FCC's Broadband Plan: $15.5 Billion for Deployment

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission will recommend the deployment of a nationwide free or low-cost wireless broadband network, and it will pour at least US$15.5 billion into broadband deployment across the country over the next 10 years under a national broadband plan to be officially released Tuesday.

 

The FCC's national broadband plan, released to reporters Monday, sets a goal of 1G bps (bits per second) service to anchor institutions such as hospitals, schools and government buildings in every U.S. community by 2020 and "affordable" 100M bps service available to 100 million U.S. homes during the same time frame.

 

The first comprehensive plan for broadband in the U.S. also calls on Congress to fund a nationwide wireless broadband network for emergency response agencies, at a cost of $12 billion to $16 billion, and it seeks to free up 500MHz of wireless spectrum for broadband in the next decade.

 

"The National Broadband Plan is a 21st century road map to spur economic growth and investment, create jobs, educate our children, protect our citizens, and engage in our democracy," FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said in a statement. "It's an action plan, and action is necessary to meet the challenges of global competitiveness, and harness the power of broadband to help address so many vital national issues."

.....

The plan outlines several ways for the U.S. to increase broadband speeds and deployment, although it doesn't specifically address how to get to 100M bps for most of the U.S. The plan seeks to lower the cost of deploying broadband by reforming right-of-way rules, and it calls on the FCC to revamp wholesale telecom rates and so-called special access rates paid to large telecom carriers for large-pipe connections between buildings and central switching facilities.

 

The FCC will also establish broadband performance measurement standards and will look at ways to require broadband providers to disclose performance data, according to the plan.

 

To help broadband deployment, the FCC would transition the high-cost program in the Universal Service Fund (USF), which now largely subsidizes traditional telephone service, into a broadband fund. The $4.6-billion-a-year program would transition into a new Connect America Fund over 10 years, with the FCC expecting to put $15.5 billion into broadband deployment over the next decade. To qualify for funding, broadband providers would have to provide service of at least 4M bps.

 

Congress could choose to allocate an additional $9 billion if it wanted to speed the deployment of broadband nationwide, FCC officials said.

 

The Connect America Fund is in addition to the $7.2 billion that Congress approved for broadband deployment in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, passed in early 2009.

(more at the link above)

Edited March 15, 201016 yr by Athomeboy_2000

Lets do this s*** and join the rest of high tech western civilization.

Lets do this s*** and join the rest of high tech western civilization.

We can't join the rest of western civilization. Wellpoint AT&T says so. We have the best system in the world anyway.

As long as it doesn't cost me another f***ing surcharge on my phone bill.

Just to play devil's advocate... what happens to the existing providers of broadband? Will they be the ones playing in this sandbox, much like the privitization of phone companies ended up?

 

Maybe the telecom companies can use all the billions in subsidies they already got to expand broadband capacity and never actually.

Just to play devil's advocate... what happens to the existing providers of broadband? Will they be the ones playing in this sandbox, much like the privitization of phone companies ended up?

Quite frankly, I'm almost certain that's how it'll wind up.

All private industry sucks. Government saves!

 

In the 80's the broke up Ma Bell. Because Ma Bell was a monopoly and was bad. Smashing it into pieces would promote competition, albeit artificial competition.

 

Throughout the late 90's and into the 00's, they slowly reconstructed most of Ma Bell, only they no longer call it that and the same government that broke it up allowed it to be reconstructed, which I really love.

 

Consumers won nothing, costs continued to rise, and now we have a ton of extra taxes, government surcharges and other ridiculous things such as "entertainment fees", which cost upwards of 20$ a month (check your Comcast/DirecTV bills for that one).

 

I'm all for Nationwide Wireless Broadband -- I think it's the way to go, wired is dead, not to mention costly and cumbersome to install. Wireless is the telcom medium of the future, no doubt about it. That said, Mr. Government isn't going to just snap it's fingers and suddenly the entire infrastructure exists. This has to be rolled out...which will take years, and a lot of money. That's fine, I'm still all for it...get it going.

 

But I can tell you where this leads.

 

Internet fees for national/state/local (a tax), increased federal and state taxes, surcharges and usage tier fees. That's where.

 

This is their entry point into the regulation of the Internet.

 

** Keep in mind DARPA created the internet (arpa) and actually attempted to give it away to AT&T, who said they weren't interested. In the history of company blunders...people always point to HP rejecting the personal computer...but no. The biggest blunder of them all was when DARPA asked AT&T to take ownership of arpanet AKA the Internet...and they refused.

 

AT&T could have owned it all.

 

To anyone interested in reading of the true history of the invention now known as the Internet, read this book, you'll like it:

Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins Of The Internet by Katie Hafner

Edited March 16, 201016 yr by Y2HH

All private industry sucks. Government saves!

 

 

Our government sucks! Enron GM Lehman Brothers Walmart saves.

Our government sucks! Enron GM Lehman Brothers Walmart saves.

