Our Timid National Broadband Plan Isn't Working

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Was there ever any question the National Broadband Plan is seriously broken? By now you would think there would be a system of checks and balances in place to make sure the money is spent where it is supposed to and promises are delivered on. :(

The high point of the plan has to be grants helping rural communities and Native American territories get wired, though even this has been tarnished by the kind of corporate greed, political corruption and oversight issues we saw in West Virginia. In short, most of the plan was a bit of a show pony designed to make us feel good, with even the few quality portions of the plan being implemented poorly.
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500Kbps is fast enough broadband for anyone who wants to be gouged by granted monopolies.
 
I think at this point that people should recognize that blaming only politicians for corruption or only corporate executives for it is only half the picture. You see the corruption in politics and within corporate structure, and the lines between the two blur too often, too.

Which sucks, because you'll see politicians and corporate execs that actually believe in these ideas, only to have some asshole co-worker come and fuck it up for everyone.
 
For a country that keeps talking about moving to an intellectual/information based economy, we seem to have no collective interest in building the necessary infrastructure to support such a paradigm.

The information economy runs on bandwidth the same as the real economy runs on roads, rail and water. US citizens have been sold out to private telecoms at every level of government. Rather than building or incentivizing the creation of high speed broadband into homes, we have a system of local monopolies, data caps, and exorbitant fees. Then these same folks wonder why they lack the STEM workers they need to grow that information economy.
 
Pretty much the same case in Canada. The incumbents are just milking that copper for all it's worth. Now considering the copper costs were effectively given and/or paid off decades ago, it only paints the picture of what north american telecom is up to.
 
The architect for this National Broadband Plan, Blair Levin, is the same guy who admits that one of the factors NOT involved is lack of competition. *face palm*
 
The high point of the plan has to be grants helping rural communities and Native American territories get wired, though even this has been tarnished by the kind of corporate greed, political corruption and oversight issues
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This was unexpected though? This sort of shit happens at all levels. San Francisco wanted to push clean energy so ponied up $11,000 grants for "low income" (less than 80k a year for a single person) for solar panels, so what happened? Fliers went around low income neighborhoods (apparently I live in one too *frown*) that said "Free Solar" I was intrigued got a flyer and found some company popped up to basically give you about 1kW of solar panels, and he pockets the $11k + state incentives. Greed. I jumped on the money, but not with this company, and mine was far from free. Buddy over on the east coast sister's house got flooded when Sandy hit, contractor removed drywall and soaked insulation from one room, here's a bill for $23,000 that you can pass onto the claims. Fucking greed.

So yeah grant money available to wire up rural areas? Guess who's going to jump all over it and get it reserved in their name? Sure as hell ain't going to be the companies/people that take their time, plan their attack and possibly bring something useful. It's going to be those who move quickest, use the cheapest shit they can get their hands on, and leave it at that all the while cashing their welfare check from the US Government.
 
The problem is that telecoms are still deploying copper in the year 2013. There should have been a push to get rid of copper and increase existing fiber backbone capacity.
 
Kueller said:
For a country that keeps talking about moving to an intellectual/information based economy, we seem to have no collective interest in building the necessary infrastructure to support such a paradigm.

The information economy runs on bandwidth the same as the real economy runs on roads, rail and water. US citizens have been sold out to private telecoms at every level of government. Rather than building or incentivizing the creation of high speed broadband into homes, we have a system of local monopolies, data caps, and exorbitant fees. Then these same folks wonder why they lack the STEM workers they need to grow that information economy.
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I have to say, at my company we just invested a few million between two sites for a consolidated database and VoIP system. We upgraded from a 3 Mb/s to 6 Mb/s link between the sites. Couple hundred people at each site. It honest baffles me. I spend a half an hour a day watching frozen screens waiting for downloads or uploads. Conversely I have a 50 Mb/s connection at home!
 
The ISPs of ISPs will tell you secretly behind the scenes that they have next to unlimited bandwidth left to sell but nobody's buying.

Which is interesting, with Netflix taking up so much constant traffic over there..
 
