FCC chairman Brendan Carr starts granting telecom lobby’s wish list
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That could work, but an even better model is co-op, which is the way a lot of the rural US got electricity and telephone service.
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You can thank Ronnie "where am I, what is I" Reagan. Breaking up the Bell system was brilliant. Almost as brilliant as his cozying up with Paul Weyrich and Jerry Falwell. Or bringing in his buddy Greenspan.
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Your last is the big problem. Depending on the exact county, rural counties are still between 20-40% liberals who almost certainly didn’t vote for this crap.
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Sorry, rural UK is not the same as rural US or Australia. Order(s) of magnitude distance difference.
The rest of your post is spot on.
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Republicans simultaneously want bread and circuses to control the masses AND to suck huge profits from network access and streaming services.
The irony would be amusing if it wasn't so damaging.
The irony would be amusing if it wasn't so damaging.
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Or just do what pretty much every other country does: mandate access agreements to infrastructure, and regulate that.
As I've said, I'm in rural UK, and there's only a single company who provides the physical fibre running to my house. But that doesn't mean I have to buy my Internet from that company; I've got a choice between multiple providers (as in, more than twenty) - many of whom are cheaper than if I went with the broadband operation of the company that owns the fibre.
It's not just "this isn't a hard problem". It's a problem that has been solved in multiple countries the world over. It's a problem that's soved for energy companies in at least some states in the US, where you can change energy providers without needing to install new power lines.
It's possible for a company to have a monopoly on the infrastructure and still have a competitive consumer market. You just need regulators who regulate their industries, not capitulate to them.
I would disagree, given that the news article is mainly talking about rural areas which are already served by copper networks. If you can serve it by copper, you can serve it by fibre.
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You're being generous in thinking that those areas will still have schools and hospitals. Similar to internet access, BigHealthCo isn't going to be interested in operating rural healthcare at a tremendous loss. In the future, those rural folks are probably looking at a long drive to a town to get to the nearest facility.
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I guess I'll take the side of evil on this one. I think there's a really good argument that wireless is probably the better method of reaching some of these places. Is it really worth investing in a fiber network when most residents of remote areas are probably just going to opt for Starlink anyway? Living in rural areas has its advantages, but it also has its downsides, one of which is that the communications infrastructure isn't as robust. I think most people living in rural areas know and understand this tradeoff. Forcing telcos to lose money on a legacy network that provides a subpar service no one really wants doesn't improve the situation. As an avid outdoorsy person, I've observed that we desperately need to upgrade terrestrial wireless connectivity. Keeping the copper lines doesn't solve much of anything. It'll be up to folks in rural areas to make their voices heard and ensure that their reps follow up with solutions to improve wireless connectivity and reliability.
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I might be mistaken, but maybe this isn't as bad as it seems. I suspect that many of the customers this would affect would have the option of getting phone/internet/etc. through their cable company.
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Without offering a pass here to US telcos, because they are indeed shitty.
The UK has a 5th of the US population while being 40 times smaller. So I would expect nothing less than the whole country being wired up with fiber while being cheaper.
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As a leftist living in a deep red state, this attitude is not productive, imo. Please don't tell me I can just move.
I get it, we're all mad at Republicans right now, but I think we should be forward-thinking when possible. Rural areas getting cut off from the internet (information) and further pushed into their Fox News/AM radio silos certainly won't help the situation in the US.
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Pretty sure there's no helping the US anymore. This isn't sand in a hourglass. This is an avalanche. It's going to have to completely collapse before anything can be rebuilt. Hopefully into something better. But there's no guarantee that reasonable people will be the ones doing the rebuilding. Because both parts of the fascist coalition in charge of the US government now also want to tear it all down. They just don't want to build the same kind of nightmare shithole country afterward, but by the time that incompatibility comes to a head, the US will already be ruins.
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The fact that rural areas are so underserved for internet is a direct consequence of rural areas voting for Republicans. There's only so much the external world can do, if they keep putting up roadblocks to their own progress, that's a them problem. We know how to solve this problem, rural voters won't let us.
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Ajit Pai still has the more punchable face, but I'm willing to learn for Brendan Carr.
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Just wait until you have a monthly cap of 20 GB with a $1/GB overage charge.
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Netflix will add a premium 360p streaming bundle for just $7.99/month.
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You know what's funny though -- that's already been happening.
I'm going to get the terms all wrong here because I'm not a networking nerd, but Centurylink has a TO or something about 1 mile from my house (half that as the crow flies). They run fiber there, and then DSL from there to the houses in my semi-rural area (semi- because I'm about 5 miles from a suburb with 5 massive Intel sites, Microsoft, Nvidia, etc..).
There has always been insufficient capacity -- during WFH intel folks near me were literally doing engineering work over 3G hotspots because all the ports were full at the Centurylink TO. Centurylink didn't GAF. Every so often a port would fail, and Centurylink would terminate that user's service. I talked to a technician who was out at my house (my service has been horribly spotty, up and down frequently) and he said there was a corporate decision not to invest in this area because density is too low (most lot are 5-10 acres) to warrant putting any money in. So they're milking the equipment that is there as long as possible. It's fully allocated and when it fails, it fails.
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I actually do have Starlink on my roof as well. Every 6 months or so I activate it and the performance has been getting better, presumably as both the satellite density has improved and the dish's targeting capabilities have gotten better. When I first bought it (~3 years ago) I put a couple thousand dollars into trying to get a good solution, and ultimately gave up after a lot of time and effort. Realistically my best option is to hire a tree guy to top a tree and mount it up there, then deal with trying to get power and data about 300 feet away. At which point I just decided 9/768 can handle zoom, so I'll deal with it.
On my roof it's not at the point where it's reliable. I get 2-3 second dropouts every couple minutes which is OK for streaming but not for work. Fingers crossed that it continues to improve faster than my trees get taller.
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Maybe not as much. Surely a fraction of what needed to be pumped into DC lobbying can be used across many states. More would have to be spent in blue states than red for sure, considering the red's don't seemingly care for their constituents as it is. Just give them more to spend in the blue's pushing their agenda. Everyone has their price, now the telecoms will have the extra where they need it and a federal agency backing them in cases where the money is just not enough.
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Unfortunately, most people will probably not draw the connection from who was elected to relatively obscure changes at government agencies that they're barely (if at all) aware of to the real impact on their lives. Especially for something like this where it likely won't show up for months to years.
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They really, really don't care as long as they think the people they hate are being hurt more than they are.
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They were fine with the 'Die for your economy' push from Trump after all. Treated it like a badge of honor, in fact.
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FCC Chairman: "Give us all the wireless!"
Secretary of HHS: "Wireless causes cancer!"
Let them settle it in a Celebrity Deathmatch.
Secretary of HHS: "Wireless causes cancer!"
Let them settle it in a Celebrity Deathmatch.
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They're not incompatible. The plebs will get the wireless, the wireless will 'cause' cancer (note: it won't be the wireless causing it, but they'll get lots of cancer), and they'll tell their constituents, who will believe whatever they're told without question, that it's all the fault of those damn dirty Libs and Dems.
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Every country with faster, cheaper internet -- which is most developed countries -- have more regulation surrounding internet delivery.
Yet another lie from the MAGAts.
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Effective lobbying at the Federal level seems to be (depressingly) cheap in any event. Even if it doesn't scale exactly the added complexity will hopefully make things pricey.
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sydbarrett74
Smack-Fu Master, in training
It might be more accurate to say that most Americans want liberal treatment for themselves and conservative treatment for everyone else.
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