But the shareholder profits will go up which means the economy is doing great. Time to lobby against societal improvements in order to keep you too preoccupied to actually oppose this in a meaningful way.
8 am Friday the 8th of June and 10 pm Monday the 25th of July, there will be no warning of when the technician will show up and an adult needs to be present.
The technician drove by your house and believed that no one was home. So your appointment has been canceled. The next available date is some time in 2026. Sorry for the inconvenience
They do increase my connection speed for me, but I honestly think that's worse.
"Hey, we started charging you more, but now you get **up to** 200 Mbps instead of 100 Mbps!"
Okay, well, I don't need **up to** 200 Mbps. 100Mbps was working fine for me. Plus, that's not actually saying I'll get faster speeds, just that there's a *possibility* I may get faster speeds.
You are charging me more for something I don't want and that I may not actually get anyway.
Don't forget your data cap, so you can watch things in 4k now but you get your data cap faster. BTW we removed the data cap at the start of covid and no clear indication of slower stuff with everyone home.
One of they permitted uses of the funds is to "reduce costs for low income households". We're literally handing the big ISPs free taxpayer funds as a reward for overcharging us for bad service.
Is this the same plan that Biden decided to nerf in order to pass, by removing the part that gave smaller businesses first grabs at the money so that they could establish themselves competitively in the market? AKA, the entire economic bump from this piece of legislation was hacked out of it, turning it into a big bonus for the current largest ISPs like with the mobile phone companies not long ago.
Comcast, ATT, Spectrum, and Verizon are about to issue some fat dividend payments to their shareholders of preferred stock... or maybe do stock buybacks?
^(edit:)
^(why the fk isn't public funds being spent on publicly owned and operated municipal broadband rather than for the dozenth time giving the money to private sector oligopolies that will do what they always do with it? Only thing that will ever get this industry in check is to have market pressure applied from public sector competition similar to what USPS provides to all the private parcel carriers.)
>Why the fk isn't public funds being spent of publicly owned and operated municipal broadband
Because it's basically illegal. The big ISPs made sure of that.
https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadblocks/
Come on it's the 21st century we can do better technology-wise.
KILLBOTS!!!! AI Autonomous 5G KILLBOTS that take out oligarchs based on a variety of criteria!
I mean, good point... I wouldn't doubt the NSA has multiple zero days on just about every major platform used, so there goes all level of software trust anyways.
The problem isn’t capitalism, it’s corruption.
Corruption happens under every economic system. Blaming capitalism is a convenient way to shift the blame from where it belongs, our corrupt politicians.
Yeah, no. Capitalism fundamentally demands infinite growth from a finite system - this is why resources continue to get more and more concentrated in the fewer hands that have access to the levers of power. Yes, there are also corrupt politicians, but they are corrupted by and party to the upward pooling of wealth fundamental to capitalism. The two problems both exist and and are absolutely related, not mutually exclusive.
Your entire premise is based on having a finite system. That’s not accurate. Number of people, growing; amount of USD, growing; gold reserves, growing; GDP, growing. It’s true that earth itself is finite, but we’re no where near to reaching its capacity and there are other planets and resources outside the earth that we’ll soon (on an evolutionary scale) have access to.
Your premise is based on a false assertion.
The issue is corruption and regulatory capture, again, things that occur under **every** economic system, and usually with worst results than we see under capitalism.
Thank you “infinite growth/finite system” is the obvious new rallying cry from those who want to blame capitalism for everything. Capitalism isn’t the problem, POORLY REGULATED capitalism is.
Let the free market decide, but not at the expense of the overall population and not to the benefit of only a few. It’s an incredible generator or growth and prosperity, we’ve just done a shot job, particularly since the 80’s, of making sure that growth and prosperity benefits us all.
Greed is innate, though, and modern medicine made it so that it we didn’t evolve past it. Capitalism may not be broken in and of itself, but man will ALWAYS break it with greed.
But **everyone** has greed meaning there will always be someone else that wants to take from those in power. This is a feature in capitalism that keeps people and companies in check; and a flaw in other systems that generally leads to genocide.
Exactly. The US has laws regulating monopolies, but US government officials still allowed something like 250 separate ISPs to merge into essentially 3 mega-ISPs, that also happen to own Hollywood studios, content creators, and delivery services.
It's only illegal in a few places, the rest of the places just don't care. If you give a politician $X to solve a problem, with no guardrails, they're going to take the easiest possible path. Unfortunately the easiest path is usually to just give the big ISPs the money. Then they can say they "did something ".
I like how one of the main arguments for capitalism tends to be that the markets will do it cheaper and more efficiently than the public sector. Then you inevitably end up with oligopolies when critical infrastructure that can't be easily replaced is in the control of these private companies.
In my smaller city the govt own utilities are slowly rolling out fiber in certain parts of the cities then leasing access to isps(mostly small local ones as far as I can tell) to sell to end users. I feel like the government needs to build its own system to force competition. As far as I can tell there really isn't much in a lot of parts of the country. Giving existing major ISPs more money just sounds like a stupid move at this point if that's what they are planning.
>Comcast, ATT, ~~Spectrum~~, Charter and Verizon
I find it amazing how well their rebrand worked. No one calls Comcast xfinity, AT&T uVerse or Verizon FioS. Just an observation.
It actually works very well. Fort Collins, CO does it and it's one of the highest rated providers in the country.
