Trump's FCC Chairman Pick Ajit Pai Vows To Close Broadband 'Digital Divide' (arstechnica.com) 292
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On his first full day as Federal Communications Commission Chairman, Republican Ajit Pai yesterday spoke to FCC staff and said one of his top priorities will be bringing broadband to all Americans. "One of the most significant things that I've seen during my time here is that there is a digital divide in this country -- between those who can use cutting-edge communications services and those who do not," Pai said (transcript). "I believe one of our core priorities going forward should be to close that divide -- to do what's necessary to help the private sector build networks, send signals, and distribute information to American consumers, regardless of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or anything else. We must work to bring the benefits of the digital age to all Americans." Pai promised to "hear all points of view -- to approach every issue with a literal open door and a figurative open mind," as the FCC "confronts this and many other challenges." Pai didn't offer any specific initiatives for closing the digital divide yesterday, but in September 2016 he outlined a "digital empowerment agenda." The plan included "remov[ing] regulatory barriers to broadband deployment," changes to pole attachment rules, and "dig once" policies that install broadband conduit when roads are dug up during any road and highway construction project. He also proposed setting aside 10 percent of spectrum auction proceeds for deployment of mobile broadband in rural areas. Pai suggested requiring mobile carriers to build out service to 95 percent of the population in areas where they have spectrum licenses; he noted that some licenses only required service for 66 percent or 75 percent of residents, a problem in sparsely populated rural areas. At the same time, he proposed extending initial spectrum license terms from 10 years to 15 years to give the carriers more time to complete the construction. Pai also proposed creating "gigabit opportunity zones" in areas where average household income is below 75 percent of the national median. In these areas, state and local lawmakers would have to "adopt streamlined, broadband deployment-friendly policies," and there would be tax incentives and tax credits for companies building high-speed networks.
Bring broadband to all Americans... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, we want to bring broadband to all Americans... so my ex-clients can gouge the shit out of them with rent-seeking behavior, unneeded service caps and fees, and charging content providers that aren't directly owned by the ISP access fees after we shitcan Net Neutrality!
Re:Bring broadband to all Americans... (Score:4, Insightful)
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It's still better to have it be available at some price than not available at all. If the infrastructure gets built, future administrations have more ability to reign in the abuses.
Whatever happened keeping free market actually free? Seems the Obama excuses for bigger government are now parroted by Trump except replace government with telcos.
Lets do what Clinton did and give Telcos a bunch of money and hope they have our best interests at heart!
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Only if it isn't required to live a reasonable life. In some places all the government services and information have moved online, and businesses have shut down their shops and call centres. Even in the UK it got to the stage where getting any kind of good deal on utilities required net access.
If you are going to allow virtual monopolies and price gouging, it needs to be something you really can live without.
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Thank you, I needed a good laugh.
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Well, you have Obama to thank for that. "I've got a pen and a phone" was how he phrased that whole "fuck Congress, I can do what I want" thing. Precedent is a wonderful thing, isn't it?
Ultimately, I have no real problem with the notion of making broadband available to everyone. But this (probably) isn't the way to do it.
Note that I use the word "probably".
A counterpoint: Rural Electrification Act. FDR's version of the broadband divide. My grandparents wouldn't have had electricity without it.
In ot
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Which he did only well after Republicans in Congress said "fuck Obama [pbs.org]". And even then Obama's Executive Order count (I presume that's what you're referring to, anyway) is still one of the lowest in the last century [wikipedia.org], by raw or per year.
If you want to talk about people who say "fuck Congress", President Trump has so far signed 12 executive orders, which makes his rate 285.7 per year, the second highest in th
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And on the topic of Obama's Executive Order usage: yes, he used fewer numerically than previous POTUSes, but the way he used it to circumvent Congress was unique. Understandable given that he wanted to do anything at all, certainly, but it still set a precedent. Even with good intentions, he upset the checks and balances between branches in a bad way.
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It's still better to have it be available at some price than not available at all.
LOL. Nice troll.
Something you can't afford is of no use.
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"Rein in". The euphemism is about horses, not kings.
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It's a metaphor, not a euphemism, you map of Tasmania.
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Assuming it goes that far. I'm guessing a huge federal payout to the telecoms, of which not a penny gets spent on rural broadband. To meet their obligations, the telecoms lobby to have the definition of broadband lowered, suddenly millions more have "broadband"...mission accomplished.
