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Communications The Internet United States

FCC Awarding Up To $16 Billion To Address US Areas Lacking Broadband Service (reuters.com) 68

Posted by msmash from the shape-of-things-to-come dept.
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission voted on Tuesday to adopt auction procedures to provide up to $16 billion to areas that lack broadband service, including nearly 6 million unserved rural homes and businesses. From a report: The FCC voted to commence the auction on Oct. 29. Auction applicants will be required to offer voice and broadband services in unserved locations in exchange for receiving monthly payments over 10 years. The three FCC Republican commissioners approved the proposal, while the two Democrats dissented in part. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, a Republican, said Americans without access to high-speed internet "deserve access as soon as possible. They cannot afford to wait ... while we work to develop new, more granular broadband coverage maps" that will be used to award a subsequent $4 billion.
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FCC Awarding Up To $16 Billion To Address US Areas Lacking Broadband Service More

FCC Awarding Up To $16 Billion To Address US Areas Lacking Broadband Service

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  • Well... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by garyisabusyguy ( 732330 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2020 @04:02PM (#60165492)

    that should pay for the next few phases of Starlink

    • That was the first thing that came to my mind

    • Not just the next few phases. It would help to rapidly speed up the deployment of Starlink, increase the size of the proposed constellation, and still leave several billion for SpaceX to pump into Starship.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by jon3k ( 691256 )
      As usual Ajit Pai is doing everything he can [arstechnica.com] to protect the cable monopolies.
      • Of course he is, that's why he's in the job.

        To be fair, this is not the first time vast amoiunts of taxpayer money has been thrown at internet infrastructure and I doubt it will be the last.

    • Of course the FCC is doing this because Starlink will kill any existing out-of-town services.
      So Comcast/Verizon/etc are freaking out and need a bailout because of the new disruptive service.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Maybe wait until they demonstrate it working with a decent number of subscribers in one area though. Musk's claims tend to be... "optimistic", shall we say.

  • Eligibility (Score:5, Funny)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2020 @04:07PM (#60165510)

    It's only available to people who don't have access to the internet and you have to sign up for it online.

    • It's only available to people who don't have access to the internet and you have to sign up for it online.

      Rural areas probably still have working POTS lines, so they have at least 19k dial-up access for signing up ... :-)

      • Actually, many rural areas do NOT have working POTS lines, as the carriers haven't been maintaining them, in favor of everyone just going wireless.

        We cancelled ours a couple years ago because it was unusable. Notable 60-cycle hum all the time. We'd complain. It would disappear for a couple days. Then it would be back. And then they tried to give us a bunch of grief when we cancelled.

        Out here, it's HughesNet, Verizon or ... nothing. AT&T has no interest in maintaining their wired infrastructure

        • Actually, many rural areas do NOT have working POTS lines, as the carriers haven't been maintaining them, in favor of everyone just going wireless.

          We cancelled ours a couple years ago because it was unusable. Notable 60-cycle hum all the time. We'd complain. It would disappear for a couple days. Then it would be back.

          Ya, I get you. I live in Virginia Beach and had a POTS line w/Verizon until a few years ago, then started having the same problem you described. Eventually, they said the only remedy they could (meaning would) offer was to upgrade to FiOS. I already had my TV and Internet with Cox, so simply switched my phone to them as well -- also the Cox and Verizon drops are on opposite sides of the house and my cable/network connections were on the Cox side, so updating the wiring for Verizon would have been a minor

    • Typical US government work. Literally building a Catch-22 into their system.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bjwest ( 14070 )

      It's only available to people who don't have access to the internet and you have to sign up for it online.

      You can use a wireless service, nothing says you have to use giga-fast internet to sign up.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2020 @04:17PM (#60165552)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Accountability? (Score:5, Informative)

      by smooth wombat ( 796938 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2020 @04:44PM (#60165708) Journal
      Thank you. During the Clinton administration, providers were given billions to roll out broadband. I think they had promised 50/50. Yes, 50 up AND down. That was their promise. In exchange all they asked for was the taxpayers to foot the bill. We see how well that worked out.

      Then of course there is the $400 billion (and counting) we've been taxed [infoworld.com] on our current services.

      Neither of these include all the other billions handed over to ISPs for the same purpose, money which has never been spent on its intended purpose.

      This is just another socialist policy to subsidize private industry at the expense of the taxpayers. Nothing will come of it other than to enrich the 1% while this country continues to be in the backwaters of broadband connectivity in the industrialized world.

