Analysis of broadband affordability deemed “extraneous” by FCC chair.
The Federal Communications Commission is ditching Biden-era standards for measuring progress toward the goal of universal broadband deployment.
The changes will make it easier for the FCC to give the broadband industry a passing grade in an annual progress report. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s proposal would give the industry a thumbs-up even if it falls short of 100 percent deployment, eliminate a long-term goal of gigabit broadband speeds, and abandon a new effort to track the affordability of broadband.
Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act requires the FCC to determine whether broadband is being deployed “on a reasonable and timely basis” to all Americans. If the answer is no, the US law says the FCC must “take immediate action to accelerate deployment of such capability by removing barriers to infrastructure investment and by promoting competition in the telecommunications market.”
Say it with me people.
Seperate infrastructure and service!
If the companies responsible for laying cable and wires weren’t tied to a single brand we’d instantly break the monopolies by town that we currently have. They would also focus on maintaining the infrastructure and growing the network instead of the profits going elsewhere.
I fucking hate that every couple of years we just backpedal on everything. So god damn exhausting.
It takes so long to fix everything, too!
Yeah well, clearly it wasn’t fixed fast enough so we should vote back in the people that break everything. Or decide that we shouldn’t vote at all like the lazy sacks of shit we are.
Propaganda is a hell of a drug
This is the part that bothers me so much about everything that is being dismantled right now. It took forever to get it to where it is, and it still needed a lot of improvement. And it was just smashed seemingly overnight.
It’s like a sandcastle. Takes forever to build a good one, and it takes some asshole one second to step on it and destroy the whole thing.
takes some asshole one second to step on it and destroy the whole thing.
Absolutely. The last one to just go “lol nah” and demolish the working class this hard was Reagan, and we were still reaping the fallout from those asinine policies when 2016 hit!
We had never actually fixed any of the shit that Reagan broke. They kept doing more of the same stuff he had started
The religious right latching on to Reagan as the patron saint of supply-side economics was a serious fucking problem that was completely ignored (and in fact lauded in tons of circles) at the tone. And still is, largely.
It took forever to get it to where it is, and it still needed a lot of improvement
It not just took forever to get to where we were but it seems like most of the good things Biden was able to get passed were long term investments. Money spent for something that would help in ten years.
Now it’s money spent and thrown away.
And “fixing it” usually means giving away the infrastructure we built to the private sector so it can charge us to use what our tax money built.
If only we could chart that and see which political party is in charge at which points, and then never vote for the one that puts us here ever again… Oh well
We can though, first time was the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 with funding being released in 2010. D president, D Senate, D house.
By 2012 it became obvious that the commitment lined out in the 2009 bill weren’t going to happen and a meek attempt to claw back the funds was made. D president, D Senate, R house.
2021 sees the access broadband act. D president, D Senate, D house.
By 2025 it became obvious that the commitment lined out in the 2021 bill weren’t going to happen. R president,
DR Senate, R house.The only constant is a Democratic Senat so clearly that’s the problem! Right?Edit: wrong session for 2025 caucus. It’s all Rs there.
In 2025 the Senate is also controlled by the Republicans. The have complete control of all 3 branches.
My bad, thanks for catching that I was looking at 118th caucus not 119th. I thought I just misremembered which of those pesky other parties were part of which caucus.
I know, I was being facetious. I appreciate the sources to back it up though
With the way American politics are at the moment I interpreted that as a “only the Republicans are the bad guys” and wanted to make it abundantly clear that is not the case.
We need a new 4th branch of government that’s in charge of infrastructure and public welfare.
No, we really just need to stop selecting between two bad presidents over and over again. If you always pick the second-worst option, you’re going to have a bad time. Pick the best option. Ranked choice voting is the only way.
At this point it’s hard to remember the good old days when we picked the second worst
Yes…
But you still get very bad politicians paid by billionaires, who will undermine the president.
How would this branch be structured? How would it interface with the other branches? How would its members be appointed? What does “Infrastructure and Public Welfare” entail? Why are “Infrastructure” and “Public Welfare” grouped together? What powers would it have to carry out its job, and what specifically is that job? Based on those previous answers, how would it solve any existing or foreseeable issues? Why would it be better positioned to solve those issues than a change made within the existing three-branch framework?
And money. Infrastructure is all cost, no profit, no income source, and damn expensive.
A separate branch only solves the political will half of the infrastructure problem, but we also need a consistent, large budget to actually keep up
And personally I’d vote to give it all to Amtrak and transit. Every time we add a highway or more lanes to a highway, we’re increasing infrastructure costs that we already can’t afford to keep up with. Why are we still digging this hole deeper?
Blah blah blah checks and balances that we can pretend exist.
It’s because USA has nukes my friend. The only way your enemies can attack you is through asymmetric warfare, mostly by corrupting your political system so that you attack yourself.
If you’ve wondered why everything looks like a coup since he got in, perhaps it is because it is one.
https://lemmy.world/post/31401705
https://electiontruthalliance.org/
And if you’re wondering why Democrats like Tim Walz are not even interested in investigating it themselves, well, the existence of certain files and whether or not they are disclosed could have something to do with that.
stop voting them in then
If it were just my vote that mattered, they wouldn’t be in office. But I understand the sentiment.