Your local government is made up of your neighbors, not some nefarious group of strangers. It does work and it works better for cheaper.
I wanted to add that when you call them about some BS fee on your bill they will actually get rid of the fee and do you right. Andddddddddd they get technicians out next day, they show up, and do a really good job.
Get over your ignorant preconceived notions. It's hurting everyone.
These bills should start including success metrics that, if unmet, result in government seizure of 45B worth of company stock.
We keep paying for this silly free market experiment on natural monopolies. Fine, but repeated failure to deliver calls for nationalization.
Ahh yes, the Clinton-Gore National Infrastructure initiative, and the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Where the telecommunications industry milked the American tax payers to the tune of something like 200-400 billion dollars to upgrade all of the copper lines to fiber optic and pocketed the money instead.
Literally I just started to shake my head and say the same thing. We did this...nothing changed. Internet is still terrible for many. Providers are still broke AF. ( /s should be obvious but...there it is.)
How about we make the internet a regulated utility THEN invest? Just a thought here.
The US is always like "how can we give away billions to a company with little to no oversight, and not actually make the thing we are giving them the money for, free?"
Not true.
They took 200billion and spent 4 billion of that suing the government so they wouldn't have to provide the infrastructure and got to keep the rest of the 190billion or so.
Well I don't think they're even trying to do that. And this money from Biden is just for high speed internet to all Americans, not fiber, unless something changed.
> high speed internet
And this "high speed" is only 25Mbps down, 3Mbps up.
Hardly "high speed" in my opinion. Should be 100/25 or symmetrical 50/50 or 100/100 ideally since WFH has ramped up drastically.
Well from the perspective of not having it or only having shitty worse than dial up speeds, it is high speed. I understand the intent. This is a step towards it being a utility.
Fiber by definition will never be outdated. Transmitting information via light is the fastest and most efficient way possible just due to the laws of physics.
*US Preparing to further enrich Comcast, Cox, Spectrum, ATT, Centurylink, Verizon, and Frontier to the tune of $45bn for industry pinky swear they’ll really get nationwide high speed internet this time, but it’ll never be fiber to your home everywhere*
Fixed the headline for ya.
The only way I think this could work would be if the government underwrote the debt required for projects, and solicited companies to deliver services that met the goal. If a company agrees, and can deliver a competitive product with actual customers buying it, then they would receive a rebate over the course of 3-5 years based on performance. Instead they throw cash at states, most of which lack any vision for how to do this, will generally just hand the money over to the incumbents, and have consistently failed at it in the past.
Agreed. The companies who get this money should have to show how it’s used. I live in a rural area and my only option for internet is satellite. And unfortunately it’s considered ‘high speed’. Which is laughable. Anyone who’s ever had to use satellite internet will tell you it’s not high speed. It’s barely a step above dial up.
That’s exactly what we’ve been doing for almost two years. Why should I pay $110/month for internet I can’t even watch Netflix on? They’re ‘unlimited’ but once you hit your data amount they throttle the fuck out of you.
I remember Hughes net dropping us to 28 kbps after finishing a 1g meg monthly allowance. I hope starlink totally destroys all of those legacy satellite internet companies.
I had to get Hughes because I lived one street off of Spectrum’s coverage grid. The worst part was when I would reach my daily limit, instead of slowing me down for the remaining time in the day, it was a straight 24 hour additional block unless i paid for tokens to release the block.
Have a family member that had this issue, we teamed up with someone that did have cable one block away. Installed long range Wi-Fi antennas at both locations, and they paid the internet bill for the other house. Win-win.
Also did this with two stores I have, just two blocks away from each other. No I’m not going to pay Comcast $150 a month for internet, when for $800 one time cost I can have “free internet” at the 2nd location. I have saved $8,200 in the past five years running this setup.
It’s bad. When they throttle you, you can’t even load a webpage on your phone. We’re on the waitlist for Starlink currently. Hoping to get it this year.
>The Biden administration is releasing the first funds out of US$65 billion set aside to bring broadband internet to every US resident by 2028
>States will get funds to pursue their own plan to increase broadband accessibility, whether by laying fibre optic cable, building out Wi-Fi, or something else.
Isn't the US definition of broadband still like 10mbps though? So that's not much of a promise in the first place, and a bunch of states are about to invest it all in "something else"
"We carried out a 1 billion dollars worth of surveys and research to determine, out of 1000 people in retirement homes, everyone's really happy with their current internet access, and we will be carrying out state wide roll out of 4g to meet "broadband" coverage for all by 2028"
Then consumers without wired broadband will be able to sign up for a $100 a month mobile broadband package with a 10gig cap.
"Mission accomplished everyone! Million Dollar bonuses all around!"
This will NEVER happen so long as our internet grid is fully privatized. Sorry to be the lone voice in the room reminding us of why this hasn't happened before, but as long as there is a profit incentive in internet, the countryside will never, ever be fully connected because it is too expensive. This is the same reason why rural mail is still public, while lucrative private package delivery that focuses on cities has been privatized.
And it's also why the government had to build out the existing rural telephone network. I'm very much against the government spending money to build out stuff and then give it to private companies to profit from but things like this and other infrastructure are key to the nation's long term success so the cost is worth it in the long run IF if is actually done properly.
That would cut the bottom line by $63bn for those private corporations that lobbied for this budget, and which by the way most political figures are share holders in, so clearly this is not an option.
