Senate Bill Introduced to Create National Broadband Access Standard

[DooKey]

A bipartisan group of Senators has introduced a bill that will task the FCC with determining a broadband access standard. The FCC must determine whether mobile and broadband are comparable in both rural and urban areas. The bottom line is that broadband is needed all across the country and not just in the urban areas. This is a good start. Thanks cageymaru.

"The Rural Reasonable and Comparable Wireless Act will help bridge this digital divide by helping to ensure that rural areas — like those in West Virginia — have the access to high-speed internet that many of our urban communities do."

 

[viscountalpha]

I expect this to be a real cluster.

 

[Dead Parrot]

Typical Congress. Introduce a bill that creates guidelines for a future study with no deadline for completion and no action points based on results. If it passes, then the regulations to setup the rules for the study have to go through the normal regulatory process (months or years to complete), then the actual study begins, queue political processes to influence the methods, scope and results, a report will be written, backs will be patted and 5 ~ 10 years from now, no new hardware will have been deployed by ISPs because "We were waiting on the results of the study for guidance."

 

[toast0]

My bet is on FCC determines rural areas have electricity, and that the FCC said Internet over Power Lines was competitive in the 200x's, so rural has competitive broadband, and Ajit Pai makes another tone deaf video wearing overalls and holding a hoe like the Normal Rockwell picture.

 

[Spaceninja]

More government always fixes things. How about actually enforcing monopoly laws instead of creating new ones?

 

[pcgeekesq]

Typical Congress. Introduce a bill that creates guidelines for a future study with no deadline for completion and no action points based on results."

You get credit in politics for talking the talk. "I introduced a bill that blah blah blah," the campaign soundbite.
Whether the press bothers to check that you walk the walk depends on how much they hate you.

 

[gamerk2]

My bet is on FCC determines rural areas have electricity, and that the FCC said Internet over Power Lines was competitive in the 200x's, so rural has competitive broadband, and Ajit Pai makes another tone deaf video wearing overalls and holding a hoe like the Normal Rockwell picture.

Yeah, it's most likely the FCC says "Wireless is basically Broadband". This actually isn't a good thing.

 

[W.Feather]

No thank you. Internet is not a right, it is a privlage. You do not *NEED* 1 GBps (Hell even 10 MBps) to survive. I dont need my tax dollars going to subsidize someone in BFE's porn addiction (Fine, Netflix / HBO). Dial up is fine for the arguments people make (Job postings etc....But im skeptical there because they are talking about small town , where pretty much everyone knows everyone...). Ive yet to see a real argument that makes sense to me atleast as to why Broadband is a basic right for a citizen.

 

[toast0]

No thank you. Internet is not a right, it is a privlage. You do not *NEED* 1 GBps (Hell even 10 MBps) to survive. I dont need my tax dollars going to subsidize someone in BFE's porn addiction (Fine, Netflix / HBO). Dial up is fine for the arguments people make (Job postings etc....But im skeptical there because they are talking about small town , where pretty much everyone knows everyone...). Ive yet to see a real argument that makes sense to me atleast as to why Broadband is a basic right for a citizen.

I understand where you're going with this, but so many things are online these days, and people making web pages stuff so much garbage on them; dialup would be pretty awful. The page to sign up for social security ( https://secure.ssa.gov/iClaim/rib ) is pretty fast, but it's 856 KB, and that'll take 2 minutes to download on 56k. Something in the range of 1.5 Mbps is probably fine to deal with web bloat though.

 

[sfsuphysics]

"The Rural Reasonable and Comparable Wireless Act will help bridge this digital divide by helping to ensure that rural areas — like those in West Virginia — have the access to high-speed internet that many of our urban communities do."

So West Virginia senator making a push to make sure his state gets shit done first?

But yeah, our urban communities have broadband, because they're fairly densely populated so costs of infrastructure get passed around to many people, in rural areas cost of infrastructure would be handled by very few people or eaten by the telecoms... but lets be honest now, neither of those will happen so lets have everyone else in the country pay for their ability to have broadband.