10 years from now USA is gonna be a 3rd world country with all these cuts.
Trump was always obsessed with “shit hole countries”. Now he’s turning the US into one of them.
He wants us to be exactly like Russia. Complete shithole company run by the oligarchy, who live lavish luxury lives.
Rich people hate equality because that means they need to share.
Certainly seems that way.
No regulations to support a reasonable standard of living for the peasants.
Oligarchs mooching off everyone else.
Americans have lost so much in the last few months, not only with the bullshit spending bill but just the erosion of the rule of law and the democratic process.
Not even gonna take 10 years. By the end of Spray Tan’s term the country is gonna be a complete toilet.
Assuming he doesn’t find a way to stay in office indefinitely.
It’s already a 3rd world country, has been for some time now.
From Europe it has already looked like a 3rd world country for at least a few years.
I wish someone would look up what “3rd World” means and stop conflating the unaligned movement with poverty.
You should look up how many people in the US are under the poverty line.
I don’t think that was what they were saying. They were bemoaning the fact that “3rd world” has become a synonym for “developing” or “poor” when technically it means countries that weren’t part of the cold war, although I think they might be tilting at windmills given it’s a distinction that’s been lost for at least three decades already.
Apart from anything else, even if you keep its original meaning, it still works as a metaphor in the sense of a country losing superpower status.
it’s a distinction that’s been lost for at least three decades already.
The consequences of Cold War politics echo through to the modern day.
Ya, the term “3rd world” has since become synonymous with poor or developing countries.
It’s not a correct or accurate term, but it’s still used.
We always have been a 3rd world country
From a Swede with gigabit internet: didn’t you Americans already give a lot of money to your ISPs to build fiber? Maybe time to demand a ROI?
Please don’t remind me.
I wish these companies would all just go bankrupt and die already.There should be daily reminders until there are consequences imho.
Kinda hard when they’ve gone full mafioso and split up the country into territories so that we only have like one choice and have to be a customer. Because capitalism runs on no competition and monopolies, right?
that was ages ago, they took the money and never developed it, they started to do something last year with biden, but trump reversed. Just like with HIGH RAIL system in california, trump blocked it all.
$100+ a month is normal, and gigabit internet is not available everywhere
I pay 639 SEK per month for 1 GB full duplex. And gigabit internet should be available in at least most of America, why else did you give away all that money?
$67 USD
Get ready for your shitty internet to cost even more.
This is the same administration who is going all-in on oil and coal for energy production. Nobody should be surprised.
Thank God we’re also eliminating cheap solar panels from China. Who wants an energy source so unreliable. It literally didn’t even shine for most of the entire time. Sure it’s been lit for just a few million years but whatever are you gonna do when it eventually runs out of helium and hydrogen?
I’d prefer the new ford trash diesel hybrid…just start the engine on gasoline, switch to diesel, then just dump your trash for that week in the back and wait for the big ass black plume to reduce yo just a healthy soot. It can get 23miles per trashcan!..sorry, 2.3 downhill miles. Isn’t it great? Mr.TrashyBurn!
FCC: Doing our job deemed extraneous.
Broadband quality:
Great
Good
Decent
Whatever ✅
Didn’t ISPs just get tens of billions of dollars to expand high-speed connections to rural areas? For the second time?
No that was just free money we gave them.
What money? I guess they’ll need some in about… two years or so for rural broadband? That’s about time to buy some election influence again.
And they kept it all to buy themselves the latest private jets stocked full of cocaine and hookers. Again.
Yes! And I’m honestly very thankful for it. The federal grants are the main reason I have affordable gigabit-speed fiber internet way out in here in my rural county. Without it, I’d be stuck with 10mb DSL, crumby and expensive satellite based options, or very limited 4G/5G based hotspot internet.
Glad you’re one of the lucky ones. They only did a fraction of the amount of work they were supposed to and pocketed the rest. Enjoy it for the rest of us!
You sure that wasn’t rolled back to give that money to Jeff Bezos so he could have a really really expensive wedding?
Actually I remember reading a few weeks ago that BEAD money was cut. At the time I was thinking the Appalachians are gonna thank that one person who’s totally one of them and their friend, J.D. Vance, for that.
I live in the Appalachians. I’m confused about whom you’re referring to. I’d assume you mean Trump, but he’s not one of us. He’s not Appalachian at all.
I’m a bit confused, I explicitly wrote J.D. Vance, why would you assume Trump? :-D
He had the whole book taking up his Appalachian heritage didn’t he? The end of my comment was of course sarcastic, because all he’s doing is betraying rural America including the Appalachians.
Ah ok. I thought you were referring to two people, one vaguely and then that person’s friend, Vance. My confusion.
Ah I can see how it can be read that way! Sorry. Maybe I messed up the commas again. I’m perpetually confused because the rules are different in English and German.