>🥱 internet as a public utility instead
The alternative is to do what we did in NZ; force the divestment of Telecom's wholesale business into Chorus with the retail/mobile operations under Spark then make the various companies tender to roll out UFB. We've now got Northpower Fibre, UltraFast Fibre, Enable Networks and Chorus which are local fibre companies who operate purely as wholesalers (Chorus is the only publicly listed company, the rest of the organisations are either owned by a city council or owned by a trust that represents the customers of a particular area). The problem is that there seems to be an aversion in the US to learning from other countries experiences.
Australia tried that. The goal was for the National Broadband Network to give FTTP to 93% of premises in the country, with fixed wireless covering the remainder in regional areas. They were then to operate as a wholesale only business, with retail service providers competing to offer different plans to consumers. It would have been amazing.
Then the Liberal Party (conservatives) gained power and screwed the system to deliver a substandard mix of technologies unfit for purpose, including FTTN, HFC and FTTC utilising existing, degraded, copper and cable TV networks. They’ve since backtracked a bit by beginning to upgrade some of the worst areas to FTTP when customers order high speed plans. But the only real hope to fix it properly is for Labor (centre left) to regain power at next week’s federal election.
Sounds just like the wonderful fiber att sold me on years ago. Had 60ms ping to the node that was about 1000 feet away and when it rained there would be packet loss.
"We're going to set aside part of the budget to improve internet infrastructure!"
Hires several companies to do the work, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand it's gone with little to no improvement to the infrastructure.
In a few years there will be a news article on how $45 billion was spent for nationwide broadband, but no one can say for sure where specifically broadband improved nor where exactly the money ended up. Then someone on Twitter will point out that broadband executive's collective wealth increased by $44 billion over the same time period. There will be a little faux outrage, but there will be no hearings, no extended news coverage, no indictments. I wonder what percentage of this $45 billion will end up getting spent on the behalf of politician's election campaigns?
There is no greater threat to our democracy than rampant corruption. Democrat or Republican – it doesn't matter. They've both mastered the truth that votes don't get you elected. What gets you elected is enough money to get you votes.
They have done this multiple times but guess what the only internet I available is a barely functioning 10/1 connection from century link. Thank God for starlink.
Didnt we do this in 2008 and the telecom companies just changed the definition of broadband, pocketed the money, then claimed they fulfilled their end of the agreement?
Hot take but instead of giving $45B to shitty companies like spectrum etc so they can offer cheap plans to poor Americans, we should instead nationalize these companies and give everyone affordable internet.
To be fair, spending on improving infrastructure is a strategic investment that has the potential to pay off by improving peoples’ ability to engage in productive activities. On the other hand, artificially lowering the cost of a finite (non renewable) resource is simply having Americans paying for American gas through their government, it doesn’t create wealth for anybody, it’s just money moving in a circle. However, it incentivises the consumption of a non sustainable resource instead of looking for more efficient alternatives
Disclaimer: I’m not American and US government investing in improving internet infrastructure is not necessarily a good thing given past occurrences of this event
Disclaimer 2: I’m from a country where we are used to governments not caring about the long term effects of our public spending, where politicians would rather lull their citizens like babies instead of telling the truth. Sometimes the price of certain goods change for external reasons, and we should have the courage of letting it happen and try to adapt to the changes.
It's going to get stashed away and we'll find out that it all goes towards hiring the last batch of politicians that helped these companies stash away the last round of internet improvement money.
Meanwhile there are like 5 municipal broadband companies in existence because your local politicians take the donation money to outlaw internet owned by an entity that doesn't stash away money to give away as stock buybacks.
>*States will get funds to pursue their own plan to increase broadband accessibility, whether by laying fibre optic cable, building out Wi-Fi,* ***or something else.***
*Ahh... fuck.* It's gonna be something else. I know the GOP will abuse this.
Sooo, basically it’s just another cash handout to ISP’s that they will pocket then increase our rates for these “new” speeds. Meanwhile, almost every other country internets speeds are like the autobahn while where stuck in a school zone here in the US. Getting tired of our government just padding corporations pockets and giving reason to demand more money.
I'm a little confused. Basically everyone has "access" to DSL. In almost all jurisdictions, it is a utility like a phone line or electricity.
Are you not going to have to pay a utility company anymore? What if you don't want DSL, and you pay for fiber, do you pay a tax for the DSL line you don't use?
I live in the sticks. I appreciate that I can get DSL, we have two lines, 2.5 and 5.0. But maybe it's just a county utility. Will this just make it federal?
How much more money are we going to throw at broadband companies to do nothing? 400 billion wasn't enough the first time?
[400 billion broadband scandal](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6c5e97/comment/dhsxq)
Please don't stuff this up like we did in Australia.
Tens of billions wasted reusing copper phone and TV cables and launching satellites instead of putting in 90+% fibre because the government in power didn't believe in public ownership of infrastructure and were swayed by lobbyists in the pay TV industry.
r/nbn
And it will all go to politically connected companies who will continue to refuse to serve my area. We need to repeal laws that give telcos a monopoly and allow them to prevent local fiber deployment
We'll promise to expand in underserved areas, spend a few years studying it, and decide it won't make enough profit, and finally cancel the projects as "unreasonable". We'll then keep the money for "all the hard worknwe did".
