybe you could sling the fiber from existing power poles to keep you costs down. But even then you wont get under 2k.

They don't have to get the cost under $2K, that $2K/household is the SUBSIDY, it is designed to encourage the investment and speed up the return on investment for the cable company/ISP... Who will still charge every customer the same amount, with or without subsidy on their install.

Without this money, rural customers would be forced to pay the actual cost of their service...