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Yes, we want to bring broadband to all Americans... so my ex-clients can gouge the shit out of them with rent-seeking behavior, unneeded service caps and fees, and charging content providers that aren't directly owned by the ISP access fees after we shitcan Net Neutrality!
Not to be all devils advocate but the same thing was said about Tom Wheeler [newyorker.com] when he was picked by Obama to head the FCC. And Wheeler ended up being a strong advocate for Net Neutrality and tried limiting cable and telephone monopolies. Of course the odds are that Ajit Pai will be so deep in the pockets of the cable and telephone companies that it would take a search team three weeks to find his nose, but it is not unheard of that a former lobbyist bites the hand that fed them.
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If net neutrality is violated, then the service provided is not "internet" (*cough* AOL). In which case, tax breaks, subsidies, safe harbor, etc. do not apply.
With one exception (Score:2)
I preferred Obama, who just talked about stuff like this and didn't do anything. That was much better than having greedy evil companies providing services to the less privileged.
Well... Obamacare / Insurance Companies. Just sayin'
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Except that's not what happened. No lives were saved. Nobody is better off.
People are currently forced to buy insurance, or else pay a penalty to the IRS on their taxes. But people can't afford the monthly premiums and even if they somehow come up with enough money to pay the premiums, the deductible is so high that they end up having to pay for everything themselves anyway. Because of the additional burden of paying hundreds of dollars a month for insurance, that they can't use, they are actually worse
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First, I'm not a "leftie" so suck it. You know nothing about me. I didn't vote for Hillary, and insinuating that you have to be all-in for one candidate or another is asinine.
Second, when in history have telecommunications providers not abused their monopoly positions? When have these organizations not taken every single resource afforded to them and done the bare minimum with them? What about the $300B and counting that was charged as excise taxes under the Telecommunications Act of 1996, handed direct
Great, but... (Score:2)
I'm all in favor of this, since I think expanding access will help lots of people in poorly connected communities. What concerns me, though, is that Mr Pai is an opponent of Net Neutrality, the abolition of which would harm many people across the whole country.
Read between lines (Score:3)
If you're going to deregulate, go all in (Score:5, Insightful)
If Pai is truly a believer in free market and competition, then don't stop at just knocking down net neutrality. Remove the regional monopolies that restrict where existing ISP's can and cannot do business. Remove roadblocks to cities building municipal fiber, since this only creates more competition so long as they're on a level playing field with private ISP's. Lift restrictions on last mile unbundling so that more companies can enter the market and offer competing services.
The fact is net neutrality was such a necessity only because there are few players in the market and limited choice for consumers. Who cares if ISP's can create fast lanes and throttle non-partnered content if I have a list of 20 ISP's with broadband speeds to choose from, since there will always be those whose model is to offer a more open package, even if it is at a higher price. The ISP's are crying about regulation, but only when it's regulations on what they can do. Once you talk about remove regulations on what their competitors can do, suddenly these restrictions need to be upheld. Because if you gave the average Comcast customer the option to choose another ISP with better customer service, no data caps, and more transparent billing practices they'd take it in a heartbeat, even if meant an increase in monthly price.
If Pai truly walks his talk and heavily deregulates the industry by removing barriers to entry and regional monopolies in addition to net neutrality, he'll be a far better FCC Commissioner than Wheeler ever was. If however he's yet another industry talking head who's only interested in removing consumer protections while still leaving in place industry friendly regulation, then nothing good will come from his chairmanship.
Massive Giveaway to Telecoms (Score:5, Insightful)
...and there would be tax incentives and tax credits for companies building high-speed networks.
Translation: "Let's give billions more taxpayer dollars to the worthless telecoms/cable companies."
Re:Massive Giveaway to Telecoms (Score:5, Informative)
...and there would be tax incentives and tax credits for companies building high-speed networks.
Translation: "Let's give billions more taxpayer dollars to the worthless telecoms/cable companies."
That was my initial reaction, too. This will probably turn into federal subsidies for telecom companies without any kind of requirement that the telecom companies actually do what the subsidies were supposed to pay for.
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In other words, get rid of those pesky regulations (Score:2)
So the big boys will be able to lock out competition and do whatever they want. Sweet.
