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Gigabit Internet With No Data Caps May Be Coming To Rural America (arstechnica.com)
Jon Brodkin, writing for Ars Technica: The Federal Communications Commission is making another $2.15 billion available for rural broadband projects, and it's trying to direct at least some of that money toward building services with gigabit download speeds and unlimited data. The FCC voted for the funding Wednesday (PDF) and released the full details yesterday (PDF). The money, $215 million a year for 10 years, will be distributed to Internet providers through a reverse auction in which bidders will commit to providing specific performance levels. Bidders can obtain money by proposing projects meeting requirements in any of four performance tiers. There's a minimum performance tier that includes speeds of at least 10Mbps downstream and 1Mbps upstream, with at least 150GB of data provided each month. A "baseline" performance tier requires 25Mbps/3Mbps speeds and at least 150GB a month, though the data allotment minimum could rise based on an FCC metric that determines what typical broadband consumers use per month.
The ISPs shouldn't receive a penny until they do what they say they'll do. How much money are we going to give these guys for promises they never keep?
o Offer gigabit broadband with no data caps
o Allow a few years for Rural America to get used to having it
o Impose Shadow Datacaps on the biggest bandwidth users
o Complain about 'data hogs' and 'lost profits'
o Impose 'overage fees'
o Impose data caps for all subscribers
o Profit!
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Sure, give the already obscenely greedy ISPs more money, surely that will get them to meet their prior commitments!
They still haven't delivered what they promised when we, the people, gave them several hundred million in 1996.
lose != loose
Everybody wins.
Except for those people who don't want the government running the pipe through which they talk to family, entertain, telecommute, handle their finances, etc.
No. The federal government gets to own and run something that vital when they show they can maintain things like interstate highway bridges or other less complicated and less sensitive things well and on budget. The federal government can't even fix completely broken, highly scrutinized VA hospital administrative staff, let alone become a giant new ISP.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
In the 90's we gave the network providers billions to bring broadband to rural areas. They didn't do it then, what makes us think they will follow through this time?
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
The Rural Electrification Act was a (relative) success. So let's try a similar scheme again. Let rural governments create cooperative ISPs, apply to the FCC for their share of the funding and put in broadband. I have the feeling that the incumbent telecoms are going to get their hands on the money and it's all going to disappear down the same rat-hole that the last subsidy did.
Have gnu, will travel.
2. Throw a little money into astro turf organization to protest.
3. Astro turf will denounce it as Big Government, Obamanet, over reach and argue for the program to be axed.
4. Some law makers will be persuaded by the lobbyists to fake concern and axe the program.
5. The companies will blame the funding cut to renege on all promises
Lather, rinse and repeat.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact