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Communications United States

White House Touts Broadband Part of New Infrastructure Deal (nbcnews.com) 59

Posted by msmash from the moving-forward dept.
The White House announced Wednesday that its "once-in-a-generation investment in our infrastructure" would include a part dedicated to improving Americans' access to the internet. From a report: Later, the Senate passed a critical test vote by 67-32, suggesting possible passage of the entire infrastructure bill in the coming days. "This bipartisan deal is the most important investment in public transit in American history and the most important investment in rail since the creation of Amtrak 50 years ago," President Joe Biden said in a statement Wednesday afternoon. "It will deliver high speed internet to every American."

Neither precise details of the broadband section nor the text of the whole bill has been released yet. The White House said in a related statement that a $65 billion investment for broadband, out of $550 billion in new spending, would ensure that "every American has access to reliable high-speed internet," comparing it to the electrification of the country a century ago. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration, part of the Commerce Department, published a comprehensive interactive online map last month. The document shows how poorer, more rural and tribal areas generally don't have affordable broadband access.
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White House Touts Broadband Part of New Infrastructure Deal More

White House Touts Broadband Part of New Infrastructure Deal

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  • How are they expected to bilk customers out of their money if there's some kind of public national broadband network? They can't tell people they offer service when they don't, they can't lobby state governments to give them a monopoly so customers have no other options except maybe one that costs even more for less service, they can't tack on random fees to bills, they can't slowly ratchet up the price on bills every month even though the deal was $X for 12-months and it's only been 6-months, and they can'

    • Why do you think it is going to be a single public national broadband network?
      Your ATT, Verizon, Comcast, Spectrum... will say we want a piece of that sweet government money. And will just expand its networks, charge customers for service, and offer those charity rates for a few that really need it, while giving them just the government minimum, while stating for an extra $30 a month you can go up to a faster speed.

      Our power grid, is owned by a lot of company. Often when our roads are being built, you wi

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by EvilSS ( 557649 )
      Oh they are not going to fund a national broadband network. This is basically going to pay billions to the incumbent carriers to, well, if we are being honest and going off past efforts, we'll be paying them to pocket the money and not do jack shit for it.

      • Yep. I've lost count of how many times this has happened since they broke up Ma Bell. This kind of dishonest BS is the reason why I am now convinced that a European approach to public services is the way to go.

      • Well the 2022 elections are coming up, and these parasites need to fund raise so this is well timed. What better way to do that than promise lucrative contracts in exchange for generous 'donations' to the super PACS?

        Dems and Reps are corporations too.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      Well, it is all a con, to loot the treasury. All the money will go out but nothing much will happen. They will spend some of if on desperately needed maintenance and take the bulk of it as profit.

      RINSE AND REPEAT

      So the government, will go to the banksters and borrow a billion dollars, which they will then GIVE to a infrastructure corporation the banksters own, to basically the government borrows the money from the bank and then gives it back to the bank and then still owes that money to the bank and has to

    • Clearly, it has to do with being screwed by the Chinese Small Dong. (Just to preempt the inevitable troll.) /s

  • monopolies = bad (Score:4, Insightful)

    by MrLogic17 ( 233498 ) on Thursday July 29, 2021 @11:59AM (#61634739) Journal

    It had better include provisions to break service monopolies.
    A disturbing percentage of the country has only 1 high-speed provider, and when municipal competition comes along, they get shut down.

    Rural is rapidly fixing itself, with a combination of cell data plan advancements, and StarLink.

    • And in some places here in Texas, the rural - and not so rural - power cooperatives are running gigabit fiber on the power poles, and selling it at remarkably good prices. Because the biggest obstacle in last-mile broadband is getting access to string cables or fibers. And the power companies own the poles.

    • Monopolies are bad but net neutrality is also bad... doesn't make any sense to me either. It is borderline illegal for a corporation to argue FOR complete nationalization of it's infrastructure, constitution and all. But the drafters of "We the people..." assumed that the said "people" would be wise enough to see that a nation IS it's infrastructure while private ownership is not. Private ownership is the promise of infrastructure. So say, 200 million day traders will never work no matter how "sexy" the te

  • It should be. (Score:3)

    by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Thursday July 29, 2021 @11:59AM (#61634741)

    Being that internet access is needed for modern participation in today culture. It really should have as much attention as our road ways, water supply, power grid, telephone and TV.

    Commercial companies normally don't have issues leaving people out of their service range, especially if they can make more money by just focusing on a concentrated area. If you live in a rural area and still have broadband, you may want to thank your local government who demanded that they cover you in order for them to service the town center.

  • Ignore the man behind the curtain (Score:4, Insightful)

    by WoodstockJeff ( 568111 ) on Thursday July 29, 2021 @12:20PM (#61634845) Homepage

    This is typical of most legislation. It has thousands of small bits that appeal to niche groups that will then ignore the parts that hurt them. Slashdot people obviously see the "spread broadband further", and ignore pretty much everything else the bill does.

    They were hoping to get more through, but this is what they could manage without losing support.

  • Prove It, Please (Score:3)

    by ytene ( 4376651 ) on Thursday July 29, 2021 @12:33PM (#61634903)
    Dear White House,

    It isn't that I think you're lying. In fact, you might very well believe every word of your statement. Unfortunately, however, we've learned from bitter experience that not all claims made by government - especially where broadband is concerned - can be trusted.

    Fortunately, you came to the right place! Here at slashdot, we pride ourselves on offering [sometimes] practical suggestions for exactly this sort of challenge. And, you guessed it, we have some suggestions for you.

    It's so simple. It's great that you managed to secure $65 billion in new spending for broadband. Let us help suggest how you can keep track of it. Just a few real simple things.

