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Microsoft Pledges To Bring Better Broadband To Two Million Rural Americans in the Next Five Years (recode.net)
Microsoft on Tuesday announced a new campaign to try to "eliminate" the gap in high-speed internet access in the country's hardest-to-reach areas -- an effort called the Rural Airband Initiative, which will set an ambitious target of bringing better broadband to two million Americans within the next five years. From a report: The Redmond, Wash.-based software giant plans to start its efforts in 12 states, offering seed money -- Microsoft wouldn't specify the amount -- to local telecom providers that are trying to improve internet access through means like "white spaces," which are the invisible, wireless radio airwaves that aren't already owned by broadcasters. From Microsoft point of view, this approach -- aimed at delivering speedy wireless internet -- is the best way to improve connectivity in parts of the country that broadband providers long have ignored, given the prohibitive costs of building and sustaining networks there. By Microsoft's count, more than 23 million Americans in rural areas currently lack high-speed internet access, despite billions of dollars in federal investment. But the company emphasized that it is not looking to become a telecom provider -- it's only providing capital to local firms -- and does not seek to profit from the endeavor. Through revenue-sharing agreements, Microsoft instead plans to invest any money it raises in additional projects in other states where internet access is lacking.
IE only no firefox or chrome for you! NEXT!
It does make you wonder what they are trying to get out of this
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
Google should approach MS, Apple, Facebook, and Netflix and suggest that they invest into Google Fiber. At that point, rename it to American FIber and then push this all around America. Seriously, if all of these companies simply invested into this and focused on any of the places in which telcos were screwing over others (ok, all of America), then it would solve a LOT.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
how else will they be able to maintain QoS for their forced updates and telemetry?
Nobody really wants to actually deliver. But there are a lot of subsidies to be had for empty promises and no sign of abatement. I mean, why slaughter the goose laying golden eggs?
In Seattle we only get dialup because of Directors rules.
Sounds like something Facebook tried in Africa.
sudo rm -r -f --no-preserve-root /
I wish someone would bring better internet to mid-sized cities in the US.
We're still stuck with low quality monopoly cable internet paying 3 or 4 times what you guys in big cities with Google Fiber get after competition drives prices down.
Yeah... I'm sure very-rural America would love to have cable speed connections but a big bang for the buck could be had by removing cable monopolies on broadband internet in the mid sized cities.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Now even quicker reshares of fake news from your racist uncles
Thanks, Microsoft
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
lets give more money to the telcos that were already paid to build out their networks by the taxpayers.
While it's nice to Microsoft embrace the white spaces of Python, I'm not sure how that's supposed to help with rural Internet access.
Also you will need an outlook.com email address to sign up.
What did Google get out of Google fiber?
"...and does not seek to profit from the endeavor."
Of course they do. I don't have a problem with it either. They stand to gain more customers. As long as they don't somehow start forcing the people who get connected to use Windows as part of the deal.
Probably a deal with the isp to make IE the default browser and Bing the default search engine on their internet setup software cd that isps try to get customers to install even though it isn't needed.
It does make you wonder what they are trying to get out of this
They are increasingly in the business of selling subscribed-to services that individuals and small businesses (say, farming operations in rural America) can't use without reliable high-enough-speed connectivity. Tens of millions of people lacking decent connectivity represents a lot of potential that MS can't eventually market to. To say nothing of the near impossibility of someone living on the side of a mountain somewhere getting their copy of Windows 10 patched/updated over the wire when they've got - at best - DSL or awful satellite service.
Just spent the last weekend driving around parts of Virginia, in the outskirts of the Charlottesville area. We're talking about people who own multi-million-dollar horse farms and wineries who have to drive 30 minutes into town to use the WiFi at a Starbucks. But they can't get cable or fiber out to their properties because nobody will do it, almost regardless of the price offered. Some sort of terrestrial wireless solution on poles, hilltop-to-hilltop, is the only way to go. LEO sats MAY provide some relief, but not likely enough to bank on when you're trying to run a point-of-sale system at the tasting room of your thousand acre winery with two hundred guests trying to give you money.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
through means like "white spaces," which are the invisible, wireless radio airwaves that aren't already owned by broadcasters.
"invisible" - The only radio airwaves that are visible are referred to as "light waves".
"wireless radio airwaves" - Redundant? Is there such a thing as "wired radio airwaves"?
