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We already give them billions a year ($8 billion in 2016 alone https://www.americanactionforum.org/research/broadband-subsidies-totaled-8-2-billion-last-year/ h

We already give them billions a year ($8 billion in 2016 alone https://www.americanactionforum.org/research/broadband-subsidies-totaled-8-2-billion-last-year/ https://www.americanactionforum.org/research/broadband-subsi...) and we gave them $200 billion to do this in 1996. Nineteen Ninety Six. (http://www.niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=ask_this.view&askthisid=186 http://www.niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=ask_this....) Instead you have things like this: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151022/09232532594/fcc-has-to-remind-isps-not-to-spend-taxpayer-subsidies-booze-trips-to-disney-world.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151022/09232532594/fcc-h... "For example, the companies apparently paid $96,000 so that Hee could receive two-hour massages twice a week; $119,909 for personal expenses, including family trips to Disney World, Tahiti, France, and Switzerland and a four-day family vacation at the Mauna Lani resort; $736,900 for college tuition and housing expenses for Hee’s three children; $1,300,000 for a home in Santa Clara, California for his children’s use as college housing; and $1,676,685 in wages and fringe benefits for his wife and three children." What is this crap from them? "Yeah that thing you have given us hundreds of billions to build over the past 25 years and billions of additional dollars every year, and subsidize rural people $50/month to pay us for, yeah, we aren't going to do it and oh yeah, taxpayer run systems are illegal in 22 states. https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadblocks/ https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadbloc..." They can screw off. Seize the industry and nationalize them. I'm so over it. And I don't want to respond to any FUD about how governments, which have been able to pull this off years ago at a fraction of the cost in every other country "just can't do it" and how we need private industry, which has robbed us blind for a quarter century while failing to deliver is "the only solution". I do not practice your religious dedication to obviously broken systems and I don't care for you quoting liturgical verses from your favorite free market prophet. It's wrong, this is a giant unaccountable money hole. The only time we hear from them is when they need to make an excuse. Unless we are willing to fire them through nationalization they're utterly unaccountable.

AdamJacobMuller 6y ago
> I don't want to respond to any FUD about how governments, which have been able to pull this off for far cheaper in every other country "just can't do it" and how we need private industry Ultimately, everything is an interface between government and private industry. Unless we have government directly employ the people laying fiber in the ground, it's private contractors all around actually implementing this. Even in muni-broadband (of which I am almost universally a fan) private contractors do a bulk of the work. The only distinction is where the definition and interface between government and contract falls. You can obviously give someone $400 billion dollars with a nebulous goal like "deploy broadband" or give someone smaller incremental chunks of money with smaller incremental goals, but, if you're not properly defining the goals and not properly scaling the money to the true benefit and the true work required you're getting poor money for value. Ultimately, I think it speaks to something fundamentally broken about the interface between government and private contractors in the USA.
- DecoPerson 6y ago
  > Unless we have government directly employ the people laying fiber in the ground, it's private contractors all around actually implementing this. NBN Co. in Australia built our FTTN “National Broadband Network” by employing their own people. I’m pretty sure it’s majority government owned and run, if not wholly. Everyone complains about NBN Co. and how slow they were but honestly they did a really good job. I think the complaints were amplified by journalists, looking for angry clicks. (An amazing thing NBN Co. also did IMO was install pull-cables in every conduit, so future upgrades are significantly cheaper.)
  - roganartu 6y ago
    I don’t complain about how slow NBN Co was. I complain about the fact that it was meant to be FTTP instead of FTTN (premises vs node), and that the only reason it didn’t end up that way is that the Liberal party said basically exactly what AT&T are here: that ADSL2 speeds are enough, and those last miles from the node to premise can be delivered over Telstra’s existing (horribly degraded and unmaintainable) copper network. So, instead of 95% of the population having gigabit fibre, we have this hodgepodge of FTTP, FTTN with the last hop over 5G, and FTTN with the last hop over copper, all of which cost the same and which you get depends on when it was installed. Don’t get me wrong, the NBN is certainly better now than the ADSL of old, but it ended up costing significantly more for the mess we have now than it would’ve if we’d successfully seen FTTP through from the start.
    - Nursie 6y ago
      Is it bad? I'm moving out your way (specifically Perth) from the UK in a few months and have got really used to our gigabit connection. Last time I lived in Aus the NBN was just being kicked off, and I remember it getting downgraded by the liberals. Has it just never caught up?
      - sumedh 6y ago
        In some areas its bad but in most atleast metro areas its good. You can check what kind of Tech your address has in the NBN website.
GeekyBear 6y ago
Historically, the electrical utilities didn't want to build infrastructure in rural areas either. It was the Rural Electrification Act as part of FDR's New Deal that set up non profit electrical coops to bring power to the most rural areas of America. Mississippi has seen progress in building out internet infrastructure in the most under served rural areas by: 1.) Changing the law to enable the non-profit electrical coops set up under FDR's Rural Electrification Act to offer broadband service using Fiber to the Home. 2.) Taking some of the funding from the initial COVID relief funding and offering it as matching grants to those coops to get the ball rolling. >How coronavirus stimulus funds helped one state create a 'broadband miracle' https://www.cnet.com/home/internet/how-coronavirus-stimulus-funds-helped-one-state-create-a-broadband-miracle/ https://www.cnet.com/home/internet/how-coronavirus-stimulus-...
pyinstallwoes 6y ago
You miss the fact that government is the device used to shield any behavior. What is lobbied to create these moats for these companies is the same thing that will be done internally. The problem is the legislation and how it's voted. It's easily corruptible when representatives are easy to capture.
Scramblejams 6y ago
> we gave them $200 billion to do this in 1996. Did we? I believe there's a compelling case that we did not, or at least a solid argument about whether that's the case: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7709556 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7709556
saagarjha 6y ago
At least this one seems like it had an appropriate ending: https://www.civilbeat.org/2016/01/46-month-sentence-for-albert-hee/ https://www.civilbeat.org/2016/01/46-month-sentence-for-albe...

