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FCC Leaders Say We Need a 'National Mission' To Fix Rural Broadband (cnet.com)
Democrats and Republicans in Washington can't agree on much of anything these days. One thing they do agree on: The digital divide undercutting rural America needs to be fixed. But figuring out the details of achieving this goal is where the two sides diverge. From a report: So how are policy makers working to solve this problem? I traveled to Washington last month to talk about this topic with FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, a Republican, and Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, the only Democrat on the commission. Specifically, I wanted to know what they see as the cause of this divide and how they think it can be bridged. One thing they agreed on: Deploying broadband is expensive in many parts of the country, making it hard for traditional providers to run a business building and operating networks. "In big cities and urban areas where you have dense populations, the cost of deployment is lower," Rosenworcel said. "When you get to rural locations it's harder because financing those networks, deploying them and operating them is just more expensive." She added, "That's not a reason not to do it. We're just going to have to get creative and find ways to connect everyone everywhere."
It might even take what Pai called a "national mission" to get the job done. But before you can really get things going, you have to address one key issue, Rosenworcel said. "Our broadband maps are terrible," she said. "If we're going to solve this nation's broadband problems, then the first thing we have to do is fix those maps. We need to know where broadband is and is not in every corner of this country." You can't solve a problem you can't measure, she added. [...] Pai agrees that the inaccuracies of the FCC's maps are a major problem. And he acknowledges that relying solely on self-reported data from the carriers is an issue. But he blames the previous Democrat-led administration for creating the problem and says his administration has been left to clean up the mess. He said that when he became chairman in January 2017, the FCC had to sift through that self-reported data based on parameters that individual carriers defined, creating a mismatched data set. "So we didn't just have apples and oranges," he said. "We had apples, oranges, bananas and many other fruits." He said his administration has tried to streamline the process so the FCC is at least gathering the same self-reported information from each carrier. But he admits that the process is still flawed. To rectify that, the agency has developed a challenge process. "We've asked the American public, state and local officials, and carriers, consumer groups, farm groups in rural states to challenge those maps and tell us where they're inaccurate," he said.
It might even take what Pai called a "national mission" to get the job done. But before you can really get things going, you have to address one key issue, Rosenworcel said. "Our broadband maps are terrible," she said. "If we're going to solve this nation's broadband problems, then the first thing we have to do is fix those maps. We need to know where broadband is and is not in every corner of this country." You can't solve a problem you can't measure, she added. [...] Pai agrees that the inaccuracies of the FCC's maps are a major problem. And he acknowledges that relying solely on self-reported data from the carriers is an issue. But he blames the previous Democrat-led administration for creating the problem and says his administration has been left to clean up the mess. He said that when he became chairman in January 2017, the FCC had to sift through that self-reported data based on parameters that individual carriers defined, creating a mismatched data set. "So we didn't just have apples and oranges," he said. "We had apples, oranges, bananas and many other fruits." He said his administration has tried to streamline the process so the FCC is at least gathering the same self-reported information from each carrier. But he admits that the process is still flawed. To rectify that, the agency has developed a challenge process. "We've asked the American public, state and local officials, and carriers, consumer groups, farm groups in rural states to challenge those maps and tell us where they're inaccurate," he said.
They don't have legacy infrastructure to maintain and just use cell towers, sure you might have latency for gaming, but latency is the solution to gaming, which is the bigger problem imo.
the 'weather' & wmd on credit cabalism are in close pursuit.. when way too much (rockets red glare babys bursting in air, gives proof to our plight) is never nearly enough.. cease fire stand down,, beware falling gargoyles etc.. good sports with good spirits will prevail? if we give away even more than we keep there'd still be more than enough of everything left? in the moms we trust.. thank you very much in deed..
You can't massage fundamentally flawed data (1 serviced residence in zip code = served area) and turn it into precise useful data. You need to toss it and start over using fixed parameters that all data sources must adhere to.