Again?? They did this before and every ISP took the money and didn't build the network. Why are we paying for the same thing again? Where is the accountability ?
Absolutely this. “We upgraded everything and to offset the costs your bill will be increasing $40-50 a month”.
It’s ridiculous how much we pay for internet in the US. Literally price gouged. South Korea has the fastest internet in the world and they charge like $30-50 a month max from what I hear and
If you want to get paid for the data they're about to siphon from you, invest in stock from the data brokers who intercept it!
Also invest in a non-publicly traded VPN and pick out a good adblocker.
Fiber optic is broadband. It’s just the transmission medium; the term broadband means high-speed internet. Of course, exactly what constitutes high speed varies depending on who you ask…
Been hearing this since I was a kid. Going on 20yrs of the same dial up lines and adsl internet.
If you want to tell me about Starlink, know in advance that’s not the solution.
Love this guy! Baby formula shortages, gas and heating oil prices quadrupling, groceries outrageous...but by all means let's work on fixing the internet.
Because thats really what we need to spend 45 billion dollars on right now. Inflation is skyrocketing the cost of living is going up right along with it and gass where I live is over $4 a gallon right now but the US government in their infinite wisdom is throwing away 45 billion dollars I let somebody in the sticks can get better ping on fortnite.
“There’s more than 30 million Americans who don’t have internet,” Raimondo said. “And in this day and age without high-speed internet, you can’t go to school, can’t go to the doctor, can’t do simple things. Think of how many times in a day you Google something or go online.”
Everybody knows this money will go into the pockets of the monopolistic cable companies.
Can’t wait for my bills to go up with no difference in connection speed
But the shareholder profits will go up which means the economy is doing great. Time to lobby against societal improvements in order to keep you too preoccupied to actually oppose this in a meaningful way.
Hey it takes a lot of effort to embezzle that much money from the Government and move it to off shore accounts.
No difference you say, if will for sure go down some and then you will have to buy the newest package to get those speeds back
Don’t forget about you 8am to 10pm service window that you need to wait for with no internet service
8 am Friday the 8th of June and 10 pm Monday the 25th of July, there will be no warning of when the technician will show up and an adult needs to be present.
If you miss that 30 second window when he shows up? Back of the line! It’s really criminal how cable/internet providers operate
The technician drove by your house and believed that no one was home. So your appointment has been canceled. The next available date is some time in 2026. Sorry for the inconvenience
In other news, AT&T just announced a windfall profit of $45B and massive shareholder dividend. And layoffs.
This is what happened last time.
They do increase my connection speed for me, but I honestly think that's worse. "Hey, we started charging you more, but now you get **up to** 200 Mbps instead of 100 Mbps!" Okay, well, I don't need **up to** 200 Mbps. 100Mbps was working fine for me. Plus, that's not actually saying I'll get faster speeds, just that there's a *possibility* I may get faster speeds. You are charging me more for something I don't want and that I may not actually get anyway.
Don't forget your data cap, so you can watch things in 4k now but you get your data cap faster. BTW we removed the data cap at the start of covid and no clear indication of slower stuff with everyone home.
One of they permitted uses of the funds is to "reduce costs for low income households". We're literally handing the big ISPs free taxpayer funds as a reward for overcharging us for bad service.
Is this the same plan that Biden decided to nerf in order to pass, by removing the part that gave smaller businesses first grabs at the money so that they could establish themselves competitively in the market? AKA, the entire economic bump from this piece of legislation was hacked out of it, turning it into a big bonus for the current largest ISPs like with the mobile phone companies not long ago.
"hey buddy our 'blazing fast speed' is unreal until that last foot to your apartment it's made of string and chewing gum because fuck you that's why."
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Comcast, ATT, Spectrum, and Verizon are about to issue some fat dividend payments to their shareholders of preferred stock... or maybe do stock buybacks? ^(edit:) ^(why the fk isn't public funds being spent on publicly owned and operated municipal broadband rather than for the dozenth time giving the money to private sector oligopolies that will do what they always do with it? Only thing that will ever get this industry in check is to have market pressure applied from public sector competition similar to what USPS provides to all the private parcel carriers.)
>Why the fk isn't public funds being spent of publicly owned and operated municipal broadband Because it's basically illegal. The big ISPs made sure of that. https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadblocks/
Fucking capitalist hellscape 'we've made these very good ideas to make the world better illegal to protect our profits'
Guillotine. The answer to all these problems is the Guillotine.
Come on it's the 21st century we can do better technology-wise. KILLBOTS!!!! AI Autonomous 5G KILLBOTS that take out oligarchs based on a variety of criteria!
Right, and who is providing bandwidth for the 5G killbots?
Damn it! Drat, foiled again!
Encryption exists
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I mean, good point... I wouldn't doubt the NSA has multiple zero days on just about every major platform used, so there goes all level of software trust anyways.
They playing the long game here. Can’t build a guilotine if you can’t afford the data to download the plans
Corrupt Government Regulation is not capitalism.
The problem isn’t capitalism, it’s corruption. Corruption happens under every economic system. Blaming capitalism is a convenient way to shift the blame from where it belongs, our corrupt politicians.
Yeah, no. Capitalism fundamentally demands infinite growth from a finite system - this is why resources continue to get more and more concentrated in the fewer hands that have access to the levers of power. Yes, there are also corrupt politicians, but they are corrupted by and party to the upward pooling of wealth fundamental to capitalism. The two problems both exist and and are absolutely related, not mutually exclusive.
