Hey, what do you know? All those meetings over the proposed
National Broadband Plan has amounted to something: a "yeah, we should probably hit this up." Today, the
FCC has kicked off an immensely ambitious project to bring "high-speed internet access to every corner of the United States." $7.2 billion of the economic stimulus package
has already been allocated for the task, but it'll be ages before anything becomes of this. For starters, the FCC is asking for input from consumers, businesses, etc, yet it doesn't require a response until February of 2010. Meanwhile, nations like South Korea, Japan and
Australia are all looking to implement similar rollouts, albeit with much higher speeds. You see, the FCC currently defines "broadband" as 786Kpbs, which obviously
isn't anywhere near median rates in some of the aforementioned countries. Pardon our skepticism in this becoming a reality, but at least we'll be extra elated if our
rock-bottom expectations are met.
posted Apr 9th 2009 10:11AM
FUCK YEAH
Fuck no!
Let the market decide where broadband is needed, and dont waste my money on extending it to wanker-ville where they are still running on 486s!
This whole thing just screams big-dig style train wreck!
Fuck the market. If it were up to the market we'd be on fossil fuels for the next 400 and living in our overvalued homes.
"Fuck the market. If it were up to the market we'd be on fossil fuels for the next 400 and living in our overvalued homes."
People want to fuel their cars with inexpensive gas. Sorry.
Once it's no longer cost effective/convenient, then they will do otherwise.
And as for overvalued homes? The market did it's job. People artificially drove up the cost of homes, and the market (supply/demand) laid the smackdown on their BS.
Or better yet, how about getting it to those people in Wankerville who can't get cable or DSL, and get real, satellite internet's a joke. Instead, in typical fashion, they'll roll it out in urban areas first, and sometime in 2174 they'll finally get to all the rural areas.
This sort of nonsence really makes me want to join a tea party.
Tea Party! April 15, 2009, in 300 cities nationwide!
OMG @Deezuts-420 that's just what I was thinking..
"AMERICA, FUCK YEA!"
@LookAroundYou:
looking around, yeah--the market is doing an AWESOME job with the economy and health care. good plan! you mention the big dig, so i'm going to assume you're another masshole. in which case, you won't even blink when i tell you to STFU. seriously.
what happens in the real world is that the telco and cable companies make millions in campaign donations to stifle any talk of competition, and to ensure that they don't have to make unprofitable investments in rural and inner city broadband infrastructure. they've also taken millions in government subsidies on the promise that they would make such investments, didn't make them, and kept the money anyway. nobody's asked for it back, as far as i know. so you really have no idea what you're talking about.
FUCKING DEMOCRAT IDIOTS!!!
If they want more people to adopt the internet, how about increasing competition to lower the prices to rival that of South Korea, 1 gigabit for $19.95 per month. Then there would be no need for government, which has no business getting involved in the first place.
im all for it but the speed should be much higher i mean come on 786k is is only one TINY !!! step above dial up and i know the ppl who can't afford broadband is tired of those low speeds.....and to even get your game on you have to be around at LEAST!! 2m.b. and gaming is just one ex there also buiness like writing reports that are huge and sending them across town and etc. .....
Thanks Obama, I'll stick with FiOS
I think the point is somebody like me CAN'T even get Cable, little less FIOS.
Good for you. However, there are still far too many places in this country where people are stuck with either satellite or dial-up. This should not be. The government once acted to see that phone access was available throughout the country, and in this day and age, it makes sense to do the same with what has become a basic level of internet access.
Yep. 786Kpbs would be amazing for my family.
@Marduk:
"However, there are still far too many places in this country where people are stuck with either satellite or dial-up. This should not be."
What? So, if people don't have a car, are we going to buy them one? So, if people don't have a house are we going to buy them one? What about computers and cell phones, should we buy them those too? Who's going to pay for all this great stuff? Oh wait, the taxpayers, many of whom already have purchased these wonderful luxuries for themselves, and now have to purchase it for the rest of the country.....sweet.
I love liberals.
@Jon
Maybe you should read a little more carefully. It isn't about buying these people internet access, it is about ensuring that access is available to those who want it. I am sure that you would feel differently if you lived in an area where the fastest connection available was, you guessed it, 56 k.