 

[sfsuphysics]

I understand where you're going with this, but so many things are online these days, and people making web pages stuff so much garbage on them; dialup would be pretty awful. The page to sign up for social security ( https://secure.ssa.gov/iClaim/rib ) is pretty fast, but it's 856 KB, and that'll take 2 minutes to download on 56k. Something in the range of 1.5 Mbps is probably fine to deal with web bloat though.

You live rural, that usually means a slower life, what hurry are you in to look at social security?

 

[Spidey329]

I expect this to be a real cluster.

I expect it to be very simple. The FCC will simply ask Comcast/Verizon for their answer and then forward that on as the official position. I'd suspect they'll say that "56k is acceptable in rural communities, but we'd like some infrastructure subsidies to investigate further."

This won't change a thing.

 

[W.Feather]

I understand where you're going with this, but so many things are online these days, and people making web pages stuff so much garbage on them; dialup would be pretty awful. The page to sign up for social security ( https://secure.ssa.gov/iClaim/rib ) is pretty fast, but it's 856 KB, and that'll take 2 minutes to download on 56k. Something in the range of 1.5 Mbps is probably fine to deal with web bloat though.

And i can understand that. The definition needs to be dialed into what is reasonable, not what is instant. Low end DSL maybe. But cable / fiber, no in my opinion.

 

[dandirk]

I understand where you're going with this, but so many things are online these days, and people making web pages stuff so much garbage on them; dialup would be pretty awful. The page to sign up for social security ( https://secure.ssa.gov/iClaim/rib ) is pretty fast, but it's 856 KB, and that'll take 2 minutes to download on 56k. Something in the range of 1.5 Mbps is probably fine to deal with web bloat though.

Online is also affecting brick and mortar... Amazon/online is becoming the new Wal-Mart which means less local stores and/or selection of products in their area. Rural areas already have been limited to access to products compared to urban areas, the internet was leveling that field.

Getting cheap on our internet infrastructure is just short sighted imo.

 

[Chunder]

We need a national standard and unified/nationalized infrastructure, however, this bill doesn't seem to be taking us in the direction needed. Rumors were that the Trump administration was considering this move a few weeks ago, but caved to corporate interest (again) instead.

 

[pcgeekesq]

Odds are that Musk and his competitors in the LEO satellite internet race are going to make whatever noises Congress makes irrelevant.
Let's hope so, anyway. You think the government is going to let you watch porn, read 4chan, or use a VPN in a foreign country over the internet they give you? Puh-lease.

 

[AaronGant]

Don't worry the lobbyists will get in there and convince them that if you can buy wireless broadband at $10/gb that counts as broadband, then they'll stop using their existing lines while prohibiting anyone else from offering wired access.

 

[Brian_B]

No thank you. Internet is not a right, it is a privlage. You do not *NEED* 1 GBps (Hell even 10 MBps) to survive. I dont need my tax dollars going to subsidize someone in BFE's porn addiction (Fine, Netflix / HBO). Dial up is fine for the arguments people make (Job postings etc....But im skeptical there because they are talking about small town , where pretty much everyone knows everyone...). Ive yet to see a real argument that makes sense to me atleast as to why Broadband is a basic right for a citizen.

As a rural resident:

I don’t believe internet is a right. At least any more than electricity or land line telecom or broadcast radio/TV.

But it definitely serves to greatly increase the standard of living and hosts a whole slew of public benefits. And that’s why we have traditionally mandated that these things get propagated beyond just the urban areas.

I don’t really want anyone to subsidize anything I do. I already pay $200/mo for 7Mb (fastest I can get with no cap). But at the same time, with the utter lack of competition that is allowed to exist - I can’t even get the option to pay for something unsubsidized that comes close to the same capability.

 

[WhoMe]

I've heard this song before. Lots of noise little of substance. But hey who needs rural areas, everyone can move to the city, the crops and cattle will grow and harvest themselves.

 

[viscountalpha]

As a rural resident:

I don’t believe internet is a right. At least any more than electricity or land line telecom or broadcast radio/TV.