Dayaks said:
I have to say, at my company we just invested a few million between two sites for a consolidated database and VoIP system. We upgraded from a 3 Mb/s to 6 Mb/s link between the sites. Couple hundred people at each site. It honest baffles me. I spend a half an hour a day watching frozen screens waiting for downloads or uploads. Conversely I have a 50 Mb/s connection at home!
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I'm in a similar situation. We run 3Mbps (dual T1) links in my company. I have a 115Mbps link at home. A lot that we do now relies on a remote database and downloading large files from customers. Instead of upgrading the links, we got sent new computers to "help" with the problem of waiting for stuff to load.
 
For some reason I just remembered that EA won the worst company in America award.

People are sheep. Maybe we deserve to be screwed like this when our top concern is weather or not we can print plastic guns.
 
Dayaks said:
I have to say, at my company we just invested a few million between two sites for a consolidated database and VoIP system. We upgraded from a 3 Mb/s to 6 Mb/s link between the sites. Couple hundred people at each site. It honest baffles me. I spend a half an hour a day watching frozen screens waiting for downloads or uploads. Conversely I have a 50 Mb/s connection at home!
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There used to be a standard explanation for that and it was QoS/Availability and Service Guarantees. Problem is that I have been able to achieve similar QoS/Availability with Cable and DSL in a failover/load balanced setup for a fraction of the cost of a T1 or T3 line. Unfortunately I still haven't found a cable or DSL provider willing to give an uptime guarantee, but considering the huge bandwidth to cost ratio, I think that is risk most businesses should consider.
 
I'm tired of paying $40 for a 3Mbps connection, surely the government can step in and force an upgrade of the lines for cable, or fiber?
 
Outamyhead said:
I'm tired of paying $40 for a 3Mbps connection, surely the government can step in and force an upgrade of the lines for cable, or fiber?
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Is this sarcasm? What I just quoted is actually horrifying.
 
Wine said:
I can believe if it isn't sarcasm. Where I live I pay $40 for <6Mbps DSL, though I could always "upgrade" to cable and get 6Mbps for $50. :eek:
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I believe you misunderstood the part I found horrifying.
 
>surely the government can step in and force an upgrade of the lines for cable, or fiber?

Never know, maybe something positive could come of it, or pigs could start flying. *shrugs*
 
For those talking about business infrastructure, internet is very different then with local ISP's.

For instance a company I know off spends $2k on a 50/50 connection. BUT THEY ARE GUARANTEED 50/50 from the tier 1 (ie backbone) provider (such as LVL3) the middle man (century link/Comcast etc) just provides the last mile service. If the business connection above goes down the last mile provider calls you. They apologize (at least the good ones do). I spend $50 a month on a 30/5 connection at home, but I am not guaranteed anything, they can just tell me to pound sand.

We are talking apples and oranges in connection types when referring to cable and dsl and sometimes fibre versus a true business connection (typically T1.'s T3's and OCx's are guaranteed bandwidth. Cable/dsl and secondary fibre companies split bandwidth in a balancing act. Buy as little as little bandwidth as possible and spread it among users. The number of users and activity at any given time will set the actual bandwidth. This is why heavy users are "hated" it has nothing to do with piracy, and all to do with profit margins.
 
I pay $40/ month for 1187k / 441k bps. Its the fastest connection you can get here and my downloads cap out at about 110KBps... I have literally been to third world countries with better internet.

As someone that has installed OC3's, OC12's, and OC48's, I can tell you, it's complete BS that America's networks are in the sad state that they are. There really isn't any excuse at this point beyond greed.

It's like how we pay $60/month on our electric bill for infrastructure repairs after that last ice storm because the electric company pocketed their profits instead of upgrading the infrastructure in the first place.
 
The government should have applied the same principles to both Cell Phone system and Internet infrastructure that was/has been applied to the Electrical system and Telephone system of the US.

Regulated Monopolies granted subsidies to provide universal access, in return for controlled costs for that access.

It provided the mechanisms to get electricity to everyone and basic telephone communications to everyone, and the time has come to implement the same concepts for both cell phone and internet service.... public safety, commerce, etc are the predicates for Government action, just as they were for electrification and the telephone system, as well as the licensing of radio and television broadcasting.
 
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