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

Funny story...

[pubwvj]

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.

Subsidies are okay. Exclusivity is not.

[fustakrakich]

If they take our money to build the line, they are acting as an agent of the state (so, yes we can say the government put in the line) and they must lease it out at reasonable rates.

Re: Subsidies are okay. Exclusivity is not.

[kenh]

Ha-ha, that's funny.

Why doesn't that apply for football stadiums that are built with taxpayer subsidies?

Here's a better idea

[dirk]

Instead of giving Century Link 3 billion dollars to build the infrastructure and then have a monopoly where they can overcharge the customer, let's take that 3 billion and have the government build the infrastructure. Then we let any company who want so use it do so for a small fee. Then not only do we have infrastructure, but we also have competition and at least a small income from the lines, which is better for everyone.