      • You will find that during the GW Bush administration the providers of the POTS lines got an exception for any build out of new fiber infrastructure.

        This was supposed to encourage businesses to build new high speed networks, but it also allowed them to lock out other carriers (unlike the old POTS lines)

        • This is nothing more than a govt handout to Verizon/Comcast and the rest of their filth ilk. The govt needs to repeal the laws that give these monsters their monopoly status.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by cusco ( 717999 )

            Those laws are long gone, what's in place now is the inertia of installed infrastructure. Cable plant buildouts are massively expensive and take a long time to pay off. They had their granted monopolies, generally for 20 years, to subsidize the buildout of the original infrastructure. Now all the phone/cable/internet services are complete (at least in areas where it made financial sense to do so), and any new competitor would have to start from scratch to build out their own cable plant. Making it even

            • Actually there are all sorts of laws on the books that prevent municipal communications infrastructure and limit competition. Sure the MaBell monopoly was broken up, but what has sprung up in its place is a de facto monopoly that privatizes the profits from the public right of way. Strict equal access should be the guiding principle for the FCC and telecom policy.
      • Ours is a rural "fiber to the node" provider and $100 a month gets you basic cable and 12/2. A co-worker who lives about an hour away pays $100 a month and gets more stations and 500 down.

      • Re:Accountability? (Score:5, Informative)

        by rea1l1 ( 903073 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2020 @07:51PM (#60166180) Journal

        This is just another socialist policy to subsidize private industry at the expense of the taxpayers. Nothing will come of it other than to enrich the 1% while this country continues to be in the backwaters of broadband connectivity in the industrialized world.

        There is nothing "socialist" about this. I can only imagine this word is so commonly misused due to the cold war propaganda. Perhaps the word you are looking for is "cronyist" or "captured" or "corrupt"? There is nothing in there that relates to being anti-capitalist or the workers owning the means of production.

    • Sounds like another big giveaway of tax payer money.

      I'm not even sure we need to do this either. I have a relative that recently moved out to the sticks. He can get broadband internet, but it's expensive and not all that fast compared to what you'd get in most cities. He just got an unlimited* (not actually unlimited) data plan for his phone since the service is good enough there that he can get decent speeds.

      Maybe that's not true for every part of the country, but it sounds like there're already work

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Tailhook ( 98486 )

      only for the providers to not bother

      They did in fact bother. The providers with competent lawyers made sure they wired a couple residences in enough new census blocks to fill out the map and hit the FCC threshold. The rest of the providers filed lies and hoped the the FCC couldn't sue them all.

    • My guess is this is free money to do whatever the hell they want without oversight based on the way this administration likes to keep grabbing tax dollars and throwing them at businesses and wall street. In all honesty, I have SERIOUS doubts there's any provisions written in that demand any sort of proof that the money will be put to good use. I suspect some righteous bonus checks for some upper management types will be rolling out over this one.

  • Hmm... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09, 2020 @04:27PM (#60165600)

    By my calculations that's ~$2,500 per rural household/business, which will once again mostly be coming from taxpayers in blue states and counties and going to red states and counties. Who will doubtless be proud of their bootstrap-pulling abilities.

    I'm in favor of expanding access to rural areas, but the irony of it also doesn't escape me.

    • Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Diss Champ ( 934796 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2020 @04:47PM (#60165732)

      Don't worry, no actual new broadband will be build in those red states and counties. The companies will once pocket the money and limit buildout to profitable areas anyway.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by slazzy ( 864185 )
      Plus they'll mostly use it to boast on Facebook about how great their Red areas are.

    • It's about industrial policy picking "winners and losers". Where are the "free marketers" when the government is deciding that folks in rural areas need high speed intenet. Shouldn't the free market allocate the resources? Oh wait a minute when the government subsidizes green energy, that's socialism, but when the government hands out money for rural internet that "being fair ".

      On the other hand, the rural electrification program and universal telephone access demonstrates that the social policies like this

    • From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs. You should be proud to give to those who have less. You only have more because you're exploiters anyway. Power to the people!
    • It's actually the red voters in blue states who provide most of the tax receipts, not the blue voters. So there's no real problem here (if you insist on turning this into a red vs blue debate).