Furthermore, the FCC already has the 'Connect America Fund' (part of the Universal Service Fund) program to increase rural broadband availability/speeds, $Billions are spent on that annually.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
You can call up an ISP today and get a firm fixed price.
They know how much it cost them to install fiber per mile in a given area. The problem is, in some areas a mile of fiber will serve 5,000 households, in some areas it'll serve one.
In the areas we're talking about, that price is $10,000 / house or more because installing fiber is expensive.
Wireless is a half solution (probably the best we have) because of a fundamental physics problem. High frequency signals don't penetrate walls (or rain or fog), low frequency signals have low data rates.
who needs it? and why?
and if they really need it, why are they not paying full cost?
why should rest of people subsidize them?
if there are benefits to the society at large from such subsidization, what are they?
has such benefits manifested themselves in areas, like urban areas, where they already have this? are there costs and bad results from this? are they perhaps larger than benefits?
or are the real beneficiaries not rural folk but tech corps? why should society at large subsidize them?
does anyone expect out of touch, corp beholden, corrupt elitist bureaucrats to raise, weigh, and answer, these kinds of questions honestly?
And he acknowledges that relying solely on self-reported data from the carriers is an issue. But he blames the previous Democrat-led administration for creating the problem and says his administration has been left to clean up the mess.
The self reporting has been happening since the first form 477 was filled out... in 2000. Every adjustment made since inception has tried to minimize the burden on industry, just like Ajit Shithead prefers.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
The excerpt quoted in the original post hints at but doesn't state the one glaringly obvious point: the fact that the technical requirements to offer broadband to rural communities are no different from those required for urban areas. The only variable is the perceived "return on investment" that the providers might receive in return for their capital outlay.
In a nutshell, this encapsulates the key weakness of competitive markets and capitalism - it breaks down when something we need is not economically viable to those able to provide it - without an economic incentive, why would they bother?
Whilst the political aspects of this debate could keep us in debate for hours, I think the potential solutions boil down to just two:-
1. Have rural municipalities provide the service, funded out of general taxation.
2. Write the contracts offered to providers in the urban areas so that the grant of each "urban area license" *also* requires the provider to offer their services to a rural area, such that the sum total of all urban contracts at the national level also includes a requirement to provide rural services so that the whole country is covered.
Want the contract for cable in Manhattan? Great - but you get to do the *whole* of New York State, including all rural areas, or you pay penalties.
Now, if those contracts were written such that in return for the award, the companies were accepting a legal liability for non-performance such that if they failed to provide services to the rural areas, they would have to pay fines and penalties, then they will be incentivized to provide a complete service. Then, all we'd need would be an independent (i.e. government operated) monitoring function (say the FCC) with a clear, documented and unambiguous set of tests that will be covered. Live in rural New York State and can't get broadband? Report your issue with the monitoring function and encourage your neighbours to do the same, and the NY State provider (or county provider, or whatever) has to pay fines until they fix the issue.
It's really important to make this model one in which the incumbent is hit with financial penalties if they fail to meet the agreed targets, or they would simply walk away from the contract.
Let's be honest, many of these companies have dedicated internet cables across the Atlantic which run at Gigabit+ speeds. Over thousands of miles. Any they claim they can't offer say 200Mb/s to every address in the country? Come on, who are they trying to kid.
The issue here is economic, plain and simple. The providers want all of the most lucrative areas [where densities are maximized and their profits will be fat] and they're not interested in locations with poor likely return. So the ONLY ways to address this are to either cover those locations with a national non-profit (i.e. government funded) provider, paid for out of federal taxes, or to write the contracts for existing commercial operators to give them a legal obligation to provide full, national coverage.
Will that hurt their profits? Yes. But nobody is sticking a gun to their heads and telling them that they *have* to bid for the lucrative franchises.
Oh, and write the franchises so that they run for fixed terms, with explicitly documented investment requirements and objective measures [i.e. so much fiber laid, so many homes connected, fix times at measurable values, etc. If the company doesn't meet their contract, they are out after 5 years.