I like seeing good news on Slashdot. (Score:2)
Oooookay? (Score:2)
Isn't that what FCC has been *trying* to do, but has been blocked at every possible avenue, if not by corporations, then by congress, who have stated that FCC is exceeding it's authority?
And hasn't Trump stated that he is uncategorically nixing Net Neutrality?
Based on all the other actions that have occurred in just the last few days, I have serious doubts that what the US consumer gets will be in their best interests.
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Isn't that what FCC has been *trying* to do, but has been blocked at every possible avenue, if not by corporations, then by congress, who have stated that FCC is exceeding it's authority?
Yeah, kinda like how Obama wanted to give us universal health insurance, but the Republicans in Congress wouldn't let him because it was "too Socalist", and the compromise was forcing everyone to become customers of for-profit insurance companies. But now Trump is in office and he's going to give health insurance for all [bbc.com].. And he can't do it by amending the ACA, because then the Republican's can't talk about how they repealed that miserable failure Obamacare and gave us this new insurance for everyone (that
change internet connectivity to a utility (Score:3)
Information Superhighway (Score:3)
The good news is that everyone will have access to broadband. The bad news is that the only content will be a single Twitter account.
I don't buy it (Score:2)
The problem here is that the federal government just doesn't have much control over many of these regulation, as they are mostly down to state and local regulations. At the federal level, then, implementing these policies as Pai describes isn't just about removing regulations: it's about increased regulations of the states, something that Republicans have been historically against, and which may open the way for court challenges.
I also worry that he explicitly mentions private industry, but doesn't appear
Translated: (Score:3)
Translation: "We will be giving out another run of YUUUUGE chunks of money to telcos to roll out rural broadband, which they again will choose not to do. We will never demand our billions of dollars back for the service they contracted to do but refused to provide. Just like last time"
Trump drag's GOP into the future (Score:2)
Race, gender, religion, sexual orientation? (Score:3)
Odd wording. Broadband is not denied to people on those grounds, it's because they reside in an area where the infrastructure just isn't in place yet (generally for financial, ROI reasons - poor neighborhoods are poor). This reads like I've had broadband but my next door neighbor was denied it because she's a woman; or Brazilian, or gay, or Buddhist, or some combination thereof.
Still better (Score:4, Informative)
So, it will be available in more areas, at greater costs and in more limited uses.
First, I reject the assumption it will cost a lot more.
Secondly, so what if it does cost more? Is it still not better to have the AVAILABILITY of real high speed internet be much more widespread? My mother lives in a rural area, and on average from her DSL line she was getting 128kb/s. No I am not joking. Do you know how much of the modern internet is really usable at those speeds? Not much, and Netflix was a pretty low quality affair.
Recently T-Mobile expanded cell service enough in the area that I was able to get her a wireless hotspot. Now she has about 8MB/s down, and everything is useable... she has more of a cap than before but then again she probably couldn't have downloaded even a GB in the course of a month before had she tried.
Making something available is a huge boon. Even if it is expensive that simply means you can subsidize the payments for those that could not afford it otherwise - either the government or private groups. But there's no reason to believe once something is available and widely used that prices will not come down.
Re:Still better (Score:4, Informative)
This is just more bullshit doublespeak.
This is the same guy who just a few days ago said eliminating regulations like net neutrality will result in more jobs, more innovation and a free pony for everyone.
It's the same bullshit that has been coming out of Republicans for the last 30 years. Allowing companies unlimited price gouging is good for consumers. Eliminating jobs creates jobs. Cutting wages increases wages.
Re:How is that wrong? (Score:5, Insightful)
If he also scraps the regulations that forbid communities from running their own co-op ISP I'll believe it.
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He doesn't have the POWER to "scrap" those "regulations", because they are laws enacted by individual states restricting those states' own municipalities.
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He doesn't have the POWER to "scrap" those "regulations", because they are laws enacted by individual states restricting those states' own municipalities.
State's rights don't matter in alternate USA.
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Besides the commerce clause that seems to give the federal government reason to do anything, there is also a clause relating to postal roads, which would be easy to stretch into meaning communication or email considering some of the other ways the courts have interpreted the Constitution.
Re: How is that wrong? (Score:2)
You tend to forget one thing:
While States can do as they please, if you don't play the game by Fed rules, then they don't have to give you Fed money.
