Why Rural Internet Is Still Terrible, Despite Billions in Federal Spending
wsj.com
wsj.com
The Democrats somehow think they are channeling FDR by giving out a few billion dollars in a lottery, again and again and again. They don't seem to understand how it looks to people who see the spending but still have slow internet.
You solve a problem like not by setting a $X billion budget arbitrary but by planning to get it done, setting a budget appropriate to the scale, and getting it done.
Another phrase that hurts is "technology agnostic". There is nothing agnostic about it at all, it is really advocating fixed wireless and DSL, technologies that aren't adequate to the task. DSL is a great technology for a place like Singapore or South Korea but rural areas in the US need the long range of optic fiber. It shows how far we've fallen that at one point we ran electric wires and telephone wires to people's houses but today we can't run a simple strand of fiber.
It's less "can't" and more "won't". CenturyLink and co. make a lot more from reusing and overpricing very expensive 5Mb DSL instead of rolling out fiber, and whenever the fed wants to push fiber rollout, they take the funding and "may not meet" deadlines[1].
Same reason some ISPs ask some for hundreds of thousands of dollars[2][3][4] when they're "out of reach" from their network, even when the house nextdoor isn't (can't find that one now). Sometimes that amount is for cable or DSL, not even fiber.
Disclaimer: I'm not American, but I followed these US telco stories for a few years.
1: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/01/centurylink-fron...
2: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/09/man-b...
3: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/08/want-...
4: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/01/jared...
https://www.amazon.com/Zero-Sum-Society-Distribution-Possibi...
talks about numerous problems we experience today, such as windfall profits in the petroleum industry, but the most interesting bit in my mind was the fall of the steel industry in the US which based on the Open Hearth Furnace and the Bessmer process. Japan and Germany had there obsolete factories blown up so they switched to the newly developed Basic Oxygen process which was faster, cheaper and produced superior steel. US Steel lobbied to get protectionism, but this had a negative effect on other parts of US industry. For instance US automakers were making expensive and inferior cars out of expensive and inferior steel.
The problem wasn't that the US Steel industry had to invest in new steelmaking capacity, but rather it had to disinvest in the old technology because so long as it could make profits without investing it wouldn't invest. This character played a role in it
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Mellon_Scaife
and he later got famous for bankrolling a campaign to harry Bill Clinton when he was in office. Oddly Bill Clinton became friends with RMS later because RMS let him "triangulate", so long as he could keep his head above water he could do nothing for leftists and have them blame the Republicans and not Clinton.
If the phone lines just disappeared it would be perfectly profitable to roll out a fiber network, but so long as the copper wires exist phone companies have every reason to postpone copper retirement indefinitely.
- Bezeq was forced to lease the VDSL infrastructure line to ISPs for a (low) capped price. Only the wholesale lease price to ISPs was capped, they could charge individual customers as they wish.
- Other ISPs were allowed to deploy fiber gradually and slowly but Bezeq's rollout had rural coverage requirements
This sounds intrusive but Bezeq was originally government-owned and most (if not all) of its infrastructure was paid for by taxes during that time. Once it was spun off into a private company, they kept all of the profits. So this was more reminding Bezeq their existing telco infrastructure was gov-funded.
OT tangent / rant: COVID is a great example too. GOP? Do nothing. Dems? Take every precaution, or shame on you god damnit. Just six months ago I got a box full of COVID tests I never asked for mailed to my house. They would have been great to receive anytime in, say, 2020. At this point after I’ve been vaccinated and isolated for 2 years it feels like a hollow gesture by someone who felt VERY compelled to spend tax dollars to pad their political “accomplishment” list
In Dec 2020 my left wing friends were expressing fear of a vaccine that Trump developed at "Warp Speed". After Biden was inaugurated anti-vax became a right wing thing. Trump could have done some good using every channel to push people to take "his" vaccine but he choose not to because, I think, he understands that QAnon psychology and knows he would lose the esteem of his Jan 6 army if he did something responsible.
It's like the story of the Church of Scientology where it's believed the leader, David Miscavige is terribly afraid of catching COVID and has driven the staff to take extreme precautions against it, including mandatory vaccinations. He's also told staff to lie about this because he believes the Scientology public is anti-vax and would be driven away if they were honest.
Kamela Harris: "But if Donald Trump tells us that we should take it. I’m not taking it."
Mike Pence: "So the fact that you continue to undermine public confidence in a vaccine, if the vaccine emerges during the Trump administration, I think is unconscionable."
Who would have predicted the political positions just a few months later...
Having said that it is a genuine problem for computer science, computer and communication engineering not unlike the Riemann Hypothesis for the mathematicians. Whoever solved this particular problem with an affordable and sustainable solutions (not solely on govt budgets) should deserve the Nobel prizes, Field medals,Turing awards, etc.
See page 12 of https://www.ustelecom.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Rural-B...
If you've got the money to spend, carriers won't take it. Frequently the cable company will quote you something ridiculous like $50,000 to do the install, but it is really a bluff to make you go away. If you do have the money they'll make up some excuses and you'll find service is not available at any price.
Sure, the Democrats are way too comfortable with subsidizing things, but the problem is not that internet service is too expensive, it's that carriers have refused to upgrade DSL networks.