English can be silly like that. If we were talking in person, I would be able to understand from the inflection in your voice by what you meant, but in text, it’s easier to misinterpret what was meant. It was my mistake.
I’m surprised US doesn’t have gigabit as a standard already. I’m upgrading to 10 gigabit next month here (Portugal)…
Much of it does, but as far as standard, I’m not sure.
As someone who has had download speeds above gigabit all throughout the 2020s so far (and for under $60/mo as well), it blows my mind that there are parts of the country that still don’t even have 10% of that.
Like what I’m saying is that even cell phone towers can do multi-gig speeds these days FFS, so there’s no excuse even for rural areas to not have at least a couple of reliable gigabit options available, no matter where you are in the country.
If they can figure out reliable 5G in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, surely they can install an antenna on grandpa’s farm and beam a 2.5Gbps signal directly to his rooftop. I mean my 1400Mbps line comes in through a 5G gateway sitting in my kitchen window sill and it has been just as reliable as fiber for me, even with a giant pine tree in the way blocking line-of-sight to the tower. ISPs need to stop making up excuses, and actually start investing those outrageous monthly fees they collect into better infrastructure.
What ISP do you have, $50 sounds great. My gb never goes beyond 450mbps but it definitely drops to sub 10mbps sometimes. And that’s $70/month. Which I thought I was doing fairly well after coming off how bad Spectrum was for me previously. (Mine currently is through the local power/water company)
This really depends on where you live. All broadnands are micro monopolies. I wish we’d pull a EU and split infrastructure and service. We’d get better speeds and prices everywhere
Verizon 5G Home Internet. The one with the big box that goes in your window, not the one with the smaller box that can go anywhere in the house.
other country: lets bring in gig speeds Japan: futile we have and are testing terrabytes… America: i like cheese… govt cheese
Terabit per second speed is not impressive for backbone links. I could go to the office tomorrow and grab all the stuff needed to install one on our line through the alps, just by bundling 3 links of 400 Gbit/s with stuff we already have, and I’m working for a small to medium ISP.
What you are likely referring to, is the 1 Pbit/s over 1800 km demonstration that NICT presented at the OFC this year. That’s impressive.
Neat. I’ve heard of backbones and T1-T3 lines. Butt that’s crazy, and makes sense.
Such a predictable outcome by the shittiest people on the planet.
We are truly living in a kakistocracy right now.
that’s a feature of capitalism…
People is stretching it. They are subhuman pedophiles all
Well, they all started as humans and then turned into twisted creatures by staggering amounts of wealth and luxury.
Next up EPA switches to visual inspection of water sources for purity.
They’ll just have AI do it. Can’t afford real eyes.
The AI will end up costing 3x the amount it did before but the company is owned by some senator’s son so the agency will lock in a 20 year deal.
But…
Real eyes realise real lies…
It’s all in the rhyme there.
It’s funny that you think they’ll inspect it at all.
It will be left up to the states, and only blue states who actually care enough to fund their DEP will do anything.
Which would 100% lead to illness and death.
Honestly expecting them to defluoridate water any second now, citing quack sources, and will then be aghast at skyrocketing dental issues.
… Dental will still be a luxury insurance, of course.
Why the fuck would they care about dental issues? Those are elective bones that only rich people should have anyway.
plus untreated dental diseases, like caries, gingivitis, periconitis can lead to more serious infections. also the immense pain you would feel before it even gets “worst”
Why does everything have to be so fucking political?
Faster broadband is good. Who fucking cares what political party?
But corporations don’t want to spend money on customers, so they’d rather keep customers on slow speeds and charge the same price.
so they’d rather keep customers on slow speeds and charge the same price.
Be fair. The prices go up.
Well yeah, we all know it’s good. That’s why Republicans want to take it away.
Why does everything have to be so fucking political?
When will people who say shit like this wake the fuck up and realize that life is political?
Grow up and deal with it like everyone else, fucking cowards.
and deal with it like everyone else
no, not like that, that doesn’t do anything useful
It’s especially funny how Republicans are against regulations because according to them, it stifles progress and innovation. So why are they against regulations that try to force progress and innovation?
Of course we know why, because it’s all a lie. They just want more money for the 1%. How there is even a single (non-1%'er) idiot left that votes for them is waaaay beyond me.
Why does everything have to be so fucking political?
The problem with ignoring politics is that politics is never going to ignore you.
For rural communities to get higher speeds ISPs have to actually use the money the government gives them for increasing rural community internet speeds on increasing rural community internet speeds. If broadband is defined as “one house in the county has access to internet as fast as your grandparents had growing up” then they’ve already met their goal and they don’t need to spend any money and collect pure profit from government subsidies.
Biden thought that was bullshit and established policy to direct them to do the right thing. The current administration, however, is more than happy taking their checks to the back.
We should not be giving private entities cash without rigid metrics and timelines. In fact, we should claw back what we’ve given them.
In general I’d agree. Unfortunately, private entities and lobbyists don’t and they’ll pay politicians for the privilege of getting free money at the expense of the rest of us.
The wedge is already in place. They just keep pounding on it. This is 100% what happens when corporations and governments become one.