If Pai gave these whiny excuses to his boss in any industry, they'd throw their coffee in his face and boot him out the door.
Some of these obvious rural areas would not attract traditional business model to support any sort of current delivery system of internet. Other than satellite or cellular where other customers support the technology. The lack of density of customers would mean a very unprofitable service for any ISP addressing just this type of customer. It does appear some of the potential solutions in other countries with rural areas might eventually spur on some interest in new technologies.
We tried this once in the 90's.
400 BILLION was given to the ISP's to upgrade the US to fiber to the house. That money should have gone a lot further in the 90's than 400 billion would now, but the ISP's did basically nothing with it. They used loopholes to declare that because there was a fiber connection somewhere on the line, the plan for all houses to be fiber to the home was complete.
The telecoms pocketed all that money and declared it as quarterly profits. If this idea goes anywhere, Ajit Pai will laugh as another half trillion dollars goes up in smoke as government money goes up to the same companies and is just declared profits again when they declare "oops, we already completed the goal before the first check was ever cashed, but thanks for the money!"
"Well kids, you tried your best, and you failed. The lesson is, never try." -Homer Simpson
fuck em, if there is a problem then let the magic hand fix fix it.
what about if an ISP site has your address has it but it turns that it really does then the ISP must pay the cost to built it out.
https://www.theverge.com/2014/...
https://www.usatoday.com/story...
https://consumerist.com/2015/0...
Most rural areas in the US are republican and GOP strongholds that strongly oppose government charity at tax payer expense. Make them pay for their broadband.
It seems like there is a solution to this problem that is already in the works - Low Earth Orbit based satellite internet. Several companies are working on this already - Starlink already has a couple test satellites in orbit. The best solution to this issue would be to just keep the government out of the way of these networks going up.
Rural areas are serviced by telephones. Perhaps role out broadband the same way: well regulated monopolies, then break them up when people complain that they're monopolies.
I was under the impression that the forces of the free market would solve the problem, just as they solve all the problems. You mean to say that that's not true?
Better part of a hundred Dollars for internet access?
Why must we coddle monopolies such as Comcast, ATT&T, and Google in this country?
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
How about not giving CenturyLink 3 billion dollars over six years to bring coverage to rural areas and then not holding them accountable? The fuckers are using that money to open up only in "new markets" where competing providers near one of their coverage areas start providing coverage instead. Meanwhile the other rural areas that no one's tried to serve yet are still not being covered, six billion dollars later. Just to put this into perspective, that amount of money equals just a bit under $20 for every single man, woman, and child in the United States, from newborns to the near-dead. The money came from somewhere, isn't being used for what it was supposed to, and there is zero accountability.
We paid 200 billion that was stolen for this
Arrest the people responsible for appropriating those funds and use their2 assets
Shut it down and remove the copper land lines too so people can't even get ADSL. Those backwoods hicks can use metered mobile for their Internet!
Again, why should society pay for interstate highways when there are millions of people who hardly ever use interstate highways? Why should society pay for harbours when most people hardly ever travel by sea? Why should society pay for rail networks when millions of people never travel by rail? Why should society pay for airports when millions of Americans have never taken a commercial flight in their life? The answer is that your questions simplifies the issue far too much, you can't just reduce this to a subsidy and then rage against it. Even if you don't do any of the above things you still benefit indirectly from funding interstate highways, harbours, a rail network and airports. Then there is also that nice warm glow you get when you do like the Christians and their commandments would have you do, i.e. give a damn about somebody other than yourself, like the people in flyover country
I'm American and I live in a pretty large metro area in the USA. I grew up in a small town in my state several hours away from where I live. I'll tell you why I really don't care if rural areas ever get broadband. You know what I hear all the time from people who still live in my hometown and other small towns in my state? This is what I hear all the time.
1) Sarah Palin made a career out of telling small town America that they are the "Real America" and those of us in large metro areas don't matter - at all.