"aren't already owned by broadcasters" - That is the vast, vast majority of the radio spectrum, "broadcasters" control just a small fraction of the radio spectrum.
This plan is to allocate and dedicate one unused UHF Broadcast TV channel in each market for high-speed data transmission. So this proposed service, which broadcasters object to, would be located in the midst of spectrum controlled by TV broadcasters
Ken
White space would be nice in providing much needed "I'll take my business elsewhere" competition. It could also provide revenue to local stations by siting the white space transmitter there. And last the use of utility fiber for broadband seems to be one dark horse that never amounts to anything even though it's penetration should be bigger than cable or DSL. Also while the devices are in their infancy they could be shrunk down to cell-phone size.
Xbox Live subscription revenue.
Probably some obscure form of financial aid from gouvernment, Microsoft do not make money giving back to the society for free, like with educattion.
The only options available in many places around Microsoft is 1.5 Mbps from Frontier. How about helping the locals first
We built electric power out to every household in this country. We built the telephone network out to every household in this country. Are you telling me we can't do the same with fiber-optics? When did we become a bunch of lazy defeatists?
The government should be nudging (gently at first, then onto a hard shove) the private sector to deliver high speed internet to rural areas. Not private companies. Private companies will place their own ends above what's best for the public.
...will detect what kind of system you're using and block access if it isn't Windows, Windows Phone, or Xbox.
Says somebody w/ no clue about Microsoft's recent marketing on Windows Phone. It's pretty much disappeared from the Microsoft Store. While they do sell an HP Icon as a Windows phone, the other phones they have on display are Galaxies. The main thing they now promote is Office on Android, which anybody can download from the Play store. And their apps - like OneNote, OneDrive, Office - are all there both on iOS & Android.
Actually it would be a good idea if Microsoft drops the idea of a Windows subscription, and instead entered the broadband business. Unlike in the 90s, it's not difficult to live w/o Windows today: one could use a Mac or Chromebook for things that they can't already do on phones or tablets. Forcing people to pay something annually for their OS would just turn people away towards those alternatives. Better idea is Microsoft stop using Google's model of revenue through ads, and instead revert to what they used to do up to the Windows 7 era. And then toss in Microsoft Broadband, pre-built in the OS as an option, and let it get self-configured during installation if the user wants it and it's available in the place in question
I'm pretty sure Google wanted to float balloons over Africa and create a mesh network, so that neighboring tribes in rural Africa could "like" each others Facebook postings...
Seriously, they do have a Project Link to tie cities together with fiber optic cables and yet another plan to use vacant TV spectrum for wireless internet in a very select region of Africa...
Oh look, Microsoft trialed this technology in Africa a couple years ago.
Ken
Perhaps the existing networks cannot handle all that telemetry.
Google got nothing except the technology investment (which they were researching anyway). They served the purpose of agitator by stirring the cable companies to try harder but Google ultimately tripped on their own huge dick.
Microsoft can't add anything to the conversation. Cable companies are fiercely territorial and they play hardball in the highest leagues. I don't know what they're thinking.
Fiber would cost a lot to run.
oh my GOD, how many HOURS of RESEARCH did you need to do to come up with that gem? WOW what an argument
Simple: "And now that you have high speed access, let's talk about how Office 365 and Azure can solve all your computing problems!"
Positive brand association is a good thing - it causes a halo effect.
You'll have to sign an agreement that you'll only use Windows 10 to connect to the Internet ...
... or
It'll only be compatible with Windows 10, all other connections will be rejected
That's the sort of thing I expect out of Miscreant-o-soft these days.
Why connect rural White Americans to the internet? Certainly not to give them economic opportunity in today's world of brown domination. An Indian Technology company like Microsoft should know better than to let rural whites read Trump tweets. Get enough white folk riled up and they could get in their trucks and storm the cities and kick out the brown H1Bs.
Updates too big, cheaper to deploy broadband than fix Windows Update.
MS knows how bad access to decent Internet is in many places in the US, rural or otherwise. They also know that any attempt to sell an OS like Windows 10, with its bent toward creating a subscription-based revenue stream relies on the type of Internet access seen in other countries. Otherwise how will you sell a subscription that relies on getting your software, etc. from a central location? However, MS doens't want to get into the ISP/Telco/Fiber/Wireless biz in any direct way, and you can't blame them there. It's not altruism, that's for certain.
