FCC Wants To Cap Spending on Broadband for Poor and Rural Areas

Rural people should pay more for broadband. Speaking as someone who grew up in rural America.

If the government wants increased business in rural America then tax rural Americans less. Less taxes on rural Americans will allow them to pay more for such services. Just don’t burn through money by giving to businesses and then follow through with no accountability; in this case, all American lose and only a few at the top benefit.
 
Do you think people living outside the urban areas should pay more for the same internet access? I don't think so.
But it's not the same internet access, sure you end up accessing the same internet but that's not what you pay an ISP for, you pay for the access, much like you don't pay to enter Hawaii you pay for the"access" to get there aka the flight and from someplace like LA it is cheaper than from Padonk Iowa
 
I think it's despicable what these companies have done with the money so far. My mom lives in a semi rural area and the best she has is still 2g, with 3g about 12-15 miles down the road.... The only internet available to her is Satellite, $80/month for 25Mb/s with a 10gb cap... Nobody on this forum would accept that limitation. Heck, I pay $60 here for 200/200.

It's easy to say that you don't "need" internet, however you cannot even get a job without internet at this point. And it's not like you can just go to the library and use their internet because we have been closing them down and often you are required to pay to get in.
 
Interestingly enough my relatives live in the middle of nowhere and their utilities company recently rolled out fiber to every location that had power. They now have cheaper and significantly faster internet than most people can get. Granted until just recently they only had satellite or dialup for options.
 
Interestingly enough my relatives live in the middle of nowhere and their utilities company recently rolled out fiber to every location that had power. They now have cheaper and significantly faster internet than most people can get. Granted until just recently they only had satellite or dialup for options.

Wish my utility would do that... What is their location, which utility?
 
I think it's despicable what these companies have done with the money so far. My mom lives in a semi rural area and the best she has is still 2g, with 3g about 12-15 miles down the road.... The only internet available to her is Satellite, $80/month for 25Mb/s with a 10gb cap... Nobody on this forum would accept that limitation. Heck, I pay $60 here for 200/200.

It's easy to say that you don't "need" internet, however you cannot even get a job without internet at this point. And it's not like you can just go to the library and use their internet because we have been closing them down and often you are required to pay to get in.


Wait up. I'm not challenging what you are saying about the ISP outfits, but the rest, yea I have something to say.

My old man's internet sux too. But be real. If someone lives in a rural area that has poor internet access and is looking for local work, those companies don't expect people to use internet services to get a job etc. These people are not using Glass Door for crying out loud. They're using the Podunk Gazette. I've lived there, been there, done that. No one living in rural areas are being held back by poor internet.

Living in rural areas also mean you make trips to town, to the grocery, the feed store, the school, and your job. There is usually a public library and a person can put there resume on Linkedin and Monster, and wherever else they want. Anyone trying to find them can find them.

And anyone looking to get a job and move out of the sticks and into the jungle has every opportunity to do so. People do it all the time.

As said earlier, this entire article was a non-issue and didn't deserve the time to post it. Current expenditures are already far below the new cap. The new cap isn't holding anything back at all.
 
Wait up. I'm not challenging what you are saying about the ISP outfits, but the rest, yea I have something to say.

My old man's internet sux too. But be real. If someone lives in a rural area that has poor internet access and is looking for local work, those companies don't expect people to use internet services to get a job etc. These people are not using Glass Door for crying out loud. They're using the Podunk Gazette. I've lived there, been there, done that. No one living in rural areas are being held back by poor internet.

Living in rural areas also mean you make trips to town, to the grocery, the feed store, the school, and your job. There is usually a public library and a person can put there resume on Linkedin and Monster, and wherever else they want. Anyone trying to find them can find them.

And anyone looking to get a job and move out of the sticks and into the jungle has every opportunity to do so. People do it all the time.

As said earlier, this entire article was a non-issue and didn't deserve the time to post it. Current expenditures are already far below the new cap. The new cap isn't holding anything back at all.

They don't use glass door and such, but they do require you to go online and download the forms, fill them out and upload them to the employer. My sitting down and filling them out and uploading them for her is how she eventually got the job she has now. Her last job she had ended up firing her because they required weekly online training that she had no way of doing.

And I hate the library argument because it isn't really true unless you live in a major city.... Most towns do not have libraries and even the ones that do often require that you be a resident of that town or pay some $99/year fee or something. On top of that, we are closing libraries left and right.
 
I do.

I damn well do.

If it costs more to provide the service then it should cost more to receive it. I am not a "rob from Peter to pay Paul" sort of guy.

I grew up in Shallowater Texas, well a few miles in the country between Shallowater and Lubbock. To this day, the best service my Father can get is wireless which is barely better than a 56K modem. Seriously, he was timing out trying to download printer drivers. But living in the country was a choice that he made. It has it's benefits and it has it's down-side. I know rural people get taxed for services that they themselves will never receive. That's wrong, but no less wrong than taxing others to give him broadband. Two wrongs don't make a right.

The article said that current expenditures won't even touch the new cap. If it can be lowered it can be raised if needed. This thing isn't even an issue.

I'm in agreement with you.

My $0.02.... When speaking of "rights," I think too many people hold this notion that the government operates as some kind of altruistic non-profit organization functioning as a pass-through for the "will of the people." Anyone that has been paying attention to what has been going on in government, at all levels, over the last 30+ years should know that this is 100% not the case (far from it).

So when speaking about internet as a "right" one needs to be very careful about the course of action taken with respect to government. Bearing in mind that government is absolutely a for-profit enterprise (as much or more-so than private companies, IMO, mainly due to government officials' higher positions of power/influence), then do we really want to make profiteering government officials the arbiters of this supposed "right" to internet access?
 
They don't use glass door and such, but they do require you to go online and download the forms, fill them out and upload them to the employer. My sitting down and filling them out and uploading them for her is how she eventually got the job she has now. Her last job she had ended up firing her because they required weekly online training that she had no way of doing.

And I hate the library argument because it isn't really true unless you live in a major city.... Most towns do not have libraries and even the ones that do often require that you be a resident of that town or pay some $99/year fee or something. On top of that, we are closing libraries left and right.


So you are right about the Libraries, many smaller towns don't have them, etc..... but I will also argue that the same dynamic exists, the smaller the town, the less infrastructure available, the less businesses require or expect. If you to the extreme, a little pit-stop of a town that has two convenience stores, a small grocery store, a hardware store, and the Sears outlet closed three years ago, these companies are not asking people to do online training from home and all you need do to apply is walk in the door and ask for an application. It's a sliding scale from there.

Now if someone is living out serious rural and wants to work from home, they better do something to ensure they have reliable and capable access, and it might mean moving.

But all of this talk is really off topic. The issue is the FCC capping something that is no where near reaching the new cap. There is a better argument that they are just wasting time on something that is functionally irrelevant and that they are wasting time and money, then an argument that they are doing something evil to the poor rural communities.

But hey, surprise, government wasting money, more at 9:00.
 
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