2) I keep hearing how in my large metro area that we are "out of touch" because many of us don't think Trump is the greatest president of all time.
3) I keep hearing how life in their small town simply could not be better.
So no, I am not interested at all in paying to help rural America get broadband given how they've already told me what they think of me just because of where I live.
Over the years, the government has continued funding the major ISPs exactly so that they would upgrade their infrastructure and increase the range of their network to rural regions. They took that money, gave it to the higher echelon of the company as "bonuses" and "pay" and now we're back to square one.
Congrats. You keep funding the rich with money from the poor.
The problem is that they make it hard to get the money. USDA handled the last round of lets fix rural broadband. The first thing they asked for was first lien. The problem with that is we already had loans with local bank who were not going to give that up. We hired someone who had worked with USDA and even he couldn't cut through all the red tape. They made it so difficult to get the money to improve our infrastructure that we just passed on it. The problem with using the USDA for this kind of rural development is that they really don't have the experience in dealing with this type of problem.
You have corporate welfare interests pitted against right wing political interests. If you give them internet access, rural voters may run into information counter to the disinformation they get from their preachers and AM radio.
Maybe the internet providers can strike a compromise and only provide portion of the internet that the GOP, preachers, and NRA approve of.
The issue here is economic, plain and simple. The providers want all of the most lucrative areas [where densities are maximized and their profits will be fat] and they're not interested in locations with poor likely return. So the ONLY ways to address this are to either cover those locations with a national non-profit (i.e. government funded) provider, paid for out of federal taxes, or to write the contracts for existing commercial operators to give them a legal obligation to provide full, national coverage.
I'd also like to point out that the problem faced here is also in some ways similar to the problem of providing healthcare insurance coverage.
What ISP would want to spend hundreds of thousands of doll-hairs to put in a line for John Rural Hick and then charge him $40/month for it? It will ROI never.
So let me get this straight, their solution is to crowd source data from all the people in the most lightly populated and poorly connected portions of the country?
It isn't like they'll be able to report the results Waze style. Participation rates in this sort of thing are notoriously low, in urban environments that is fine because low participation is still a lot of people. That isn't true in Blood, IL population 500.
If the reporting metrics and types are inconsistent across providers then come up with a combined information map with stringent requirements and a heavy fine structure. Require them to report the updated metrics and THEN put in a system like this where not only do you gain whatever advantages are to be had from crowd-sourcing but teeth are attached. If the fines are steep enough they can motivate the carriers to fix their networks. Don't just keep the funds of course, convert them into a prize for the provider big or small with the highest customer satisfaction results or something along those lines.
corporations are corrupt, greedy and evil. The government is corrupt, incompetent and evil. The people are stupid, lazy and apathetic. We got what we deserved.
I was very passionate about these issues in the early 90s. We got shafted over and over and over again.
More of the same: billions will go to politician's pork barrels (though corrupt corporate nepotism) and the people will get a pittance of what they paid for through taxes. Promises will be made and never delivered. Democrats will blame Republicans, Republicans will blame Democrats. Both will laugh all the way to the bank on their way to their guided mansions. Golf clap. Well done America.
F* em. Too bad they can't pull themselves up by their bootstraps. If their life choices are so good, why do us blue states have to subsidize them? Where is the great red state economic output?
Trump voters f u !!
Outlaw state laws that prevent coops provoding ISP.
Then the local communities can setup their own ISP and avoid the terrible AT&T/Comcast/Cox tax for the rest of their lives.
Also mandate any new wired connections must be capable of supporting at least 1000 Mbps connections without any new equipment. Deploying anything of less capacity these days is just stupid.
I'm on a 25/5 Mbps, though AT&T fibre was put into the neighborhood last spring. I called to get GigE service 60 days later and it wasn't available. Someday, perhaps after the ground they dug up grows again, I'll be able to get a GigE connection for a reasonable price? Perhaps?
Comcast says I can get 250 Mbps for $499/month. That isn't a reasonable price.
sub-$100 for GigE is reasonable to me. $60/month for 500Mbps would be reasonable.