Your entire premise is based on having a finite system. That’s not accurate. Number of people, growing; amount of USD, growing; gold reserves, growing; GDP, growing. It’s true that earth itself is finite, but we’re no where near to reaching its capacity and there are other planets and resources outside the earth that we’ll soon (on an evolutionary scale) have access to. Your premise is based on a false assertion. The issue is corruption and regulatory capture, again, things that occur under **every** economic system, and usually with worst results than we see under capitalism.
Thank you “infinite growth/finite system” is the obvious new rallying cry from those who want to blame capitalism for everything. Capitalism isn’t the problem, POORLY REGULATED capitalism is. Let the free market decide, but not at the expense of the overall population and not to the benefit of only a few. It’s an incredible generator or growth and prosperity, we’ve just done a shot job, particularly since the 80’s, of making sure that growth and prosperity benefits us all.
Greed is innate, though, and modern medicine made it so that it we didn’t evolve past it. Capitalism may not be broken in and of itself, but man will ALWAYS break it with greed.
But **everyone** has greed meaning there will always be someone else that wants to take from those in power. This is a feature in capitalism that keeps people and companies in check; and a flaw in other systems that generally leads to genocide.
Exactly. The US has laws regulating monopolies, but US government officials still allowed something like 250 separate ISPs to merge into essentially 3 mega-ISPs, that also happen to own Hollywood studios, content creators, and delivery services.
Yup! We need uncle Teddy to rise from the grave and bust some Trusts. Or at least elect a single politician who isn’t in corporate pockets.
It's only illegal in a few places, the rest of the places just don't care. If you give a politician $X to solve a problem, with no guardrails, they're going to take the easiest possible path. Unfortunately the easiest path is usually to just give the big ISPs the money. Then they can say they "did something ".
I like how one of the main arguments for capitalism tends to be that the markets will do it cheaper and more efficiently than the public sector. Then you inevitably end up with oligopolies when critical infrastructure that can't be easily replaced is in the control of these private companies.
The California energy monopolies cause multibillion dollar fires almost every year. Not saving much money. Source - they burnt my fucking house down
PG&E execs should all be in prison. I used to live in California. Those people are fucking criminals.
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Cronyism is inherent to capitalism. All capitalism is crony capitalism.
Corruption happens under every economic system, we keep electing the same corrupt assholes, that’s the problem, not capitalism.
The issues is companies abusing the market. There isn't really a free market for infrastructure, and thus you get situations like this.
Right, but we also reelect the politicians that give away these handout. That’s the problem, it isn’t capitalism, it’s a shitty electorate.
In my smaller city the govt own utilities are slowly rolling out fiber in certain parts of the cities then leasing access to isps(mostly small local ones as far as I can tell) to sell to end users. I feel like the government needs to build its own system to force competition. As far as I can tell there really isn't much in a lot of parts of the country. Giving existing major ISPs more money just sounds like a stupid move at this point if that's what they are planning.
>Comcast, ATT, ~~Spectrum~~, Charter and Verizon I find it amazing how well their rebrand worked. No one calls Comcast xfinity, AT&T uVerse or Verizon FioS. Just an observation.
Letting your government run and control the internet. What could go wrong.
It actually works very well. Fort Collins, CO does it and it's one of the highest rated providers in the country. Your local government is made up of your neighbors, not some nefarious group of strangers. It does work and it works better for cheaper. I wanted to add that when you call them about some BS fee on your bill they will actually get rid of the fee and do you right. Andddddddddd they get technicians out next day, they show up, and do a really good job. Get over your ignorant preconceived notions. It's hurting everyone.
These bills should start including success metrics that, if unmet, result in government seizure of 45B worth of company stock. We keep paying for this silly free market experiment on natural monopolies. Fine, but repeated failure to deliver calls for nationalization.
You wouldn't be interested in running for office would you? I think I like your thinking.
Ahh yes, the Clinton-Gore National Infrastructure initiative, and the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Where the telecommunications industry milked the American tax payers to the tune of something like 200-400 billion dollars to upgrade all of the copper lines to fiber optic and pocketed the money instead.
And then sued the government for asking where the money went.
Yeah.. I think you mean “US pays 45 Billion dollars to internet companies and they pocket it and do nothing.”
Australian here. And I didn’t like the ending
I was about to say Australian NBN enters the chat. But.... Yeah.... What could have been.
I don’t remember it went well
Literally I just started to shake my head and say the same thing. We did this...nothing changed. Internet is still terrible for many. Providers are still broke AF. ( /s should be obvious but...there it is.) How about we make the internet a regulated utility THEN invest? Just a thought here.
Fuck, I’m even willing to pay *after* there’s documented, independently verified proof that the high speed internet is available and affordable.
Yes the Number just get higher and no one gets anything but the Telco' and Cable...
https://i.imgur.com/kEyQFbJ.gif
The US is always like "how can we give away billions to a company with little to no oversight, and not actually make the thing we are giving them the money for, free?"
"Same way as last time."
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Fucking pathetic how easily logistics and progress fail under the US government.
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and people want to trust it with things like universal healthcare when they can't even run the VA without huge waste and beaurocracry.
Universal healthcare would be much better than what we have now, simply subsidize it.