@Dane
I understand where you're coming from and would agree that it is in our national best to have a robust communications infrastructure in place. Although, I believe this should be taken care of by the private market and not government. Government spending, regulation, and general intrusion of people's lives, wallets, and liberty has progressed out of control. I also certainly can understand the frustration of that relatively small piece of the population that has no other alternative for access other than dial up. That is one of the unfortunate results of living in sparsely populated regions of the country. If it was profitable for the broadband providers to build the network out to these regions, they most certainly would (we all know they love money), but that is how the market works. Why aren't there random commercial airports with regular daily flights to remote regions everywhere even though there are people living there, probably because it just isn't profitable for the airlines to fly many flights out there.
Also, I did read the post carefully. In my haste to make point, my sarcasm may have been misleading. It's a simple distinction, I did not think the government was paying for their access, obviously they are only subsidizing the cost of the infrastructure build out. This doesn't really change the validity of my point.
Technically, we are buying these people internet access. We are paying to buildout to their location and judging by the statements made by Obama and his staff, they want to offer low cost broadband access to people who "cannot afford" it. I only put quotes around that because that is a term that varies with perspective.
Oh hi anyone know where all these power lines, phone lines, tv towers, water grid etc etc etc came from? Oh that’s right the fucking government built them then handed them over to the private sector. Do you really fucking think att fronted the cash to get telephone access to 90% of the country? Do you really see comcast extending its range for more customers when they could just retain the ones they have and cap their bandwidth and charge overages?
Get some fucking sense people and look into how we got all this shit in the first place, Republicans did not just shit out our current infrastructure, if it was up to those morons the only places with Internet access or phones at all would be major cities and they would have no oversight on them and probably be charging you 79.99 a month for 128k "DSL". But im sure what we need right now is less oversight for giant monolith companies to just do whatever the fuck they want, free market right? Guyz?
@jon we are to the point in this civilization where the Internet is not the luxury it once was. When schools have access to something it is no longer a luxury it is close to a necessity. The same thing happened to electricity, phone lines, tv, water, ALL OF IT. So your argument that "OMG whos gonna pay for all this" is strawman at best.
@Jon: do not use logic, it scares them... =P
typical response. everybody wants the government to fix the economy but get all pissed off when the government says they need money to do it. i agree that government spending has gotten out of control over the last 8 years, but the economy sucks right now and despite what you think, being penny pinchers is not going to fix it. we need to inject money into the system in the proper locations to help jump start it and building up necessary infrastructure is part of that.
Logic can only scare people when it makes sense and has truth in it. When its made up BS, then its not logic at all.
@Jon
For the more than 10 years private industry has had the chance to and has even been paid to by the government to expand into rural areas. They have not. They instead wasted that money in the cities to bring up their bottom line. With more and more government services being available online, it is about time the government created access for people in rural America. Free Internet isn't required here, but at least the access should be. That is what is missing. A better version of your car analogy would be ensuring that roads are in the area so that cars can even be used, not giving everyone a free car.
@ Jon:
there is, however, no need to hate conservatives, because they're generally their own worst enemies.
tell us one thing: who should pay for building roads? (i won't even go into education.) it's the same issue, and only an idiot would say "private industry." there is no profit in it, and yet if a town isn't connected to the rest of the country, if the taxpayers won't make the investment to connect it, it's not going to have a good economy or prosperity. it's a self-perpetuating cycle. comparing california with a red state like arkansas makes the impact pretty clear.
You would have thought Americans would have given up their "free-market is awesome" attitude by now.
Lower expectations = less disappointment...
Look how well that's working for the school system.
768Kbps > nothing
Wouldnt WiMax kind of solve alot of this?
WiMax and other wireless tech is awesome to get the coverage to 100% - that is, it's awesome in vast areas where nobody lives, like most of those states in the middle.
It's terrible in highly built-up areas because wireless contention is way too high with many users. So in population centers, wired is the way to go. It's not too expensive to reach everyone with fiber and there is no interference.