AdamJacobMuller 6y ago

> I don't want to respond to any FUD about how governments, which have been able to pull this off for far cheaper in every other country "just can't do it" and how we need private industry Ultimately, everything is an interface between government and private industry. Unless we have government directly employ the people laying fiber in the ground, it's private contractors all around actually implementing this. Even in muni-broadband (of which I am almost universally a fan) private contractors do a bulk of the work. The only distinction is where the definition and interface between government and contract falls. You can obviously give someone $400 billion dollars with a nebulous goal like "deploy broadband" or give someone smaller incremental chunks of money with smaller incremental goals, but, if you're not properly defining the goals and not properly scaling the money to the true benefit and the true work required you're getting poor money for value. Ultimately, I think it speaks to something fundamentally broken about the interface between government and private contractors in the USA.

DecoPerson 6y ago
> Unless we have government directly employ the people laying fiber in the ground, it's private contractors all around actually implementing this. NBN Co. in Australia built our FTTN “National Broadband Network” by employing their own people. I’m pretty sure it’s majority government owned and run, if not wholly. Everyone complains about NBN Co. and how slow they were but honestly they did a really good job. I think the complaints were amplified by journalists, looking for angry clicks. (An amazing thing NBN Co. also did IMO was install pull-cables in every conduit, so future upgrades are significantly cheaper.)
- roganartu 6y ago
  I don’t complain about how slow NBN Co was. I complain about the fact that it was meant to be FTTP instead of FTTN (premises vs node), and that the only reason it didn’t end up that way is that the Liberal party said basically exactly what AT&T are here: that ADSL2 speeds are enough, and those last miles from the node to premise can be delivered over Telstra’s existing (horribly degraded and unmaintainable) copper network. So, instead of 95% of the population having gigabit fibre, we have this hodgepodge of FTTP, FTTN with the last hop over 5G, and FTTN with the last hop over copper, all of which cost the same and which you get depends on when it was installed. Don’t get me wrong, the NBN is certainly better now than the ADSL of old, but it ended up costing significantly more for the mess we have now than it would’ve if we’d successfully seen FTTP through from the start.
  - Nursie 6y ago
    Is it bad? I'm moving out your way (specifically Perth) from the UK in a few months and have got really used to our gigabit connection. Last time I lived in Aus the NBN was just being kicked off, and I remember it getting downgraded by the liberals. Has it just never caught up?
    - sumedh 6y ago
      In some areas its bad but in most atleast metro areas its good. You can check what kind of Tech your address has in the NBN website.

GeekyBear 6y ago

Historically, the electrical utilities didn't want to build infrastructure in rural areas either. It was the Rural Electrification Act as part of FDR's New Deal that set up non profit electrical coops to bring power to the most rural areas of America. Mississippi has seen progress in building out internet infrastructure in the most under served rural areas by: 1.) Changing the law to enable the non-profit electrical coops set up under FDR's Rural Electrification Act to offer broadband service using Fiber to the Home. 2.) Taking some of the funding from the initial COVID relief funding and offering it as matching grants to those coops to get the ball rolling. >How coronavirus stimulus funds helped one state create a 'broadband miracle' https://www.cnet.com/home/internet/how-coronavirus-stimulus-funds-helped-one-state-create-a-broadband-miracle/ https://www.cnet.com/home/internet/how-coronavirus-stimulus-...

pyinstallwoes 6y ago

You miss the fact that government is the device used to shield any behavior. What is lobbied to create these moats for these companies is the same thing that will be done internally. The problem is the legislation and how it's voted. It's easily corruptible when representatives are easy to capture.

Scramblejams 6y ago

> we gave them $200 billion to do this in 1996. Did we? I believe there's a compelling case that we did not, or at least a solid argument about whether that's the case: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7709556 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7709556

saagarjha 6y ago

At least this one seems like it had an appropriate ending: https://www.civilbeat.org/2016/01/46-month-sentence-for-albert-hee/ https://www.civilbeat.org/2016/01/46-month-sentence-for-albe...