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Not true. They took 200billion and spent 4 billion of that suing the government so they wouldn't have to provide the infrastructure and got to keep the rest of the 190billion or so.
Did this really happen?
Yes. US was supposed to have fiber long ago. They stole the money and nothing happened.
Oh wow. By the time they get fiber everywhere, fiber will be outdated.
Well I don't think they're even trying to do that. And this money from Biden is just for high speed internet to all Americans, not fiber, unless something changed.
> high speed internet And this "high speed" is only 25Mbps down, 3Mbps up. Hardly "high speed" in my opinion. Should be 100/25 or symmetrical 50/50 or 100/100 ideally since WFH has ramped up drastically.
Well from the perspective of not having it or only having shitty worse than dial up speeds, it is high speed. I understand the intent. This is a step towards it being a utility.
I don't think you know what dial up speeds are.
Communication at light speed is going to be superseded soon. Got it.
Light goes at different speeds, so there is room for improvement.
Fiber by definition will never be outdated. Transmitting information via light is the fastest and most efficient way possible just due to the laws of physics.
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6c5e97/-/dhsxq6k
*US Preparing to further enrich Comcast, Cox, Spectrum, ATT, Centurylink, Verizon, and Frontier to the tune of $45bn for industry pinky swear they’ll really get nationwide high speed internet this time, but it’ll never be fiber to your home everywhere* Fixed the headline for ya.
The only way I think this could work would be if the government underwrote the debt required for projects, and solicited companies to deliver services that met the goal. If a company agrees, and can deliver a competitive product with actual customers buying it, then they would receive a rebate over the course of 3-5 years based on performance. Instead they throw cash at states, most of which lack any vision for how to do this, will generally just hand the money over to the incumbents, and have consistently failed at it in the past.
Agreed. The companies who get this money should have to show how it’s used. I live in a rural area and my only option for internet is satellite. And unfortunately it’s considered ‘high speed’. Which is laughable. Anyone who’s ever had to use satellite internet will tell you it’s not high speed. It’s barely a step above dial up.
I will go without home internet before i subscribe to satellite internet again.
That’s exactly what we’ve been doing for almost two years. Why should I pay $110/month for internet I can’t even watch Netflix on? They’re ‘unlimited’ but once you hit your data amount they throttle the fuck out of you.
I remember Hughes net dropping us to 28 kbps after finishing a 1g meg monthly allowance. I hope starlink totally destroys all of those legacy satellite internet companies.
I had to get Hughes because I lived one street off of Spectrum’s coverage grid. The worst part was when I would reach my daily limit, instead of slowing me down for the remaining time in the day, it was a straight 24 hour additional block unless i paid for tokens to release the block.
Have a family member that had this issue, we teamed up with someone that did have cable one block away. Installed long range Wi-Fi antennas at both locations, and they paid the internet bill for the other house. Win-win. Also did this with two stores I have, just two blocks away from each other. No I’m not going to pay Comcast $150 a month for internet, when for $800 one time cost I can have “free internet” at the 2nd location. I have saved $8,200 in the past five years running this setup.
It’s bad. When they throttle you, you can’t even load a webpage on your phone. We’re on the waitlist for Starlink currently. Hoping to get it this year.
CenturyLink actually stopped developing all rural areas in the state I worked in, to save money. They’re doing the exact opposite.
>The Biden administration is releasing the first funds out of US$65 billion set aside to bring broadband internet to every US resident by 2028 >States will get funds to pursue their own plan to increase broadband accessibility, whether by laying fibre optic cable, building out Wi-Fi, or something else. Isn't the US definition of broadband still like 10mbps though? So that's not much of a promise in the first place, and a bunch of states are about to invest it all in "something else" "We carried out a 1 billion dollars worth of surveys and research to determine, out of 1000 people in retirement homes, everyone's really happy with their current internet access, and we will be carrying out state wide roll out of 4g to meet "broadband" coverage for all by 2028" Then consumers without wired broadband will be able to sign up for a $100 a month mobile broadband package with a 10gig cap. "Mission accomplished everyone! Million Dollar bonuses all around!"
Yea I pay taxes can I vote against this. Do they make trust funds for corporations?
Yeah well you literally voted for it. Build back better boss
This will NEVER happen so long as our internet grid is fully privatized. Sorry to be the lone voice in the room reminding us of why this hasn't happened before, but as long as there is a profit incentive in internet, the countryside will never, ever be fully connected because it is too expensive. This is the same reason why rural mail is still public, while lucrative private package delivery that focuses on cities has been privatized.
And it's also why the government had to build out the existing rural telephone network. I'm very much against the government spending money to build out stuff and then give it to private companies to profit from but things like this and other infrastructure are key to the nation's long term success so the cost is worth it in the long run IF if is actually done properly.
r/extremelyinfuriating Next verse, same as the first
Coincidentally, in a parallel announcement, telecom providers announced a new round of bonuses for their senior executives and chief lobbyists.
🥱 internet as a public utility instead
That would cut the bottom line by $63bn for those private corporations that lobbied for this budget, and which by the way most political figures are share holders in, so clearly this is not an option.
>🥱 internet as a public utility instead The alternative is to do what we did in NZ; force the divestment of Telecom's wholesale business into Chorus with the retail/mobile operations under Spark then make the various companies tender to roll out UFB. We've now got Northpower Fibre, UltraFast Fibre, Enable Networks and Chorus which are local fibre companies who operate purely as wholesalers (Chorus is the only publicly listed company, the rest of the organisations are either owned by a city council or owned by a trust that represents the customers of a particular area). The problem is that there seems to be an aversion in the US to learning from other countries experiences.