But it definitely serves to greatly increase the standard of living and hosts a whole slew of public benefits. And that’s why we have traditionally mandated that these things get propagated beyond just the urban areas.

I don’t really want anyone to subsidize anything I do. I already pay $200/mo for 7Mb (fastest I can get with no cap). But at the same time, with the utter lack of competition that is allowed to exist - I can’t even get the option to pay for something unsubsidized that comes close to the same capability.

With how the internet is being required to get and find jobs, It becomes a right. Just like a telephone. If you have kids, they are at a severe disadvantage if they don't have internet access. Our societal basic choices require it to be a right and not a luxury.

 

[tetris42]

My bet is on FCC determines rural areas have electricity, and that the FCC said Internet over Power Lines was competitive in the 200x's, so rural has competitive broadband, and Ajit Pai makes another tone deaf video wearing overalls and holding a hoe like the Normal Rockwell picture.

Dammit, now I want to see that.

 

[pendragon1]

With how the internet is being required to get and find jobs, It becomes a right. Just like a telephone. If you have kids, they are at a severe disadvantage if they don't have internet access. Our societal basic choices require it to be a right and not a luxury.

internet is not a right, its a luxury, just makes thing easier. everything that could be done before the internet can still be done without the internet. ie physically getting up and looking for work, using a phone book, going to the job center(they have PCs too) and access it twatter and bookface are not rights either.
telephone are also not a right, you just have the right not to be denied service if you can afford it. just the 2a doesn't give you a free gun...

 

[Exavior]

When it all comes down to it, the issue is and always will be money. If an area is profitable people go there and build services to make money. If an area isn't profitable people avoid it. When you have to spent $500,000 to get service to 7 people, that isn't profitable. I struggle with this all the time working for a ISP. I would love to be able to get fiber to every home and just keep spreading our fiber into every town / city around us and have it spread like a vine. The problem is cost. So.. all I can do is figure out where to slowly increase speeds at the edges and chip away at those that can't get faster speeds. There are a few options to help with this but in the long run it probably will get fucked up just like everything else the government touches. USF is something that everyone pays on any phone bill that helped pay for telephone lines to be ran to every house no matter what. With a small increase to that fee and it applying to internet instead of telephone you then can make that money available to anyone that is building out to these areas and have fiber a large percentage of people within 5 years. The problem is how to manage who gets the money and ensure it is used correctly. Every time some pool of money is set aside for internet projects somehow it gets mismanaged. That said there is a new program that might help some of the rural areas but we will see how well it is applied. CAF (connect America fund) phase 2 is going to start up here soon that will allow people to do a reverse bid for under served areas. So whoever can build it out for the least amount of money gets it and can then build out to the area to get everyone above the line that they are drawing.

 

[Tekara]

internet is not a right, its a luxury, just makes thing easier. everything that could be done before the internet can still be done without the internet. ie physically getting up and looking for work, using a phone book, going to the job center(they have PCs too) and access it twatter and bookface are not rights either.
telephone are also not a right, you just have the right not to be denied service if you can afford it. just the 2a doesn't give you a free gun...

Neither is electricity, sewer, water nor a roof over your head. If it was good enough for the primitive humans to live off the land, it's good enough for the impoverished, amiright? Sadly though, fewer and fewer corporate employers accept physical resumes anymore. It's too time consuming to run them through the Applicant Tracking Systems when they can just be placed in the circular file and another qualified applicant can be hired in lieu.Heck, the cost savings from moving from physical service locations to online / phone support is enough that internet is pretty much a right to participate in western society and I don't see us stopping this transition.

 

[pendragon1]

Neither is electricity, sewer, water nor a roof over your head. If it was good enough for the primitive humans to live off the land, it's good enough for the impoverished, amiright? Sadly though, fewer and fewer corporate employers accept physical resumes anymore. It's too time consuming to run them through the Applicant Tracking Systems when they can just be placed in the circular file and another qualified applicant can be hired in lieu.Heck, the cost savings from moving from physical service locations to online / phone support is enough that internet is pretty much a right to participate in western society and I don't see us stopping this transition.

yup I agree none of that is a right either and I guess you look for a job somewhere else and work until you can afford internet. internet access only makes it easier to interact with society.