Which is cool as long as your State runs a budget surplus every year and doesn't need it.
Since the majority do not, it's easy leverage to get the States to play ball.
Watch how fast the States change their mind about sanctuary cities once their allowance is cut off.
Re:How is that wrong? (Score:5, Insightful)
---Fewer regulations mean more freedom for companies to try different approaches to providing network services. That in turn, obviously means more jobs... and is better for consumers.---
You SERIOUSLY don't believe that? Not ONCE as that happened. Fewer regulations means static progression and price gouging.
Net neutrality, is the ONLY thing that has stopped VZ and Comshit from completely shutting down your internet access EXCEPT to "their" sites.
Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it-
Read up on the railroad barons of the early 1900's, that exactly where the removal of "net neutrality" will get you.
Re:How is that wrong? (Score:4, Insightful)
Again look to history.
No, the robber baron's did no such thing, they hindered and stifled competition every where they went. You want a new pick axe? Sorry the general store can't get any because the robber barron keeps "losing" his shipment. BUT you can but this pick axe from the Robber Barron's store for only FIVE TIMES the cost!!!
(if you think they got that filthy rich through "competition" you're mistaken.)
Read what Comshit did to Netfilx, and that's recent history...
I'm not against free markets and capitalism, but they only work where true competition is available. That's not the case, with "utilities" where barrier to entry is astronomical.
Re:Still better (Score:5, Insightful)
Given that we pay the among the highest broadband prices in the world yet are well behind many other countries I think we pay more than enough. We're getting gouged by the likes of Comcast. Also, there's the fact that in many places in the country they make it difficult or impossible for things like municipal broadband which typically has lower prices and better service. Given the fact that he's from the telecom industry, I expect things to get worse, not better, for rural America since it's not in the best interest of the telecom businesses to serve them given the higher costs involved. He's already come out against things like net neutrality.
Municipal Broadband (was Re:Still better) (Score:3)
That's what I noticed as conspicuously absent. Not only that he specifically mentioned paying the 'private sector' to do it.
If he really cared about Americans, then it wouldn't matter who was building this out...just that it was getting built out. If the municipality can beat the private sector to market...then they win, and the 'Americans' win.
People don't vote to fund 'public broadband' initiatives if they feel they are being fairly and adequately served by the private Telcos.
Pai on muni broadband - follow the Constitution (Score:2)
He was appointed to the commission by Obama in 2012, so we know what his positions on municipal broadband are. Basically, he thinks the FCC should get out of the way and let states and cities do muni broadband if they wish - Congress has made no law requiring states to deploy it, allow it, or disalow it. The FCC should enforce the law, not make the law, and there is no federal law on the subject pf muni broadband for the FCC to endorce.
The Tennessee case is instructive. The state, under their Constitution
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Given the fact that he's from the telecom industry [...]
Don't forget that the last FCC chairman was from the telecom industry too. We all thought he was in their pocket, but he turned out to be pretty decent in the end, responding to public outcry over some of his policies that would have hobbled net neutrality by backing away from them and, eventually, even helping to push through a number of initiatives that strengthened net neutrality. I have to admit, I pegged Wheeler wrong.
Which isn't to say that I expect the same of Pai, given that he routinely voted contr
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I have to admit, I pegged Wheeler wrong.
me too. An interesting read was Wheeler talked about when cable tv started, there was a huge outcry and pushback from legacy OTA broadcasters. Wheeler said at the time OTA broadcasters limited new providers and and CATV will provide opportunities for new "channels." He then implied nowadays cable companies are limiting new providers and opportunities. Wheeler presented this better than what I wrote here but hope I got my point across.
He was in their pockets (Score:2)
Net Neutrality passed - but as worded benefitted the telecoms. That's all Network Neutrality ever was (the FCC version anyway) a giant bloated document meant to keep a stranglehold of power by the major players.
Everything the FCC did under his reign benefitted incumbent ISP's greatly. Now that someone is coming in actually open to choice, you'll see lower prices and more choices of ISP (though that will take a few years to percolate through).
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I'm pretty sure netflix won't work at all at ISDN speeds.
For the verizon unlimited lines I use for Internet at home I've been paying $170/mo no one will provide wired service to my address for less than a few grand for something like a T2 or better.