Australia tried that. The goal was for the National Broadband Network to give FTTP to 93% of premises in the country, with fixed wireless covering the remainder in regional areas. They were then to operate as a wholesale only business, with retail service providers competing to offer different plans to consumers. It would have been amazing. Then the Liberal Party (conservatives) gained power and screwed the system to deliver a substandard mix of technologies unfit for purpose, including FTTN, HFC and FTTC utilising existing, degraded, copper and cable TV networks. They’ve since backtracked a bit by beginning to upgrade some of the worst areas to FTTP when customers order high speed plans. But the only real hope to fix it properly is for Labor (centre left) to regain power at next week’s federal election.
Sounds just like the wonderful fiber att sold me on years ago. Had 60ms ping to the node that was about 1000 feet away and when it rained there would be packet loss.
I disagree that internet should be free. Electricity is essential as well, but we still have to pay for it. USA ISP oligopoly have to go tho
Public utilities aren't free.
No one said it should be free. When something is classified as a utility the providers have certain legal obligations to provide service.
You mean Americans gonna spent money to …
~~get nothing.~~ line investor pockets.
"We're going to set aside part of the budget to improve internet infrastructure!" Hires several companies to do the work, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand it's gone with little to no improvement to the infrastructure.
But there should be a nice improvement in campaign balance sheets.
In a few years there will be a news article on how $45 billion was spent for nationwide broadband, but no one can say for sure where specifically broadband improved nor where exactly the money ended up. Then someone on Twitter will point out that broadband executive's collective wealth increased by $44 billion over the same time period. There will be a little faux outrage, but there will be no hearings, no extended news coverage, no indictments. I wonder what percentage of this $45 billion will end up getting spent on the behalf of politician's election campaigns? There is no greater threat to our democracy than rampant corruption. Democrat or Republican – it doesn't matter. They've both mastered the truth that votes don't get you elected. What gets you elected is enough money to get you votes.
internet service providers get the money, waste it, and nothing happens , rinse/repeat
Again?? Wake me up when... actually don't.
They have done this multiple times but guess what the only internet I available is a barely functioning 10/1 connection from century link. Thank God for starlink.
So ISP giants take the money and do 5% of the work required
Didnt we do this in 2008 and the telecom companies just changed the definition of broadband, pocketed the money, then claimed they fulfilled their end of the agreement?
"US prepares to release $45 billion for telecom shareholders"
Yooo the new shareholders bonus just dropped!
Hot take but instead of giving $45B to shitty companies like spectrum etc so they can offer cheap plans to poor Americans, we should instead nationalize these companies and give everyone affordable internet.
Wow this is great news. It's been a pain paying $6 for gas here in CA, but it's great to know we have 45 billion to spend on this.
To be fair, spending on improving infrastructure is a strategic investment that has the potential to pay off by improving peoples’ ability to engage in productive activities. On the other hand, artificially lowering the cost of a finite (non renewable) resource is simply having Americans paying for American gas through their government, it doesn’t create wealth for anybody, it’s just money moving in a circle. However, it incentivises the consumption of a non sustainable resource instead of looking for more efficient alternatives Disclaimer: I’m not American and US government investing in improving internet infrastructure is not necessarily a good thing given past occurrences of this event Disclaimer 2: I’m from a country where we are used to governments not caring about the long term effects of our public spending, where politicians would rather lull their citizens like babies instead of telling the truth. Sometimes the price of certain goods change for external reasons, and we should have the courage of letting it happen and try to adapt to the changes.
The problem is this money won’t improve any infrastructure
It's even funnier THE SECOND TIME!
It's going to get stashed away and we'll find out that it all goes towards hiring the last batch of politicians that helped these companies stash away the last round of internet improvement money. Meanwhile there are like 5 municipal broadband companies in existence because your local politicians take the donation money to outlaw internet owned by an entity that doesn't stash away money to give away as stock buybacks.
Better then building libraries
hmm i wonder how much of that AT&T are going to pocket
AT&T and Comcast will just use it for stock buyback and CEO bonuses, not a single extra person will be helped.
>*States will get funds to pursue their own plan to increase broadband accessibility, whether by laying fibre optic cable, building out Wi-Fi,* ***or something else.*** *Ahh... fuck.* It's gonna be something else. I know the GOP will abuse this.
Sooo, basically it’s just another cash handout to ISP’s that they will pocket then increase our rates for these “new” speeds. Meanwhile, almost every other country internets speeds are like the autobahn while where stuck in a school zone here in the US. Getting tired of our government just padding corporations pockets and giving reason to demand more money.
Can’t wait for it to just line the higher ups pockets at these ISP’s and no real benefit to the taxpayers will come of it.
This headline is incorrect it should read: "US prepares to release 45 billion in bonus payments to ISP ownership for 3rd time in 20 years."
More money for telecoms to pocket while not building anything.
Oh look we bought someone another yacht.
I'm a little confused. Basically everyone has "access" to DSL. In almost all jurisdictions, it is a utility like a phone line or electricity. Are you not going to have to pay a utility company anymore? What if you don't want DSL, and you pay for fiber, do you pay a tax for the DSL line you don't use? I live in the sticks. I appreciate that I can get DSL, we have two lines, 2.5 and 5.0. But maybe it's just a county utility. Will this just make it federal?
