FCC To Delay $9 Billion Rural Broadband Push To Fix Data Flaws (bloomberglaw.com) 49
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg Law: The Federal Communications Commission is poised to delay $9 billion in rural 5G subsidies for 18 to 24 months so it can fix mapping flaws that bar the agency from determining which areas need the service. The holdup is the most recent delay in the FCC's nine-year effort to pay wireless carriers to expand service to remote areas that otherwise are too unprofitable to serve. The FCC scrapped a similar subsidy effort last year, after it found carriers' maps exaggerated existing coverage areas, meaning locations that needed the subsidies wouldn't have gotten them.
The commission plans to vote Oct. 27 on an order that would create the new $9 billion effort to replace the program it scrapped. Under the order, however, the agency would wait to award funds until it evaluates new data it's collecting on rural service locations. The replacement 5G program would distribute twice as many funds as its predecessor. As in the earlier effort, the subsidies would come from the agency's Universal Service Fund, which is raised from monthly fees on consumers' phone bills. It will likely take until at least mid-2022 for the FCC to collect the data, putting the commission on track to start awarding the funding to carriers later that year. That timeline assumes Congress appropriates the $65 million needed to fund the initiative next year, though there is bipartisan support to do so.
The commission plans to vote Oct. 27 on an order that would create the new $9 billion effort to replace the program it scrapped. Under the order, however, the agency would wait to award funds until it evaluates new data it's collecting on rural service locations. The replacement 5G program would distribute twice as many funds as its predecessor. As in the earlier effort, the subsidies would come from the agency's Universal Service Fund, which is raised from monthly fees on consumers' phone bills. It will likely take until at least mid-2022 for the FCC to collect the data, putting the commission on track to start awarding the funding to carriers later that year. That timeline assumes Congress appropriates the $65 million needed to fund the initiative next year, though there is bipartisan support to do so.
StarLink (Score:5, Insightful)
It would make way more sense to pay SpaceX to do this as part of StarLink rather than paying the incumbent telcos who have done so little in the past.
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Starlink is going to be one of those massive disruptive technologies that, historically, marks a revolution in the technology for everyday life. It will rank up there with dial up internet, broadband and cellular. I think that the antennas are (currently) too large for hand-held use, but I imagine they could be used on vehicles without much problem.
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Yup. Elon Musk replied to a trucker saying it would be great for coverage. They've demonstrated it in use on airplanes, so vehicles are trivial. Anyone who uses an RV will want Starlink. The only question is how many subscribers they can support before the bandwidth drops too low. And when that becomes a problem, does that mean they have enough revenue to just put up more satellites to increase their bandwidth?
I would love to see them build this into Tesla cars for the in-car navigation and entertainme
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how many subscribers they can support before the bandwidth drops too low
Torrenting and running a seedbox from the absolute middle of nowhere, here I come!
One sat per person ought to do it. Wait, what do you mean it's not infinite? What kind of buffet IS this, anyway? And do we have network node isolation, or can I also "reach out and touch" (and sniff) my IP neighbors?
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does that mean they have enough revenue to just put up more satellites to increase their bandwidth?
Keep in mind that the owner of starlink constellation is also the owner of the cheapest currently available launch vehicle, so he can also do it at what is effectively the cost of fuel, with the least amount of the cheapest fuel, and these things can piggyback their way up on bigger payloads, and size and weight will improve over time, and so will those fuel costs.
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Have they said it works on a aircraft? The current Starlink transceivers are using dishes that track the satellites.
Obviously a dish isn't going to work for an aircraft, it would create enormous drag and probably have difficulty tracking the satellite. Trucks and cars will have similar issues, i.e. reduced efficiency and tracking through turns.
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I'm pretty sure the Air Force was testing it on planes.
It's a phased array antenna, so it doesn't have to track specific satellites. Musk recently tweeted, "Yes. Everything is slow to a phased array antenna."
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Eventually it might go to phased array but the beta units that people have received are all dishes that track.
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Really depends how it performs with more users. Beta testing results have been extremely variable and we have no idea how densely packed users are in any given area.
They will have to balance speed and latency for every user with usage limits. Obviously downloading 250GB games at maximum speed is going to impact your neighbours, except your neighbours in this case might be a hundred kilometres or more away.