 

[sparks]

just more lobby work and a few pockets filled and this will take off
============================
yep didn't they lower the std just a while back
Lets see if we could get $1 a meg that would be great and then we would supply everyone with fiber
they have F'd the american consumer to death on all of this.
High prices and slow speeds are the norm.

go look at the experiment of the frog in boiling water and you can see it in action.


make broadband a utility and watch them


we have seen this for years.
RURAL BROADBAND has been spoken, gov pays telco's a fortune
they "look" into it..
paid more money and they are still looking....free money....more please
Look on your bills there was a TAX for rural broadband
it all went to them and we got nothing but bs
of course the politicians made money. Coins are the norm now...you can't trace that million to senator bob

 

[Exavior]

just more lobby work and a few pockets filled and this will take off
============================
yep didn't they lower the std just a while back
Lets see if we could get $1 a meg that would be great and then we would supply everyone with fiber
they have F'd the american consumer to death on all of this.
High prices and slow speeds are the norm.

go look at the experiment of the frog in boiling water and you can see it in action.


make broadband a utility and watch them


we have seen this for years.
RURAL BROADBAND has been spoken, gov pays telco's a fortune
they "look" into it..
paid more money and they are still looking....free money....more please
Look on your bills there was a TAX for rural broadband
it all went to them and we got nothing but bs
of course the politicians made money. Coins are the norm now...you can't trace that million to senator bob

What the lowered was just what can be marketed as broadband. Which honestly who really cares? They are wasting more time on the marketing aspect than the actual deployment aspect.

As for the money from other programs. The problem is that while you personally might not have noticed anything from it that doesn't mean that nobody has. There have been many rural areas that have been fiber be deployed to every home. Mostly small towns of 300 - 400 people where they get service from a small telco that services only them. If you are serviced by a larger company, than yeah they probably just pissed away the money. Those in the middle might have been in a position where taking the money wasn't right for them, or they were in a position where they where too big to get some of the funds set aside for really small companies, but where then too small for the extra money given to the really big guys.

 

[SticKx911]

How about we build broadband centers? Or funnel money to libraries in rural areas instead. Gotta be cheaper to complete and works towards the same goal. Give them the “access” they need without really giving anything away....seems more effective than running lines to every house in the middle of nowhere.

 

[tetris42]

Haven't we already paid for this multiple times over to the tunes of hundreds of billions and the ISPs basically made a hand jerk motion and said it's too hard, but kept the money anyway?

 

[Exavior]

Haven't we already paid for this multiple times over to the tunes of hundreds of billions and the ISPs basically made a hand jerk motion and said it's too hard, but kept the money anyway?

not completely no. The few big guys where given billions that they pissed away yes. Not everyone has pissed the money away. Hasn't been hundreds of billions, but at least a few billion for sure. Different programs over the years. Some worked as planned and money was used correctly to get some areas upgraded. Others were basically ways to pad the pockets of execs at AT&T,Verizon, and Comcast.

even with what has been given out if used correctly wouldn't have been enough. It is very expensive which sucks. I need $100+ million to plan and build out the 5 rural towns that we service. Can't spend that much so just do what we can every year to at least get a few hundred people switched to fiber. Engineering is a lot, then you have permits. We need a permit for one job to go 100 feet down a train track, $60,000 for the permit.

 

[wizdum]

not completely no. The few big guys where given billions that they pissed away yes. Not everyone has pissed the money away. Hasn't been hundreds of billions, but at least a few billion for sure. Different programs over the years. Some worked as planned and money was used correctly to get some areas upgraded. Others were basically ways to pad the pockets of execs at AT&T,Verizon, and Comcast.

even with what has been given out if used correctly wouldn't have been enough. It is very expensive which sucks. I need $100+ million to plan and build out the 5 rural towns that we service. Can't spend that much so just do what we can every year to at least get a few hundred people switched to fiber. Engineering is a lot, then you have permits. We need a permit for one job to go 100 feet down a train track, $60,000 for the permit.