This is the phone company's job, not Microsoft's. WTF am I paying a Universal Service Fund then?
Fully licensed blockchain psychiatrist
A computer and operating system should be fully functional with zero internet access.
Just say no to rental software and control of the user.
Stop buying laptops without optical drives. Insist on physical media for your operating system and software.
Me? I'm guessing the package will include Microsoft's "Zune II".
(Or whatever the hell they decide to call their answer to Amazon Echo/Google Home)
No sig today...
Through both direct government subsidy and extra fees, the phone companies have been collecting money for years that was supposed to be going to exactly this purpose.
The BIGGEST problem with having "broadband for everyone" is how spread out America is. ALL of Europe, including England, would fit inside the land area of the USA, with room to spare. It's why it cracks me up, when I see misleading statements about how poor the USA is, in broadband speed. Heck, you can take a ferry from England, to Holland, rent a car, and drive across Europe in about a day. If two cars leave the Texas/Oklahoma border at the same time, one traveling north, the other south, the one traveling north will enter Canada, before the one traveling south hits Mexico. And that is just ONE state. I drove from the southwest part of Missouri, near the Missouri/Oklahoma/Kansas border, to Detroit Michigan, and it took TWO days, and I don't drive the speed limit, and, all of my trip was on interstate highways with 70mph speed limits.
The fact is, there's no substitute for good, wired broadband connections. All of these attempts to provide service to unserved areas with wireless technologies are second-rate solutions that still leave rural customers at a disadvantage.
Pretty much anywhere in the U.S., I can set up a satellite broadband connection and have "high speed Internet" -- only it's subject to a lot of terms and conditions. High latency is a big show-stopper with it for many things, like online gaming or VoIP telephony. And then you have the high cost and bandwidth caps that come with it.
In many rural areas I've been in, you have at least one area ISP offering microwave type broadband, where you put one of their receiver antennas on your roof and get service that way. Again, it's better than only DSL as an option, but it's not great. It's costly and slower than speeds people are used to getting with cable modems.
In other places, you can hobble along with an LTE cellular hotspot and whatever limitations come with the cellular subscription you've got with it.
The point is -- none of this stuff is really very good. They're all wireless solutions that inherently have more issues than a piece of cable stuck in the ground or running along a pole to your property.
We should be demanding municipal/state fiber or copper to fix the last mile issue. Something like the Rural Electrification Act of 1936. That's what we pay taxes for, so yes, we are entitled..
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Me? I'm an idiot who thinks I'm funny!
Or the effort to float balloons over Africa?
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
areas, they'll get information from something besides AM radio and become better informed. They might even stop voting for idiots like Trump.
But it's not a "last mile" problem. It's a "several miles between houses" AT LEAST problem, often where there is at best some electricity, but nothing even resembling the sort of infrastructure needed to run fiber/coax. It would cost tens of thousands at least, often six figures, to get the "last mile" anywhere within a mile of each of millions of homes. That's why wireless makes more sense in such cases.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
They run the power lines and even the phone lines. They can do the same for coax or fiber. Fiber should be cheaper than copper anyway. And I'm not against wireless. I'm only against the corruptly granted monopolies. The market should be wide open to everybody, including the state.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Buckets of red ink.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00OV98F44
I think the solution is going to be fixed wireless, whether it's dedicated infrastructure or piggybacked on cellular. Current LTE deployment in those rural areas is fair to middling, and can provide acceptable speeds and latency in most areas. The advent of 5G could shake things up even more, not only by increasing the infrastructure capacity on 5G itself, but also by freeing up capacity in 4G as more device move to 5G. The only problem is that all cellular providers, and most other fixed wireless providers institute usage caps that are way to low for any modern internet usage. However, since they're still technically providing what's considered "broadband", regardless of whether it can actually stand in as a replacement for physical wireline connectivity. As a result, they can proceed to rake in federal and state-level grant money, despite not providing what is actually needed: a wireline replacement connection at an affordable price. About all that's needed to make these connection more feasible is to get average usage caps raised by an order of magnitude, from 10GB to 100GB.
Multiple counties in that area (including my county just north of Cville) are trying to find solutions, but the best thing us techies can do is to convince them that they need to push not for universal connectivity, but for universal "wireline equivalency". As long as fixed wireless companies (like VABB) and cell providers keep doing what they're doing, they will continue to take credit for providing access, while failing to present any real competition to wireline providers like Comcast or Centurylink.