This might be one of those rare instances where... (Score:2)
government dragging its feet is actually a good thing [accidentally, of course]. Nine years of this means it extended not just through Trump's first term but also through Obama's second term, lest any jerk try to make this a partisan political thing - it's clearly NOT.
Consider: if this current foot dragging to get the records in order had not taken place, the government would be looking to hand this money out NOW and the only players available to cash in are the same bad players who've been lying about thei
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I suspect the foot dragging happened because none of the telcos believed that StarLink would actually work. Now they're all hot and bothered to grab this subsidy before it's operational.
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Re: StarLink (Score:2)
Starlink capable backpacks.
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Starlink doesn't have to directly serve handsets.
We can build StarLink-to-5G bridge devices and install them in remote homes and farms, along rural roads, etc.
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Like this [freedomfi.com], or if you're wanting to go full do-it-yourself with the software, this [magmacore.org].
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That's the fucking idea, but so far everyone has been scrambling to stop them instead.
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StarLink is the reason the telcos are whining that they need a subsidy now. In a couple more years they couldn't possibly justify it.
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As someone that's technically inclined, and does programming and web development as well as database maintenance for a career and happens to live in the midwest, not all of your neighbors feel the same about it as you do. You're absolutely free to continue reading your bible and ignoring the rest of the world even if we have decent internet coverage here. Why remove the option for those of us that have a legitimate reason to want it?
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Honestly, I don't care if we spend the money on them, I just want them to have to acknowledge that they are benefiting from being subsidized.
Part of it is that some folks dont see it as reasonable for someone to have to pay the price for some of the simple things that they enjoy. One simple thing that you might enjoy is living out in the real boondocks. These are the people that defend these programs.
You will not find any urgent medical care there.
There isn't even a water or sewer supply to connect to. This is the land where people dig their own well, and they dig out their own septic field.
But for all its downsides, the upsides, for many,
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Part of it is that some folks dont see it as reasonable for someone to have to pay the price for some of the simple things that they enjoy.
And that would be absolutely hypocritical with a side of entitlement. In the free market you pay the price or you simply don't get it.
Feel free to rationalize their hypocrisy all you want but won't make them less worthy of scorn.
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Yet somehow forward-thinking people who didn't believe in the "I've got mine so fuck you" culture managed to make it happen. And so the farmers, ranchers, and all thjose other "absolutely hypocritical with a side of entitlement" people ended up with power and communications.
There's a reaso
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And decades ago if you and your shitty attitude been won the argument in government these same people wouldn't have electricity and telephone either. They wouldn't have roads, police protection or fire departments.
Yet somehow forward-thinking people who didn't believe in the "I've got mine so fuck you" culture managed to make it happen. And so the farmers, ranchers, and all thjose other "absolutely hypocritical with a side of entitlement" people ended up with power and communications.
Good. Fuck em.
Their life and standard of living today would be nothing but for subsidized electricity and infrastructure.
Ya ever met any small to mid-sized farmers? They're all welfare queens. Experts at huge tax deductions, grants, and payouts for "ruined" crops. These folks looked at Trump's $70,000 deductions for hair care expenses and $750 tax bill and said "amateur". Which again is fine, the system is there so work it for what it's worth.
It has nothing to do with "I've got mine". It's that they r
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That would be a good argument except that telco and electric providers are monopolies and are heavily regulated by the government. If they weren't, we would have mom and pop providers who would be servicing the needs of those rural folks because there would be profit in it.
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Not until solar power got cheap you wouldn't, with the exceptions of dairy farms that could use methane for generation a few hours a day. Without subsidies there was no way to connect rural people to the electrical grid. Period.
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That would be a good argument except that telco and electric providers are monopolies and are heavily regulated by the government.
Regulation is yet another thing they are against! If anything they are piling hypocrisy atop hypocrisy.
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But for some reason
The reason is that a much higher percentage of those people vote, and they can elect people who will give them the benefits that the rest of us pay for. Just like Ayn Rand sucking down Social Security and Medicaide at the end of her life, her modern followers have no problem stealing any resources they can extract from the rest of us. Hypocrisy is not seen as a defect in Libertardian social circles, only generosity and a social conscience are liabilities. .
