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

Promises, promises

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:Promises, promises

[mysidia]

The ISPs shouldn't receive a penny until they do what they say they'll do.

The ISPs need funding for their projects.... My suggestion would be that the money granted, at least 90% of it should be a LOAN, which will be automatically cancelled/forgiven with a graduated schedule as the project progress, subject to an independent reviewer indicating that they are performing, and if they fail to perform, then the FCC's regulatory authority will be used to recover the payments.

Also, it should be setup as a debt partially secured by the ISP's software and network equipment.

This way the grant is an award, but only if they follow through.

FTFY: "With no data caps TO START WITH"

[kheldan]

U.S. ISP Business Plan for Rural America:

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!

Gee, wonder what ISP-employed lobbyist got this in

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, give the already obscenely greedy ISPs more money, surely that will get them to meet their prior commitments!

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.

Re: This could be interesting...

[ZeroWaiteState]

As someone who has clients in one of those areas I can tell you: you have to contact your state legislator to get ordinary service orders completed. I'm not even kidding. AT&T only wants to do wireless now. From where I'm sitting, it looks like they are stripping the wireline side bare and are waiting for a regulatory opportunity to spin off the carcus.

I'll start holding my breath.

[steak]

They still haven't delivered what they promised when we, the people, gave them several hundred million in 1996.

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.

Didn't we already do this?`

[Holi]

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?

Re:Suburbanites w/ 10Mbps to pay for farmer's giga

[PPH]

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.

sure, let's DOUBLE DOWN on STUPID!

[Thud457]

I hope this time Congress attached some performance requirements so they don't just TAKE the money and do NOTHING like last time.

Re:sure, let's DOUBLE DOWN on STUPID!

[Nethemas the Great]

I'm not sure where you got that statistic from but I can tell you that nearly all of rural America has a median family income half that.

Re:sure, let's DOUBLE DOWN on STUPID!

[dgatwood]

Even better would be to just kill this subsidy program entirely. Median farm income in America is over $80k, about 30% higher than the overall median. Why should poor people be taxed to subsidize other people that are better off?

That covers the farm owners, but what about all the other people who work on the farm?

Besides, you don't seem to comprehend the scale here. Areas defined as "highly rural" have fewer than 7 people per square mile. So at most two or three houses per square mile, and possibly not even one house per square mile. Urban areas have over 1,000 people per square mile. We subsidize services for people who make twice as much money as others because otherwise their Internet connections would cost potentially three orders of magnitude more, and even that's potentially an underestimate. That $200 setup fee suddenly becomes a $20,000 setup fee.

The government tried this already

[zerofoo]

We never learn from our mistakes:

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pu...

Our country and government should not give the telecoms a dime until they do what they say they will to the satisfaction of the auditors and regulators. Promises are worthless.

How it will be done.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

1 First all the private companies will get the money. Allocate it as bonuses and rewards to all the top executives.

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.

Competition vs monopoly in the market.

[Archfeld]

without some form of subsidy, the greedy private carriers will NEVER develop the tech, or expend the cost to wire/beam just a few locals in a small farm town in the middle of nowhere America. I agree we should just require cable/internet services to be open and do away with utility protections. I happen to live in an area that has a couple of cable options, as well as satellite services, and the cost/service benefit is HUGE. When Astound/Wave came to town Comcast/Xfinity cut their cost and upped their data caps within a month to compete because they HAD to.

http://www.wavebroadband.com/
http://www.xfinity.com/