Slashdot Mirror
Trump Pushes To Expand High-Speed Internet In Rural America (reuters.com)
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday to make it easier for the private sector to locate broadband infrastructure on federal land and buildings, part of a push to expand high-speed internet in rural America. Reuters reports: "We need to get rural America more connected. We need it for our tractors, we need it for our schools, we need it for our home-based businesses," a White House official told reporters ahead of Trump's speech at the annual convention of the American Farm Bureau Federation. "We're not moving mountains but we're certainly getting started," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to preview Trump's actions. The White House described the moves as an incremental step to help spur private development while the administration figures out what it can do to help with funding, something that could become part of Trump's plan to invest in infrastructure. "We know that funding is really the key thing to actually changing rural broadband," a second White House official said. Reuters cites a 2016 report from the Federal Communications Commission, noting that 39 percent of rural Americans lack access to high-speed internet service.
He is very familiar with rural people and their needs. He grew up in the small town of Manhattan. Upper West Side. He is one of US!
Didn't the FCC just change the definition of broadband to 10 mbps down 1 mbps up? I don't think I understand what's happening in this administration.
"...easier for the private sector to locate broadband infrastructure on federal land and buildings,"
I'm all for more Internet connectivity, don't get me wrong.
But this is just gonna be a gimme to the fine people at Comcast and AT&T.
Some suspect he's rewarding those who voted for him and punishing blue states and their infrastructure projects.
He's known to personally reward loyalty and punish non-loyalty above personal doctrine or dogma. Even though he's pro-infrastructure, he still may avoid blue-state infrastructure as punishment for not voting for him and/or giving him poor ratings.
The recent tax bill also tilts toward red states in that state and local taxes cannot be deducted as much as before from the total taxed. (Some may claim this is "more fair", but blue states already pay a disproportionate amount of money to the Federal Gov't, per population.)
Table-ized A.I.
How is "high-speed" internet different than "broadband"? Does that mean 56k modems instead of morse keys?
Whelp.. the Trump trainwreck just keeps on a rollin'!
I thought the FCC was in the process of relaxing the definition of broadband so the established players could pretend they were doing more than they are?
You can't tell by some of the comments.
At this point if the executive order provided free high speed internet to all Americans the headline would probably be
"Trump signs order making it easier to spy on all Americans".
At least he didn't threaten rape victims. Or got them fired and then sent the IRS after them the same day, claiming that they had surprisingly nice cars for unemployed people.
(^ Yes, Clinton did all that)
lucm, indeed.
I think you may have gone back one president too far. I don't recall George Bush Sr. talking about the internet. Bill and Al did go on about the "information super highway" a lot though.
... on public lands.
This administration is out to commercialize protected areas including offshore drilling and Alaskan drilling as well.
It's the camel nose approach.
"Think of the children without the internet where we plan to put government and private interests."
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Just write a check to your cronies
You got it all wrong. The cronies are the one sending checks... Congress then pass appropriation bills and spending packages based purely on their conscience and on what they think is best for the country.
lucm, indeed.
Twoot Twoot. Launder that cash. Nothing to see. Fake news.
The 'right to repair' movement is using tractors as an example of manufacturers being evil - restricting the rights of people who have purchased tangible devices to repair them.
If they're not already full of computers (much like a car is these days), they soon will be. With wireless diagnostics and controls. And with that will come the 'option' for firmware updates, which will then become mandatory with a periodic phone-home requirement or they'll shut down the tractors.
So yes, tractors have managed without Internet (at all!) until fairly recently... but the people making the tractors don't want that to continue any longer than they can help.
You can't tell by some of the comments.
At this point if the executive order provided free high speed internet to all Americans the headline would probably be
"Trump signs order making it easier to spy on all Americans".
Damn!
Just checking the early comments, and it's all "he's only rewarding the red states for voting him in", "it's encroachment on public lands - will end with offshore drilling and commercialization of public lands", "write a check to your cronies".
They left out "he's only doing it to watch liberal heads explode".
Even though I disliked Obama and [president] Clinton, at least I accepted that they were duly elected, and note that they did some things that were actually good for the country. Notably, Clinton reduced regulations and reduced the deficit (and national debt) for awhile.
