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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!
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.
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".
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.
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.
Thereby massively expanding the number of rural broadband connections? Wow, results!
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
It's talked about here...the 10/1 is a proposed standard for "mobile broadband".
Page 6, paragraph 14:Should we maintain the 25 Mbps download, 3 Mbps upload (25 Mbps/3 Mbps) speed benchmark, and to apply it to all forms of fixed broadband? and in the footnotes: The 25 Mbps/3 Mbps speed benchmark was established in the 2015 Report and maintained in the 2016 Report. Inquiry Concerning the Deployment of Advanced Telecommunications Capability to All Americans in a Reasonable and Timely Fashion, and Possible Steps to Accelerate Such Deployment Pursuant to Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, as Amended by the Broadband Data Improvement Act, GN Docket No. 14-126, 2015 Broadband Progress Report and Notice of Inquiry on Immediate Action to Accelerate Deployment, 30 FCC Rcd 1375, 1403 -08, paras. 45 -55 (2015) (2015 Report ); 2016 Report , 31 FCC Rcd at 722, paras. 51 -52.
Page 7, paragraph 18: The Commission has not previously set a mobile speed benchmark...We seek comment on whether a mobile speed benchmark of 10 Mbps/1 Mbps is appropriate for mobile broadband services.
IMHO, 10/1 is probably "good enough" for "mobile broadband", but only as long as that isn't your ONLY choice. Most people aren't hotspoting multiple devices off a single cell phone.
Up until 2-1/2 years ago, I lived in a rural area 13 miles from the closest gas station. I only had 5 Mbps, and was lucky to have that. It was actually quite livable. I could easily stream a Netflix show while doing other things. I even did a little bit of telecommuting (chip design) over a VPN, using tools like SOC Encounter (very graphics based). Not ideal, but livable.
So, double that? Yeah, enough to support 2 or 3 streaming movies at the same time. More is always better, but 10 Mbps is definitely nothing to complain about. Yeah, if you are downloading a 10 GB video game, it might take more than 1/2 hour.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
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?
Yeah - that was awesome!
(Remember when you said it was OK to do that?)
Executive orders in the face of a Congress & Senate that outright refuse to even talk about the issues you want heard is one thing. Writing more than all other presidents in the last 50 years because you really wish you were a dictator and not bothering to even ask the legislature who is your own party and holds majorities in both Congress and the Senate is quite another.
Also, taking something you hated when the other guy did it and going completely wild with it when you're in power, is not winning. It's just being a ginormous hypocrite.
Amusingly, Wikipedia has a list of executive orders per year. Trump's 12-month executive order total equals Obama's last 15 months in office. Not 50 years. And Carter (37 years ago) was the last President to issue executive orders at a higher rate than Trump. If you're going to badmouth him, at least get your facts right.
I suspect Trump's rate is high just because this was his first year, and many of his executive orders were rolling back or modifying Obama's executive orders. Nothing hypocritical about that. As much as Democrats would've loved it if Trump had kept all of Obama's executive orders in force, we all knew that simply wasn't realistic. The next 3 years will tell if he's a hypocrite about executive orders.