The government grants to improve rural broadband have been dumped into the mobile divisions of said companies, and into executive bonuses.
It's time to de-regulate instead.
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In the state of Georgia, the rural areas are frequently majority black. So, is it OK with you if we to run fiber to those counties, or do you still really believe Sarah Palin tells them how to think?
Sorry, latency on my rural internet connection.
Basically there's two things here
1. Telcos got credits and contracts in return for promise to supply net neutral services to rural areas
2. Amit Pai thinks that since we no longer have net neutrality, the Telco's could monetize the rural areas better with exclusive contents services.
Lipstick on a pig.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
My backstory is pretty much identical, but I've come to the opposite conclusion. I'd much rather see my small hometown get decent Internet access.
My hometown has a pretty wide income gap. Most of the kids in my high school class were setting their sights high to work in the nearby "big city" of 10K people. Most didn't go to college or any trade school, so they're almost entirely dependent on the local tourism income... which went well until around 2008, when the recession hit and tourism dropped. The only reason the town's survived is because a casino dumped a significant amount of money into community support.
Internet access is vital for connecting small towns to the rest of the world, but more importantly it connects the youth to the possibilities outside what their parents provide to them. That's what changes the "could not be better" perception, once people are aware of what the rest of the world has to offer.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
So.......you feel pissy because for once, the shoe is on the other foot?
Queue my inner Nelson Muntz.
I find your comment fascinating. Where can I subscribe to your newsletter?
And it will stay like that BECAUSE they don't have broadband. I would live in the countryside and dilute thier small world view with my worldview of inclusion and debate. But I am not going to unless there is melt your face off internet for $50 a month.
I really feel like this country could get a lot of bang for it's buck if we did an Eisenhower Interstate project for broadband internet. Imagine how much more would be possible if hugely high speed internet was available everywhere. Think of the boost the economy could have.
You may not be aware of this, but your comment makes no sense.
Three days from now?? Thats tomorrow!! ~Peter Griffin
A person can't live in a low density environment then reasonably expect to get the benefits of living in a high density environment. If you live in a rural setting, you get rural technology. If you live outside of the city, you can't reasonably expect the city to provide you with water and sewer. People make a better world when they work together.
Democrats believe socialized fairy dust is the cure all but, as always, reality has a way of tempering rash thinking. The fact is deploying cable in rural areas is very expensive. On top of that is the huge costs of subsidized access for low income households, which is a very expensive social welfare program.
Satellite internet available for $50/month across USA. Speeds appropriating 12MB which is much better than low cost DSL and somewhat competitive with similar services. I can think of a lot of uses of taxpayer money that fiber to everyone in US. We could start by reducing the debt.
I'll tell you why I really don't care if rural areas ever get broadband. You know what I hear all the time from people who still live in my hometown and other small towns in my state? This is what I hear all the time.
1) Sarah Palin made a career out of telling small town America that they are the "Real America" and those of us in large metro areas don't matter - at all.
2) I keep hearing how in my large metro area that we are "out of touch" because many of us don't think Trump is the greatest president of all time.
3) I keep hearing how life in their small town simply could not be better.
So no, I am not interested at all in paying to help rural America get broadband given how they've already told me what they think of me just because of where I live.
At the very least the FCC should step in to not allow the blocking of municipal broadband. If communities / counties want broadband then they can at least build it themselves. Float a bond and build out GPON / EPON fibre.
Also need a new national fee, tax, charge, & surcharge to go along with that, of course.
I live in a rural area. About 12 miles from a small town. Prior to being able to get fixed wireless, I was paying about 350.00 a month for 80GB of bandwidth so I could work from home. Had to restrict my online activities so I didn't go over the bandwidth allowance. What really puzzles me, is that cable was laid across the ocean recently. About 4,000 miles of cable. Took a couple of years. Here, it takes under an hour to run a mile of cable. As I live in an area with dirt roads. And, the adjoining highways have grassy areas on either side all the way to town. The fixed wireless I use connects to a tower that is a mile and a half away. The tower is connected to cable. Yet, why in the hell can't that cable reach my end of the woods. I was hopeful when I heard about broadband over power lines. As I felt that should makes things easier for rural connectivity. That was 5 years ago. As of late, it has become a popular idea amongst some ISP's again. Here is hoping.