      What's tripping you up is something called Simpson's Paradox [wikipedia.org] - where if you create a subdivision in your stats, the trend in those subdivisions can be counter to the overall trend. Republicans on average make more money, and our income tax is progressive so higher income owners pay more taxes, so they end up payin

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cusco ( 717999 )

        Simplified example? How about utterly retarded example. Your assumption that everyone who is wealthy is a Republican is dead wrong. Let me clue you in, at incomes over $100,000 (where most taxes come from) the largest share of people are Independents, and Republicans and Democrats are generally in a dead heat for 2nd place. At the very pinnacle of US income (Gates, Bezos, Buffet, Myrvold, etc.) the majority are Democrats since they're generally smart enough to recognize the difference between empty rhet

  • Where is the technical problem, I ask. Gutless FCC should require providers to be at least as good as number 3 provider in the world (who is that?) because being number 1 in speed and coverage is just to hard for US companies. It's something about profit. I would favor nationalizing internet service but the orange one woudl never sit for that,.

  • LEO satellite providers like Starlink may make more rural terrestrial build-out obsolete before any of these providers actually provide any service. I don't think they can serve a dense city, but should have good rural coverage.

    I wonder if this auction was open to them... perhaps not since they aren't live yet.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cusco ( 717999 )

      I think that's why this auction is being offered now rather than in a couple of years when there will be actual satellite-based competition, the entrenched providers instructed their pet "regulators" to send them one last pile of free money.

  • Give it to Starlink (SpaceX) (Score:5, Informative)

    by Kirgin ( 983046 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2020 @04:32PM (#60165628)
    Solved your problem FCC. Give the money to SpaceX and fuck telcos and cable companies completely and totally from now until the end of time. They got hundreds of billions for rural broadband and just pocketed it. Problem is the FCC is run by a Telco shill.

  • Because this worked so well the last time they tried it...

  • States have been asking the Feds to help for years (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Proudrooster ( 580120 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2020 @04:34PM (#60165648) Homepage

    States have been asking the federal government to make this investment for years, but according to Ajit@FCC (formerly of Verizon), AT&T, Charter and the rest of the broadband was nearly everywhere, while lobbying for locals to NOT build their own.

    All it takes is a pandemic see the waste. We spent BILLIONS to build out rural broadband and have very little to show for it.

    Instead of holding their feet to the fire asking how they spent the money, Ajit is just going to give them more money! Brilliant!

    Ajit represents the worst of American government and oversight.

  • to pad their bottom line.

    FTFY.

    Until we make broadband a public utility and regulate it as such this is all just pissing in the wind. We never did get that fiber Verizon promised, and they kept the money.

  • Public utility (Score:3)

    by DogDude ( 805747 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2020 @04:36PM (#60165664)
    When is the US government going to make Internet access a public utility? We're wasting a ton of money on private companies to provide rotten Internet service. It's absurd that it's still a for-profit business like health care. It's something that everybody needs to function in a modern society. Propping up monopolies is not working.
    • Phone service is a public utility, look how well that is run. Robocalls, spam, spoofed numbers. Since they are for-profit utility companies, as long as they make money they don't care. And newsflash, most of that internet public utility is run by those same phone companies.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by DogDude ( 805747 )
        Well, my land lines work almost all of the time, and cost the same as they did 30 years ago, no matter where I live. My land line is regulated by the FCC. My VOIP lines aren't.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by rea1l1 ( 903073 )

      Right when our legislators ban ISPs from spending some of that money on lobbying.

  • The big companies will get the money and will build out a single miles worth of new service.

  • Every time the FCC hands out money for communications providers to upgrade rural service they dump it into improving their wireless service in metro areas and handing out bonuses to execs for securing the funding.

    This is the song that never ends, it goes on and on my friends....

  • We're getting full, global satellite internet coverage and below-Comcast prices within less than a year. Why piss away so much taxpayer money on something that won't be needed?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Terwin ( 412356 )

      We're getting full, global satellite internet coverage and below-Comcast prices within less than a year. Why piss away so much taxpayer money on something that won't be needed?

      Sounds like they are making an effort to get in under the wire while they can still use this excuse for giving money to the companies that lobby them. If they don't get it done before Starlink becomes globally available, they may not be able to convince their voters that 'it was needed at the time'.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cusco ( 717999 )

      Let me rephrase that for you, from the point of view of the executives in Comcast and Verizon:

      We're getting full, global satellite internet coverage and below-Comcast prices within less than a year. We need to grab any rural provider subsidies that we can before it's too obvious that they're not needed.

  • Nobel prize committees, participation prize events, and monarchs.

  • So, let's see, I already pay inflated prices for broadband, but now I have to pay for other to have it, too?

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