Back during the broadband recovery act they were subsidizing 1.5mbps satellite connections.
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I'm pretty sure netflix won't work at all at ISDN speeds.
It does, just not well. And you need an older client - my mom was getting essentially ISDN speeds out of a DSL line, the only Netflix client I could find that would work (though it did work) was the first gen AppleTV.
For the verizon unlimited lines I use for Internet at home I've been paying $170/mo
You should look into T-Mobile, they could probably provide you a lower cost. They have been really good about expanding services and so these days they
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Does T-Mo offer an actual unlimited plan? A reasonable pay-per-GB plan? Sounds very useful. Not believing getting a T-Mo signal out in the boonies, but that's a different issue.
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The phone plans are unlimited so you could simply buy a phone to tether everything from.
In my case I needed to buy a mobile hotspot for its stronger reception in a more remote area (and I figured it would also be more stable over time), in that case I pay $50 for 10GB/month, and 18GB/month is $80 (for LTE data).
You can also get additional data passes at $10/1GB to be used in seven days, or $30 for 3GB to use over 30 days.
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Secondly, so what if it does cost more? Is it still not better to have the AVAILABILITY of real high speed internet be much more widespread?
Listen to yourself. "Who cares if nobody can afford it? As long as it's theoretically available!"
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First, I reject the assumption it will cost a lot more.
Comcast, meet SuperKendall. Your innocence is charming, but your alternative truth isn't.
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Yea so why the fuck would I want to do that? I don't want to pay for someone else's' internet too. Fuck that. Fuck Trump. Fuck his appointees.
Re:Still better (Score:5, Insightful)
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Given how much support he got from poor rural voters? I think you're missing the mark here.
They get to keep their guns, but they won't be too happy about their Medicaid and food stamps demise though.
Poor rural voters have voted Republican ever since the Dixicrats abandoned the Democrat party. Means nothing to the man of gold.
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Doesn't need to (Score:2)
Yeah, I bet the Trump administration will make that a priority.
That's the thing. Just being able to get the service is enough. From there even if local or federal governments will not help subsidize network fees, private groups can and will.
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Yeah, I bet the Trump administration will make that a priority.
That's the thing. Just being able to get the service is enough. From there even if local or federal governments will not help subsidize network fees, private groups can and will.
Just like they have all along - right?. Why - especially after many states banning municipal broadband, have not the private suppliers with the freer market of no allowed interference solve this problem years ago? Wide open market, zero competition from the socialists, seems like we would be seeing the free market in action, with private entities producing better internet service to more people for less money than in the socialist states that allow the Guvmint to compete with them.
Surely you have the cit
Zero competition is socialism (Score:3)
zero competition from the socialists
Or from capitalists. Or from anyone...
That is not capitalism, and the companies that have unnatural monopolies grated by the state or feds have acted just as you would expect a lazy large company with competition eliminated by law to act. That is to say, not at all.
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So, it will be available in more areas, at greater costs and in more limited uses.
See, I "expanded access".
Now, fork over the $300 a month.
'Digital Divide' implies that everybody will be able to afford it, not just that it'll be as available in Portland, ME as it is in Portland, OR.
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Unless this guy supports getting rid of laws banning municipal broadband, he's just another full-of-shit talker. In most areas there is almost no real competition among broadband providers. You have one cable company that can provide fast broadband, one phone company that can provide slow broadband, and a few satellite companies that can provide VERY slow broadband. Aside from that, you have the vague dream that Google might one day bring fiber optic to your neighborhood (which, at the rate Google is deploy
Re:Access does not imply cost (Score:5, Informative)
I love it. It's keeping my sister alive (literally). Without it, due to her condition there's no way she could buy insurance other than work provided insurance, especially given that her medication that keeps her alive costs $5K/month, most of that being the medication (a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_globulin">gamma globulin). With her work insurance her co-pay for her medicine would be $500/month (she makes $11/hour as a teacher). Thanks to the ACA she was able to get a plan that covers her medication. I have a number of friends who also rely on it who would otherwise be without insurance which they need. While far from perfect, in most cases it's an improvement over what we had before. I had a friend who relied on it once he got cancer and could no longer work due to it. It kept him alive for a couple of years he otherwise wouldn't have had with his family. He eventually died from the cancer, but it didn't leave his family totally bankrupt from it either.
