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.

Comments

This could be interesting...

[SeaFox]

As long the providers don't get the money until after the project is completed. Have it held in escrow, even.
If they say they need the money for the build-out costs, I'm sure there are more than a couple banks that would make a loan on a business expansion where the repayment is guaranteed by the federal government.

Better idea

[geoskd]

I have a shocking idea! instead of giving all of this free money to the thieves and liars, the FCC should build the infrastructure themselves and rent it out to whomever wants to use it. Everybody wins. The FCC gets its rural broadband, the customers actually get the access, and the various service providers don't have to cough up and pay for any infrastructure they are not going to use. Once the initial investment is paid back, the FCC makes money on the deal.

Anything else is just another government boondoggle with all of us collectively footing the bill.