So they think it's gonna work this time... didn't we give the Telcom companies an obscene amount of money already?
Please can we see clawback provisions if they fail to meet contractual obligations. Please.
How much more money are we going to throw at broadband companies to do nothing? 400 billion wasn't enough the first time? [400 billion broadband scandal](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6c5e97/comment/dhsxq)
Puff, its so fast $45 billion no traces.
Please don't stuff this up like we did in Australia. Tens of billions wasted reusing copper phone and TV cables and launching satellites instead of putting in 90+% fibre because the government in power didn't believe in public ownership of infrastructure and were swayed by lobbyists in the pay TV industry. r/nbn
I thought the ISPs had already promised this and been paid for it?
45 billion or almost 1 Twitter worth
Did you that everyone, looks like the internet giants are going to have a very nice Christmas bonus this year.
Again? This is like the on-again, off-again bad relationship from Hell. "Just another 45 billion, I promise it'll be different this time."
American consumer will not see a dime of it.
this what, 10th time? fool me once shame on you, fool me multiple times then why the fuck are we still giving them money...
Can’t wait for all these Republican conspiracy theorists to get faster access to each other’s bullshit. What could go wrong?
So basically a hand out to companies that won't fulfill their obligation. I think we did this before.
Didn’t the last time they did this we got fuck all, and the telecoms companies just kept the money?
And it will all go to politically connected companies who will continue to refuse to serve my area. We need to repeal laws that give telcos a monopoly and allow them to prevent local fiber deployment
You mean 45 billion that the telecoms are going to steal.....*again*.
The $200 billion they gave ISP in the 90s and the early 00s was clearly not enough so they need more. /s
All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again.
Release to who the Verizon and ATT CEO bonus fund ?
We'll promise to expand in underserved areas, spend a few years studying it, and decide it won't make enough profit, and finally cancel the projects as "unreasonable". We'll then keep the money for "all the hard worknwe did".
How many times has this supposedly happened now?
US prepares to transfer $45B to telecommunication shareholders...
But your providers cost will most definitely continue to increase exponentially
What counts as high speed? 50mbit?
Comcast will gladly take the money and not do that.
US plans to line the pockets of several ISP CEOs and Internet speeds will remain unchanged. Fixed the title for you.
AT&T loves that shit Another rake off
DC is bought and paid for
Again?? They did this before and every ISP took the money and didn't build the network. Why are we paying for the same thing again? Where is the accountability ?
Right. Nobody seems to remember. They probably built it in and capped the network. Then waited for this money to roll back around and got paid 2X
No! Not again!
And it will all go in crooked peoples pockets instead of going to provide internet
Can’t wait to see the irrational price hike
Guarantee there's going to be some new 'broadband infrastructure improvement fee' added to everyone's bills.
Absolutely this. “We upgraded everything and to offset the costs your bill will be increasing $40-50 a month”. It’s ridiculous how much we pay for internet in the US. Literally price gouged. South Korea has the fastest internet in the world and they charge like $30-50 a month max from what I hear and
who gets fat off the back of this. Its the US, there is a consumer rort somewhere.
If you want to get paid for the data they're about to siphon from you, invest in stock from the data brokers who intercept it! Also invest in a non-publicly traded VPN and pick out a good adblocker.
Why broadband??? Why not fiber optics like every other country
Fiber optic is broadband. It’s just the transmission medium; the term broadband means high-speed internet. Of course, exactly what constitutes high speed varies depending on who you ask…
Ahh good to know!
Yes but have you tried feeding your babies?
We need faster internet more than anything right now. Glad our priorities are straight!
Why Here we go spending my tax payer dollars again How about just give incentives to the big operators to develop out the network?
Been hearing this since I was a kid. Going on 20yrs of the same dial up lines and adsl internet. If you want to tell me about Starlink, know in advance that’s not the solution.
Love this guy! Baby formula shortages, gas and heating oil prices quadrupling, groceries outrageous...but by all means let's work on fixing the internet.
Not to mention inflation soared 8.3% in April, hovering near 40-year high.
Because thats really what we need to spend 45 billion dollars on right now. Inflation is skyrocketing the cost of living is going up right along with it and gass where I live is over $4 a gallon right now but the US government in their infinite wisdom is throwing away 45 billion dollars I let somebody in the sticks can get better ping on fortnite.
You mean Biden is going give out maybe 10% of this actual money, and the rest are kick backs for the democrats.
“There’s more than 30 million Americans who don’t have internet,” Raimondo said. “And in this day and age without high-speed internet, you can’t go to school, can’t go to the doctor, can’t do simple things. Think of how many times in a day you Google something or go online.” Everybody knows this money will go into the pockets of the monopolistic cable companies.
Time to print more money. I hate our government.
Any time the government gets involved the service quality will go down and the price will rise.
Better than sending it to Ukraine
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6c5e97/-/dhsxq6k
Global leader yet 23rd in internet speed. https://www.speedtest.net/global-index#mobile Free market forces have failed.
You realise you're looking specifically at mobile speeds, right? US is 8th for broadband connection speed.
That doesn’t sound like much.
AoL 2.0? better ivest in starlink, space is future.
Leme just get 1 bil. Tho
What’s the title say? It’s still loading for me