The government grants to improve rural broadband have been dumped into the mobile divisions of said companies, and into executive bonuses.
Yeah, that sounds like a problem that could have been solved through regulation. Require that the money be spent usefully with reasonable requirements.
It's time to de-regulate instead.
What? It's time to break up the telcos again, and to put the infrastructure under direct government control. Less regulation never kept a monopoly in line, and only a useful idiot argues otherwise.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Just to be clear, it isn't possible to agree on things when one side is specifically and explicitly going out of their way to be dicks.
I know that at least once, the Republican party had standing orders to vote against *anything* the Democrats wanted, no matter how good an idea it was.
How do you work with people who have standing orders to go against whatever you stand for, no matter what?
I'm trying to find a link to an article where the above was admitted, but I'm having trouble finding it cause this Kavanaugh nonsense is flooding the results.
The correct way to solve the rural issue is let private companies, esp SATs, solve it. After all, that was argument made for getting net neutrality. Now however, with multiple companies about to start .1-1 Gb sat service, the GOP want to 'fix things'. Yeah. No.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
It's not just rural broadband that's the problem. I live inside a city of 130,000 people and can barely get 5 megabit download speeds on a good day. Broadband, in general, is broken.
We should make it a national mission to find out where the billions the telcos got to do this went.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The solution for rural broadband is LEO satellite access. There are multiple companies working on this, including SpaceX. This will be available in a few years. Problem solved.
SpaceX Starlink
Yes it does. You failed reading comprehension pretty hard.
We've had satellite internet for quite a while now.
Satellite internet sucks because of the physics involved. The physics doesn't care if you have a great salesman or not. No matter how charismatic Musk is, radio waves do what they do.
SpaceX plans to use Ku band communications, because that's the frequency range that can give you high bandwidth at satellite distances. Unfortunately, it's also the peak absorbtion range for water - clouds and rain are opaque at that Ku wavelengths. Ask any satellite internet user what that means for their service.
There's an epidemic in the current Administration of "blame anyone else but me." In fact, how about not attempting to lay blame and focus on fixing the problem? How about that Mr. Pai?
You know, act like the leader you claim to be?
as mentioned by other posters they got the economic incentive in the form of massive tax breaks ($200-$400 billion worth) and still didn't do the roll out. Even when we pay them to do it they don't do it.
If we want national rural broadband the government's going to have to do it. No private business will. They'll take your money and run.
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a well educated electorate doesn't necessarily vote the way you want them to.
Remember how before the printing press only the priesthood could read the bible? Internet is like that times 100.
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It shows that selfish people like you who think only about themselves during a crisis like a hurricane are rare, and that just because uncapping the high speed data worked well in the cell you were in doesn't mean it will work everywhere.
They can't very well say "we'll uncap the data for some people, but not others, without rhyme nor reason because it depends on our capacity vs. usage in a given area". They make the rules nationwide, so they need to be workable in the large majority of cells nationwide.
What is your incoherent rambling supposed to actually mean?
We've had satellite internet for quite a while now.
We haven't had LEO satellite internet. You clearly have no idea what you're talking about.
SpaceX plans to use Ku band communications
Actually they're planning to use Ka and Ku, which stand for 'above' and 'under' the center 'K' band--which is the one where the peak water vapor absorption falls. Sure there will be some attenuation due to weather on the Ka/Ku bands as well--but there's a metric shit-ton of bandwidth available. Broadband that's somewhat degraded in weather is still better than no broadband at all.
Either way, this will be sorted out by the market--and the market doesn't care that the existence of Elon Musk makes you confront your own failed life on a daily basis.