    First, set up a web site with a real-time track of how much money, to the cent, you give each and every contractor tasked with installing broadband services. You could probably show us a "top ten" of those receiving the largest sums of money.

    Second, make it a requirement that in return for the funding, each company receiving funds must provide you with details showing exactly how many connections they make with the money. But more than just connections, there's some other things they need to tell us:-

    1. Total number of new connections. Obviously you'll need to hire auditors to confirm that their claims are accurate - and impose jail terms for directors of companies that make fraudulent claims. That's a given, right? Good. And the companies will need to be able to show that these are "additional" connections, over and above their existing roll-out plans. And you'll have to be able to validate that by looking at Zip Codes for these funded connections, just to ensure that they aren't spending public money rolling out connections to urban areas, right?

    2. Basic Line Performance details. For each new connection made with this funding, we'd need to see actual trace test results that show the basic line speed achieved for these new circuits. Again, we'd expect this to be auditable and we'd expect you to conduct some random, sampled testing, just to make sure that nobody is making exaggerated claims. Same jail time terms as above, of course.

    3. Line Performance by Distance details. We do understand that we won't see the same line speed results for residences way out in the countryside compared with those in urban areas, but we do expect to see broad consistency if we compare line speeds based on the distances between endpoint and exchange. So they need to give that data, too. Good news is - it's *easy*. As part of their circuit testing, they just need to run TDR [wikipedia.org] or OTDR [wikipedia.org] tests with calibrated test equipment and certify the results. Simples.

    4. Network Neutrality Commitment... Sorry, almost forgot to mention. It's just this tiny little thing. We need you to make the allocation of funds to any service provider absolutely and totally conditional, on the perpetual commitment that no service ever provided over the connections you fund will EVER be subject to any form of bandwidth management or network throttling. Yes, you guessed it! More jail time for management at companies that forget that little requirement.

    Thanks, Gov.

    • ... but who will do the audits if you are unable to hire auditors?

    • You forgot:

      5. Penalties and clawback for missing stated project deadlines and capacities. If a telco takes money for doing something, they better damn well do that thing and deliver what they say they will for the money. If they don't, the IRS will be taking that money back in the form of tax penalties. This won't become another excise tax where they get to pocket money forever without actually delivering on what that tax is meant to fund.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by tsqr ( 808554 )

        You don't need to do that; just structure the payments based on milestone achievement instead of passing out lump sums and trying to enforce clawbacks. It's simple, and it's called "progress payments". It's a common approach to ensure contract performance.

        • Oh, I want the money back even if it's milestones. Fuck them, they already got a $100B free ride in the 1996 Telecommunications Act.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by tsqr ( 808554 )

            Okay, then why talk about clawbacks? Just don't give out any money, regardless of performance.

  • I wonder how many billions of dollars will be given to the telco companies (again) for "rural internet" expansions that never really happen.

    Considering that you can get a Starlink account for $100 a month that gives you broadband speeds almost anywhere in the country, this money would have been better spent elsewhere.

    • I can think of $65 billion reason telcos are in favor of this.

      This couldn't be a more transparent give away to big business. If you have an underserved community as far as broadband, the money should be given as grants for community co-ops to provide services. The large telcos have proven their inability to serve those areas, the solution is not to throw good money after bad at them.

      If you live in BFE too far away to make cable/fiber feasible...well that's part of living in BFE. Hope that Starlink comes

  • I'm pretty sure we have already paid for broadband to be rolled out to the middle of no where at least once, if not twice already. Both times the ISPs pocketed the money and here we are, still not having broadband for large swaths of the country despite paying for it already.

    Sorry if some of us are not so eager to throw more money at the same companies that have already failed to delivery and faced no repercussions for doing so.

    • It's fundraising season for the 2022 elections already.

      While big crocodile tears are being shed during the Jan 6th commission, our democracy is still being dictated by corporate cash infusions into PACS.
      What could be better cover for a lucrative kickback scheme, than an infrastructure bill that includes a buzzword like "broadband"?

      Of course then there is nice little gems like "State Digital Equity Grant Program" tucked into the bill, so they can just hand out pallets of cash to their pet minority groups tha

  • We've been down this road before, with billions of dollars collected in the form of an "excise tax" through the Telecommunications Act of 1996 for ubiquitous broadband access that still hasn't been delivered on 25 years later. And that excise tax is still being collected.

    Put a contractual time horizon on that shit before giving the telcos a single fucking dime, and make sure there's an ironclad clawback clause to take the money back via the IRS if they don't deliver.

    Fucking telcos.

  • How much of a difference have govt. subsidies to the telcos had on how many more people they provide broadband internet to so far? What makes anyone believe it'll be any different this time around?

    Unless he's actually talking about municipal & state broadband services. Internet as a public utility perhaps?

  • Roads, Dams, Bridges, etc should be TOP priority.

    • I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume you already have broadband access? If you were still using dial-up because that's your only option, you might think differently.

  • The best way to improve broadband is to get rid of all the laws, rules and exclusive deals that artificially constrain competition.
    In the places where new players have emerged (regardless of whether they are municipalities, power companies, co-ops, commercial entities like Google or otherwise) and you have genuine competition, the outcome for consumers improves (better prices, better speeds etc)

  • Comparing a rural broadband plan to Amtrak is a really boneheading marketing decision. It would be better to compare it to the Apollo project hoping that it will spawn a lot of ancillary developments and eventually lead to privatization a la SpaceX. Of course, there's pretty much zero reason to spend money on terrestrial broadband given that Starlink is pretty good.

  • Ouch! I mean, talk about NOT a ringing endorsement.

    AmTrak has NEVER broke even on its operating costs during any of its 50 years of operation.

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