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Not that, but rather that rural state voters are over-represented in the US Senate and Presidency (and as a result, also in the US Supreme Court). And they think they have a god-given right to have that bigger say in the government.
I thought 5G was only good close to a tower (Score:2)
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Because the additional delay means more money for the incumbents.
Meanwhile rural kids are screwed on remote learning and adults can't telehealth or telework.
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What do you mean make sense? (Score:2)
> Even in cities you have to basically be leaning on the tower [for 5G].
Yeah it's good for 200 meters or so, a bit longer than the average rural driveway. So one tower per home will do fine. Of course with backhaul to each tower. Hey since you need with one every 200 meters anyway, maybe just string the fiber backhaul along the top of the towers.
> How does this make any sense to try to deploy in a rural setting?
This is government. It's not supposed to make any sense.
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Even in cities you have to basically be leaning on the tower to get good speeds. How does this make any sense to try to deploy in a rural setting?
That depends entirely on the frequency the towers are running on. Low-band 5G (600-700 MHz) would be used for most rural areas, and that has a fairly huge range.
Urban deployments of 5G apparently tend to run at 2.5-3.7 GHz (mid-band), which requires a tower every few km. I imagine that the limited range can actually be regarded as a benefit in densely-populated areas because the lower the range the fewer people each tower has to serve, so you reduce contention by splitting the load between more towers.
Anywa
Google (Score:1)
I bet you anything that Google has this data. As part of their Street View mapping / photographing, they sniff Wifi, and you'd better believe they are also sniffing cellular coverage as well while they are paying to have their cars drive on every road and street.
Forest, trees, something, something (Score:4, Informative)
So, "We don't know which areas need it most, so nobody gets it" ??
Just give the money to Starlink / SpaceX (Score:4, Insightful)
Carriers have demonstrated again and again they will take the money and run.
Just give the money to Starlink / SpaceX and get the job done.
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At bare minimum, write into the grants the proviso that if targets aren't reached, the telcos have to pay back the money.
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Good luck with that, they've spent a lot of money on lobbyists already to get the subsidy, and I'll guarantee that Ajit Pai will be sitting on at least one telco corporate board the day he steps down, the same as Michael Powell.
eamwhile (Score:1)
only if those with no-G get it first (Score:2)
And some want government running healthcare (Score:2)
The US federal f***ing government proves again that it's incapable of managing a lemonade stand. How many times do they get to ef up before responsibilities are reduced? This is a good place to start.
The FCC should drop its plan and let the states handle it. The FCC should provide requirements and a percentage of the universal fund to the states. 50+ experiments, some will work others won't. The states that fail will see those that worked and hopefully learn something.
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Seriously? You think Louisiana and Michigan are more competent than the Federal government? By all the gods, that's the dumbest proposal in this entire thread so far.
FCC Chairman should have known this (Score:4, Informative)
Honestly, he was a lawyer for Verizon before being chairman of the FCC.
You don't just suddenly forget that your previous employer would pump their coverage map numbers to try to look better than the competition.
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Indeed he probably would be well aware of that. I'm not convinced he cares.
The more likely outcome points to what is best financially. Make the mandate now and Verizon et al will have to start rolling out services as a condition of the subsidies they take. That will be extremely expensive given the current distances of 5G. So delay it for two years and see if the technology becomes more viable. Also give the telcos time to adjust their maps and "certify" that given areas have sufficient coverage and do
Telco Greed Strikes Again (Score:2)
In previous rounds of grant funding, the telcos took money from the federal government to roll out 4G coverage to rural areas. Now it has become clear that they took the money but did not roll out the full service. The problem? If they admit to that past act, they would be effectively ruling themselves out of funding for this round of government subsidy.
So it looks like the FCC are saving the telcos from the embarrassment by
They have already pocketed $400 billion (Score:2)
The telcos have already pocketed $400 billion in the past [huffpost.com] in subsidies to deliver real broadband to everyone and they did not. Why give them more? It is such a fucked up system, I lived in NYC for until 2009 and I know how even in the center of the largest US city it was impossible to get anywhere near broadband (at least as the word was defined in the 90s), never mind rural areas (unless you were really really lucky).
Yeah, give those monopolies another $9 billion, that will help...