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Didn't cover much in the way of prescription drugs though, which is how many Medicaid recipients were getting completely screwed.
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Isn't anything better than dial-up, satellite or low-end DSL better when that's the only option you have?
I've been living with only 5Mbps for over six years now and it's plenty enough to not feel "left behind".
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It's important that the bar is set high enough because it decides what gets funded and thus what gets built.
Compaines shouldn't be deploying 768kbps connections in this day and age but they will happily do so for free govt money.
5Mbps is only good enough for one user at a time IMHO.
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This, even just dialup speeds is 604.8 megabytes a day.That is not much less than I get now. And is like 20 times better than what I grew up with, which was dialup but really slow.
I would love the government even if they could even get a fairly decent affordable 1 MB/s service out here.
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You must have had a good dial-up connection. Here it's about 12MBs an hour, so not even 300MBs a day if I don't mind tying up the phone for 24hrs and I've been kicked off a couple of ISPs for using less. As usual unlimited doesn't really mean unlimited.
My government is paying the telco to put in a cell tower (and officially I lost my dial-up last Nov 16th, but since in Canada it is considered an essential service, it's still working). I figure it'll probably take about an hour to use the monthly quota if I
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CONNECT 28800/ARQ/V34/LAPM/V42BIS, at the best often 26.4, and better have a good modem to get that over the rusty barbed wire they call phone lines here (about a hour outside Vancouver).
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Just to be clear, are you asking your fellow taxpayers to subsidize your broadband service? If so, do you consider that fair?
That's how society works, and always has. The Romans had subsidized roads. The American Constitution has a clause for postal roads, and with advancements in technology, broadband is about important for a working society as postal service was in the 18th century.
Of course I'm sure you have nothing to do with the roads so as to not unfairly take advantage of your fellow taxpayers.
Re:"Broadband" (Score:5, Insightful)
in September 2016 he outlined a "digital empowerment agenda." The plan included "removing regulatory barriers to broadband deployment,"
The only "barriers" that exist are those created by Republican politicians. At least 20 states, all controlled by Republicans, have passed laws prohibiting cities from building their own broadband networks, even when the local cable and phone monopolies refuse to provide service at a reasonable price. Or at any price. And the reason is simple, It would create competition and that would force the broadband monopolies to increase speed, lower their prices and abandon bullshit practices like data caps.
These laws were written by lobbyists from all the big cable and phone monopolies, including Mr. Pai's former employer, Verizon.
If you think something is suddenly going to change, I've got a jar of magic beans I want to sell you.
Re:"Broadband" (Score:5, Insightful)
No, you misunderstand. They want to "help private businesses build the networks". Translation: They want to bribe the cable companies and phone companies who refused to build out the network to serve the poor, putting money into their pockets in exchange for a promise of a buildout that will never actually happen except on paper, same as always happens when the Republicans are in control.
There is, as you rightfully point out, exactly one way to build infrastructure that is truly universal, and that's for local governments to foot the bill for construction and then lease access to companies that provide service. That way, the government can bring in multiple providers with minimal up-front costs per provider, thus allowing real, honest-to-goodness competition in broadband service, without the giant noose of the infrastructure construction hanging around the ISPs necks.
What we need right now is a Roosevelt, not a Reagan—a builder, not a financier.
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I can't believe how slow network speeds are in parts of the US, I get 38 mbps or so on VDSL where I live, but that's not considered particularly fast. My neighbours have the fibre service that has just been laid, and they get 100 mbps down no problem.
1.5 mbps would be a disaster at my house, with 4 people streaming video or playing games at the same time.
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I'm on dial-up and squid doesn't really help, especially as more and more sites are switching to HTTPS, which squid doesn't seem to cache. Shit I have a hard time loading a slashdot page since they went HTTPS. Looks like this one loaded about 2/3rds before giving up.
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In rural areas, wanted increase from 10 to 25Mbs (Score:5, Interesting)
Pai was appointed to the commission by Obama in 2012, so we can answer that based on what he's supported and opposed over the last five years.
In his dissents, Pai has repeatedly expressed his frustration with the commission setting minimums with no reference to changing technology and consumer expectations. He supports looking at the speeds actually ordered by consumers who *do* have the choice, and setting new rules based on that, rather than picking a number out of a bureaucrat's ass - and using completely different numbers from month to month.