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/23/surprise-america-is-no-1-in-broadband/
Surprises! USA IS NUMBER 1 in broadband anyways! Granted we are not number one in terms of broadband speeds..
Wow.. that article is a joke. As per a comment left on that article, they just setup the study with criteria that would show we were the best. Yet they clearly state in the beginning that many other countries have more % of homes with broadband. His study was including usage of government organizations. Duh we're going to have all our gov organizations on there. And then he removes 25% of the countries population claiming they don't use the internet. Sorry, but I have a hard time believing that. Can't afford it so they don't have it, yes. If I read it right (and I very well could be wrong) he's also including 3G in there, which isn't broadband.. So that kinda throws the numbers off. Anywho. Just my 2cents. /rant off
Agree w/ Hackettman. By the time this is rolled out, will anyone really be paying for internet access for their home computer? Better to roll out a national broadband wireless network and actually get ahead of the curve instead of always playing really terrible catch-up.
So what does this mean...cheaper internet for everyone at crappier speeds? I rather pay for my own internet access. I do not like this robinhood plan of Obama at all.
Don't you have any compassion? Somewhere in the US there is a teenager who cannot pout on his webcam because he doesn't have broadband. Somewhere in the US there is an old pervert who can't download gigabytes of brazilian fart porn because he's stuck at 28.8. And somewhere in the US there is some unfortunate soul who has never downloaded a pirated movie because they live too far out in the boonies.
It's a travesty. We must have a massive, inefficient government program to pay for it all. Who cares how much it costs. Who cares how much debt the United States is racking up now. The people need broadband everywhere! Screw future taxpayers! Broadband everywhere now!
I assure you my Brazilian fart porn collection is stacked gigabytes high on 28.8.
@something clever This is my favorite new republican argument "What about the future taxpayers" This was somehow not an issue for the last 10 generations, all of sudden we are thinking about the future taxpayers. Well they were sitting pretty when we had a surplus post clinton, hmm i wonder what happened to all that money.
Its all invisible made up money that you wouldn’t see a dime of in your wildest dreams, they as long as they are making it up they might as well spend it on something at least possibly useful. Of course if it was up to 1/2 the morons in this thread we would all be hand cranking our water out of a well and dying of malaria.
Dilinger,
They had their chance (the neo-cons and repugs) and they fkd up the country.
The people voted them out of the senate.
The people voted them out of the house.
The people voted them out of congressional districts nation wide.
The people even voted them out of the white house.
Their views represent a minority, so ignore them.
As with most republicans, either they keep up with modern times or get out of the way.
And you're right, if they had it their way, half the country (geographically speaking) would still be:
without telephone
without electricity
without water
without paved roads
Guess what guys, it is our tax dollars that collectively pay for the infrastructure of this nation, and we shouldn't be so parochial in our thinking , "it doesn't affect me so why should I be concerned".
Well guess what, I bet you don't drive over many of those bridges in your city, or use many of those parks, or attend many of those schools, or have to have any buildings doused with hydrants, or even notice half of the electricity running through your city, but none of that seemed to bother you guys before.
But oh no, Obama wants broadband for all, how dare he!
The audacity, the nerve!
Fact check time: we WASTED more money on any given month in Iraq than the whole of this plan will require.
@Hamixda Good show. I have to say i didn’t think that you and i would ever agree on anything and here we are. I guess it just goes to show that we should all add os/smartphone choice to the list of things not to rage on in the future.
Dillinger, I'll agree to that truce.
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but you seem to be using England and the UK interchangeably, which is a stupid thing to do. Look outside your own country for once, you might learn something.
What's a Europe, some sort of new cheesecake or something?
mm europe cake, my favorite. Or was that british cake, meh same thing. ;)
Oh, look, an English tool. Or should I say, a tool from the UK? Meh, same thing.
Doesn't England still pretty much run the rest of the UK? I think that's why people use them interchangeably.
It means if you want to pay $50/month for cable, or more for higher bandwidth, you can. But if you're in an area where nobody offers service beyond crappy 64kbps dial-up, you'll actually have an option.
If you already have broadband, this isn't for you.
America, f*ck yeah.
People, remember how big America is compare to all those countries.