 

And where is Enron now?

 

Private companies should be allowed to fail, just like Enron failed. I'm not for bailing out private companies. Let them die, someone else will rise up and take the business.

 

The Government, however, cannot die...or the country folds. The Government can run in the red for an indefinite amount of time until a revolution overthrows them and uproots everything the country was.

 

A regular company can operate in the red until they can't continue to operate, then someone else takes the business.

And where is Enron now?

 

Private companies should be allowed to fail, just like Enron failed. I'm not for bailing out private companies. Let them die, someone else will rise up and take the business.

 

The Government, however, cannot die...or the country folds. The Government can run in the red for an indefinite amount of time until a revolution overthrows them and uproots everything the country was.

 

A regular company can operate in the red until they can't continue to operate, then someone else takes the business.

While I generally agree, I think its not always that simple. You can't let the big banks, as they stand now, fail - at least not in a disorderly fashion. They'd have to be brought down carefully. And any really large company, like GM, I do think can and maybe should fail - but again, not without some assistance.

 

And where is Enron now?

 

Private companies should be allowed to fail, just like Enron failed. I'm not for bailing out private companies. Let them die, someone else will rise up and take the business.

 

The Government, however, cannot die...or the country folds. The Government can run in the red for an indefinite amount of time until a revolution overthrows them and uproots everything the country was.

 

A regular company can operate in the red until they can't continue to operate, then someone else takes the business.

 

Exactly. What would happen if say our electrical grid was allowed to fail? Our telecom system? The internet? At some point it is in our national interest to have something that can not be allowed to fail. With our reliance on the internet, it makes sense we make it more bulletproof. It will also allow us to be more competitive in a global economy.

While I generally agree, I think its not always that simple. You can't let the big banks, as they stand now, fail - at least not in a disorderly fashion. They'd have to be brought down carefully. And any really large company, like GM, I do think can and maybe should fail - but again, not without some assistance.

 

When it comes to banks, it becomes more complicated, yes. But I'm not talking about banks.

Edited March 16, 201016 yr by Y2HH

Exactly. What would happen if say our electrical grid was allowed to fail? Our telecom system? The internet? At some point it is in our national interest to have something that can not be allowed to fail. With our reliance on the internet, it makes sense we make it more bulletproof. It will also allow us to be more competitive in a global economy.

 

There are many backbones, and many providers in most areas, and more and more will come in the years ahead.

We had no national broadband policy and we left it to private industry or whatever the hell, and look: http://gizmodo.com/5390014/internet-speeds...-shown-visually

 

For as technologically advanced as we are, that kind of sucks. Japan and S. Korea especially are just b****-slapping everybody else and paying a fraction of the cost for it. That's where we need to be but we're kind of running in place behind everyone else.

We had no national broadband policy and we left it to private industry or whatever the hell, and look: http://gizmodo.com/5390014/internet-speeds...-shown-visually

 

For as technologically advanced as we are, that kind of sucks. Japan and S. Korea especially are just b****-slapping everybody else and paying a fraction of the cost for it. That's where we need to be but we're kind of running in place behind everyone else.

 

Blame it on AT&T. Government saves!

Blame it on whoever, but the government pretty much did nothing at all whereas those other countries that are WAY out front now pushed a broadband policy of some kind, maybe not as aggressively as Japan, but at least they did something. Here we assumed the picture would paint itself. It never did.

And where is Enron now?

 

ask tom skilling

We had no national broadband policy and we left it to private industry or whatever the hell, and look: http://gizmodo.com/5390014/internet-speeds...-shown-visually

 

For as technologically advanced as we are, that kind of sucks. Japan and S. Korea especially are just b****-slapping everybody else and paying a fraction of the cost for it. That's where we need to be but we're kind of running in place behind everyone else.

Yeah, but you have to admit that this is where our size really hurts us. If all we had to infrastructure was something the size of California, I am sure we could be much farther along the line here than we are now...

Yeah, it doesn't help, but the nationwide infrastructure is already there (fiber-optic, etc) and that's the easy part, the hard part is delivering it to homes, and we only just started.

Yeah, but you have to admit that this is where our size really hurts us. If all we had to infrastructure was something the size of California, I am sure we could be much farther along the line here than we are now...

Yeah, we'll both agree that providing really high speed broadband access in the middle of the Beartooth mountains is going to be difficult, but even what you cite...California, the equivalent of the world's 7th or 8th biggest economy depending on how bad they've collapsed this month, still lags vastly behind other countries. Ditto the Northeast corridor with NYC and Boston. Even the high-density urban areas lag vastly behind the rest of the world.

This how we managed to get electricity to everyone. Private business was not interested in serving all of America.

This how we managed to get electricity to everyone. Private business was not interested in serving all of America.

We privatized the electric grids in a lot of places over the last few decades, and I can't think of a single thing that's gone wrong.

Man, what the f*** can be done without government saving us all?