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Ajit Pai earlier today: They were lying to us about the coverage maps all along! Egad! What have we done?
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I live in rural boondocks and I'm currently on satellite ISP. I refuse to subscribe to privately owned broadband after seeing the arrogance of Charter/TW, AT&T, Comcast, etc. The only thing that will get me to leave satellite is municipal ISP. Fund the municipal infrastructure - the privately owned companies have already demonstrated that they can't be trusted with it!
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
Septic tanks?
the point it to allocate hundreds of billions of $$$ more to the telcos so they can pocket it again.
notice what works empirically for rural broadband: local government owned collectives.
notice what they want to stop: local government owned collectives.
Back in 1996 when Bill Clinton (at the behest of his pal Al Gore) created this mess of stealing money from telephone customers in order to give services to people who were not paying for them, they created a typical government redistribution scam that has performed like such scams always do. The costs to the legitimate customers gradually rise, and the politicians fond more and more people to give "free stuff" to in exchange for their political loyalty.
This got so out of hand that when the broadband internet stuff was added (jacking up phone bills for average people even further) the government failed to add any enforceable metrics to the providers, so essentially the telcos got a government-mandated windfall profit. They got to bill people more each month and point the finger of blame at the government, while getting to pocket the money and not being required to provide anything meausureable in exchange. The politicians did not really care; they rarely care about results when what they really want is the ability to claim they "did something", and they avoided making their campaign cash contributors at the telcos mad by making them do something.
Oh for the days of a free market again where the only people paying companies were their customers, the only people getting stuff from companies were their paying customers, the proof that this worked efficiently was something called a "quantity discount", and people who wanted stuff had the motivation to get off their butts and get a job.
I don't disagree too much with your analysis of the cost of laying the fiber.
There are other costs other than the initially laying the fiber, course. There's maintenance. There's transit / backhaul. There's per-customer costs such as customer service and billing. Marketing. Administration (a building full of employees isn't free), etc.
At very roughly $50-$70/month recurring costs, plus $70 ish for amortizing laying the fiber, total monthly costs might be around $150/month in a lot of areas. Plus as you said, neither you nor is going to put our retirement savings into a fiber project merely hoping to maybe get our money back 20 years later - gotta have a little profit to do that instead of doing some other thing.
You can actually call the nearest ISPs and if you get the right person on the line they'll give you a price, $10,000 or whatever it is. There are also OTHER companies who will just put in the line between you and the ISP - I've received price quotes from them. The ISPs don't like trying to manage wildly different prices for each individual customer. That would be a monthly recurring cost to them to just manage having different pricing for each customer, so they like to have the cost of one-off line extensions paid when they incur the cost. That doesn't mean you have to pay at all once, though. If you want to finance it over 20 years, there are companies that specialize in financing - banks. The bank gives you the $10,000, which you use to pay for the fiber. You then pay the bank back $70/month.
Who is preventing competition from entering the markets?
It's not the big players directly. It's the big players bribing government and begging for regulation. Regulation is something the big players can bear, but is much of a burden for little guys.
Begging for MORE government makes you a useful idiot.
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Who is preventing competition from entering the markets?
It's not the big players directly. It's the big players bribing government and begging for regulation.
It's both, obviously. Big players' ability to manipulate markets is why we have laws against anticompetitive behavior. Too bad we don't enforce them.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
So:
You've just admitted laws don't work.
Your solution?
Another law.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
Been living in my house for over 4 years now, AT&T refuses to admit that what they are giving me (3Mbps down/1Mbps up for $55/month) is not broadband. Spectrum says AT&T will help so they refuse to talk. I do live in a "rural" area, but I have a friend less than a mile away getting 60Mbps from Spectrum for $35/month, the big Telco are too big, it would sure be nice to have more than a single option for wired internet... some small ISP's competing would do wonders... even if just two of the big ones were competing things would improve...
timeo Danaos, et dona ferentis