Is there *nothing* good that will come from this president?
At least he's no longer literally Hitler. That's progress.
A) Broadband companies have received well over a billion taxpayer dollars in both direct and indirect subsidies since the Clinton administration. How can providing them with more taxpayer money possibly do any good?
B) With the massive tax cut just implemented, these companies should be rolling in dough and not need taxpayer help.
C) Why is it when we hear about subsidies for wind or solar we're told those companies should either stand on their own or die on the vine, yet for established, multi-billion dollar companies no amount of taxpayer funds is ever enough?
US government owns majority of the land and this is an invite for cheap land to put up cell phone towers.
Ok, that sounds amazingly beneficial to everyone. Cell towers hardly impact the environment, they usually are fairly visually disguised, it means cell companies can put up more towers overall when costs are lower, especially for prime locations. That in turn does mean wider cell coverage for rural users which is awesome. It's wins all the way around and a role the government can fulfill well since it has a lot of land...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Remember when Cons complained about "ruling through executive orders"?
Yeah - that was awesome!
(Remember when you said it was OK to do that?)
Cue post after post spinning this into something nefarious in some way even though up until now everybody here was screaming for this.
Actually Trump did threaten to sue the women who claim he groped and molested them. Yes he did. But he's too much of a paperdick chickenshit to actually do it.
I moved into my house 10 years ago, and while I do have 15/5 unlimited cellular internet, having 100+ internet would be nice. I have fiber at the end of my street, but unless Spectrum decides to spend $150K to come down my street, my guess is that 5G cellular will be probably come first. A few years ago CenturyLink told me they would not bring DSL to my street, because they could not make any money off of it as they needed more customers (10-15 houses wasn't enough).
I think, what the current POTUS is doing is manipulative or suggested by others and he could agree.
The real stuff is done in another room. And things go how the wind blows, nobody knows for real.
That's life at the moment....
I didn't realize meth labs required so much bandwidth.
Crackdown on legal reefer states and broadband so grandma can buy her oxycontin on the dark web. Clearly, America is being made great again.
You are welcome on my lawn.
This is about right-of-way and locating facilities, not funding. How this will play out in real life is unclear.
Threatening to sue and killing the cat of a rape victim to shut her up are two different things. One of them is Trump, the other one is Clinton.
lucm, indeed.
Writing also.
The good old days?
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Because the first thing the president should do to open up the internet to rural america is fire the entire FCC board and get some sensible people that aren't propping up companies like comcast, qwest, Att, verizon ect. That want to offer crappy service and charge people through the nose for it.
We know, from reports such as this one:-
https://arstechnica.com/tech-p...
that States are now hard at work to write their own net neutrality legislation at the State level. Bearing in mind just how much money the big telcos have just spent paying on "lobbying" to have the FCC overturn the Obama Net Neutrality legislation, the idea that States could push back against this by enacting their own laws must really chafe.
So maybe what is going on here is simply a measure, pushed for by the cable lobby, to grant them access to federal infrastructure and thus perform an end-run around anything individual states can do? The devil will be in the detail, as always...
Just in case you have forgotten, the election is long over and Clinton will not run again. It's the current president of the United States the people are rightly worried about.
I'm not sure I give very much of a damn about the rural coverage until I can get coverage for proper high speed (25 mbps) in my home less than a mile from city hall. The city has a population in the hundreds of thousands. Yet I sit here on a large lot that cable and fiber offerings claim they do not have to serve. "It costs too much for us to do it."
If rural people get high speed coverage how about making it mandatory that anybody offering service within a city must honor the offer for everybody in that city? Then I could kick some Charter and Verizon ass until I got proper service. DSL on ancient noisy phone lines sucks dead bunnies through garden hoses.
{o,o}
Good luck. Anyone that remembers the history of Telco's and the shit they've tried to pull since the 1950's will know, it won't change. For those of us that remember, way back in the 80's the Telco's laid fiber with government funding. When they were done, the government said they had to share the lines. The Telco's said "fuck americans and their tax dollars" and ripped out the fiber. So yeah the Telco's won't act like monopolistic assholes in Neverland. I remember seeing them rip up the damn street to lay fiber, only to rip up the street again 2 years later to rip out the fiber. Verizon and ATT will never change and deregulation hasn't helped the consumers one bit.