You might need better contractors. It cost us under $120k to plan and roll out fiber (not including connecting the homes).

 

[Exavior]

You might need better contractors. It cost us under $120k to plan and roll out fiber (not including connecting the homes).

For how many houses in what size area? We just did a build for about $120,000. However that was 80-90 houses along 2 roads within 2.5 - 3 miles area. Are you telling me that for $120,000 you can plan and build fiber to 17,000 houses in a 200 square mile area with all needed electronics and splitters? My electronics along would run me more than that. What truck are you getting your stuff off of as it falls?

From experience i know that a new cabinet to go into a new area will run me around $40,000 for the basics to get it powered up and connected with no customers. If I can use pre-existing electronics as the feeding point then great, that is less to get started. Every mile of fiber that it takes to get somewhere will run you about $35,000 - $40,000 for aerial, about $50,000 - $60,000 for buried (direct buried, plowed, bored vary inside that range). Size of the fiber doesn't really matter as fiber it cheap, it is the labor that cost you not the actual fiber. As we have been working so far in areas that we already have a fiber backbone to grow from or are close to our electronics to start with we have been able to keep it somewhere around $1200 - $1500 per house connected if we are overbuilding an area and running fiber to every house. We do 1x32 splits for GPON and new cards now support 8 PONs, so for every 32 customers I need an SFP which is a little over a grand i believe. Then every 8 PONs would need a card which is about $10,000. ONTs on the house depending on if you go indoor or outdoor can run you between $100 and $1000 depending on it you are going single customer vs business grade with multiple lines and T1s.

A local city, just with permitting, planning and building out what i believe was 12.5 miles of fiber. Nothing connected, no electronics. I think they spent about $1.5 - 2 million on the project.

 

[wizdum]

For how many houses in what size area? We just did a build for about $120,000. However that was 80-90 houses along 2 roads within 2.5 - 3 miles area. Are you telling me that for $120,000 you can plan and build fiber to 17,000 houses in a 200 square mile area with all needed electronics and splitters? My electronics along would run me more than that. What truck are you getting your stuff off of as it falls?

From experience i know that a new cabinet to go into a new area will run me around $40,000 for the basics to get it powered up and connected with no customers. If I can use pre-existing electronics as the feeding point then great, that is less to get started. Every mile of fiber that it takes to get somewhere will run you about $35,000 - $40,000 for aerial, about $50,000 - $60,000 for buried (direct buried, plowed, bored vary inside that range). Size of the fiber doesn't really matter as fiber it cheap, it is the labor that cost you not the actual fiber. As we have been working so far in areas that we already have a fiber backbone to grow from or are close to our electronics to start with we have been able to keep it somewhere around $1200 - $1500 per house connected if we are overbuilding an area and running fiber to every house. We do 1x32 splits for GPON and new cards now support 8 PONs, so for every 32 customers I need an SFP which is a little over a grand i believe. Then every 8 PONs would need a card which is about $10,000. ONTs on the house depending on if you go indoor or outdoor can run you between $100 and $1000 depending on it you are going single customer vs business grade with multiple lines and T1s.

A local city, just with permitting, planning and building out what i believe was 12.5 miles of fiber. Nothing connected, no electronics. I think they spent about $1.5 - 2 million on the project.

Ah, around here a "Rural town" is 2000 houses (~4k people). 17k homes would put you in the top 5 "cities" in the state.

 

[Exavior]

Ah, around here a "Rural town" is 2000 houses (~4k people). 17k homes would put you in the top 5 "cities" in the state.

That is about what we are looking at per town 2000 - 4000 houses. But like I said we cover multiple towns. So take those multiplied by 5, add in a few other outlying areas of other towns that we service and you are somewhere around 15,000 - 17,000 houses. Some areas are in town limits where you have a good number of houses right next to each other. And then you have the people that you go through 10 miles of corn fields to get to that spot where in about 2 square miles you have 5 people.