Available speeds have increased in the last couple of years, so by the chairman's preferred methodology standards should be higher now than in 2015, but in 2015 he said the commission's standard of 10 Mbps in rural areas was too slow, arguing that 25 Mbps would be better:
https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_pub... [fcc.gov]
Before that, he reasoned that since Netflix customers stream at 3.2 Mbps on average, a true 10 Mbps connection would allow 3 concurrent streams - so here we see his idea of "broadband" gets faster over time.
The new chairman argued strenuously that the FCC should not adopt regulations that discouraged gigabit - the rule enacted by the Democrat majority encouraged 10Mbps and 25Mbps connections in lieu of gigabit, he argued.
He would in general rather promote competition and then gtf out of the way and let companies offer gigabit or whatever, rather than micro-managing, declaring that they must offer exactly this or that. In constrast, the rules enacted by his colleagues were much more along the lines of "Verizon must offer 10 Mbps DSL in these areas" kinds of rules. (Of course the rule is written as "an incumbent telco carrier operating blah blah blah", a description which describes only Verizon).
Anyway, to answer your question, his position is that 10 Mbps was too slow in 2015, it should have been 25 Mbps back then, and it should get faster with time based on what consumers who have the choice actually select.
Re:In rural areas, wanted increase from 10 to 25Mb (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow. I've got to say, this is the first time I'm actually impressed by a Trump appointment.
Re:In rural areas, wanted increase from 10 to 25Mb (Score:4, Informative)
Right. Especially since he was originally an Obama appointee--which you'd expect would have gotten him fired, not promoted.
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In other words, the fact that Obam
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But how are we going to afford all this if we are going to borrow another $38 billion for a semi useless wall?
Run the printing presses - DUH!
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But how are we going to afford all this if we are going to borrow another $38 billion for a semi useless wall?
Sorry to reply again, but anyone that thinks we can build an almost 2000 mile wall that extends into the ert so them imgrunts can't dig tunnels under it for 38 billion dollars is laughingly uneducated.
We couldn't build it for that much if we used illegal immigrants to build it.
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Sorry, who the FUCK was the sane candidate? Because it wasn't Trump or Clinton.
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Fast enough to post the biggest pepe before the timeout i presume.
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Re:Start twisting (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem Chairman Pai must now confront is not unlike what his fellow Republicans in Congress are facing with healthcare: the market does not always produce socially optimal results. There is no market solution in which insurance companies will look at 55-year old cancer patient with diabetes, kidney stones, two knees in need of replacement, and a raging case of herpes and think to themselves "Hmmm...I smell Profit!". From the insurance companies' perspective, the most profitable healthcare plan for that fellow involves a coffin.
Likewise, if it costs $20-50K in trenching and cabling to connect a single rural user at halfway decent broadband speeds, there's no way the ISPs are going to ever break even on that customer if he's paying $50-100 a month. Hence, the market completely ignores the poor and those living in the sticks.
It's admirable that Chairman Pai recognizes that universal Internet access is central to economic prosperity, and I wish him the best of luck despite the source of his nomination, but achieving universal broadband will not happen unless there is a mandate from the government that it happen, as well as considerable funding in the form of tax credits or direct expenditures. Waving around hands and solemnly intoning "The Market knows all! The Market solves all!" will not make those realities go away any more than it would in the healthcare debate.
I am unaware of anyone ever being denied internet access because of gender, religion, or sexual orientation. However, there are racial disparities in internet access owing to our history of segregation. Many of the high-poverty neighborhoods bypassed by ISPs are, not surprisingly, places that fell victim to redlining and the urban blight that followed it.
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<sarcasm> But towns aren't private companies and hence are bad. That's why states are banning the practice. How dare people get cheap good reliable Internet service! Their big political contributors deserve a big chunk of the pie!</sarcasm>
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Net neutrality rules are necessary because of the monopoly/duopoly status many ISP's enjoy due to regulation. If you can cut regulation and don't allow larger ISP's to interfere legally with others, there should be some competition not just from startup commercial ISP's (eg. Google) but also from municipal ISP's. In my area we have a small rollout from an ISP giving 100/20 and at one point Verizon FiOS promised to come by too, however legislation has hindered both of them.