Is no one going to bring up that they said âoewe need it (internet) for our tractorsâ? Wtf do they need their tractors connected to the internet for? So some clown can hack them??
Allow municipal fiber across the nation and the issue will resolve itself in a short time. Trump is a fool thinking that for profits make massive investments into infrastructure to serve a few hundred customers. There is a reason why there is no broadband in rural America and access to federal land and buildings is not one of them.
If Donald Trump (or any other politician in Washington) was serious about increasing the availability of broadband to Americans (rural or otherwise) the best place to start would be to use whatever federal powers exist to overturn or block laws put in place by state and local government that restrict broadband competition (or have the effect of restricting broadband competition even if that wasn't the intent of the people who created the laws).
Getting rid of laws restricting competition (as well as deals done by local government and other entities that limit competition) will result in better internet for everyone.
For areas where service does not currently exist and isn't viable if left to the free market (including some of the rural areas Trump wants to service), the government could offer a subsidy on the open market. Any provider (big, small, new, old or otherwise) that wants to offer service in a given area can get the subsidy provided they actually provide suitable service to the people in that area.
Of course none of this will ever happen because Comcast and AT&T and Verizon and Charter and the other big dinosaurs will go after anyone who tries it and just keep increasing the size of the bribe (I mean "campaign contribution") until they get their way.
We need it for our tractors
That's an odd thing to say. Perhaps the driver for this is the desire of tractor makers to limit use. Sorry Mr Farmer, you need to pay for this broadband since your tractor will not work unless it can phone home over wifi every five minutes.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
From the summary, it sounds like they are talking about easy access to cheap or even free federal land on which to locate and cash subsidies to cover the costs of expanding and enhancing coverage. How many of us here think the cash will get paid, but the work will never get done? (beyond perhaps a mere token effort)
I need a wheelchair van for my son. Help me get the word out. https://www.gofundme.com/wheelchair-van-for-jj
Are you parroting something you were told or did you actually read Willey's book? Because if you believe the stuff she wrote, then I have a pyramid scheme and a bridge I would like to sell you. Alternatively, it's good to know you tirelessly defend all accusers and believe them without question. So I presume you are calling for Trump to step down in the wake of his accusers, too. Because you are a consistent person, obviously, and if your bar of belief standard was set by WIlley's book then that pretty much means Trump's accusers of harassment are impeccable.
Snouts to the trough .. Republican fight against municipal broadband heats up in Michigan
It's the current president of the United States the people are rightly worried about.
Fake news
lucm, indeed.
Because you are a consistent person, obviously, and if your bar of belief standard was set by WIlley's book then that pretty much means Trump's accusers of harassment are impeccable.
You vastly overestimate your cleverness and your aptitude for sarcasm.
lucm, indeed.
A couple days ago, was speaking to a rural ranch client about their broadband speeds when they had an issue with a software install - 17 drops in 4 hours because SpeedTest showed the download speed was 300Kbps. So the client called the DSL provider, CenturyLink, who said "their location would never get an upgrade in speed, ever, so live with it." Broadband, in my mind, is not 300kbs and then to be charged a premium for essentially dual dial-up modem speed, yeah that is b.s... Due to the location of that client, there are no alternatives to DSL unless it is carrier pigeons (we have Eagles & other birds of prey) or smoke-signals.
Amazingly enough, the county I live & work in does have fiber optic yet no one has yet to connect all of the areas with it and the ISP's here use that common excuse (not enough people to justify the expense.) Maybe it is time we get the cattle involved, say watching Netflix, as they clearly outnumber the humans and I suspect already vote :)
By the way, that "tractors" comment was very interesting as I believe that is a nod to the autonomous tractors being developed and yes they require some type of wireless network on the farm/ranch plus internet for remote operations. My company has been upgrading farms/ranches to give that capability to their owners for the past 5 years, though the cost of the tractor is still too high, at some point it will be affordable and those clients are ready to go.
Agrisea Tsunami - Epyc Servers... https://agrisea.net/products