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mlcarson
join:2001-09-20
Santa Maria, CA

2 recommendations

mlcarson

Member

Rural Electrification Act

The same crap was happening in the early 1900's when electricity was new to most residents. The electric companies of the time only wanted to serve the densely populated areas because it wasn't profitable to do the same to the rural areas. We need the same type of legislation for Internet today. Set some type of standard that each house will have a fiber optic connection and then just start deploying a national infrastructure to these so-called non-profitable areas. Heck, why not pay the same cooperatives that exist today in the electrical industry to do the rollout. A good fiber rollout could replace all of the telephone and cable infrastructure in these areas.

The free market works fine when there are plenty of competitors and no steep barriers to entry but that's not the case for Internet today except maybe in the largest cities. It'll never be the case in rural areas.
AmericanMan
Premium Member
join:2013-12-28
united state

1 recommendation

AmericanMan

Premium Member

Yup. Without the Rural Electrification Act, I think that any area of the United States that doesn't have Fiber-Optic Internet to this day wouldn't have electricity. And I am not exaggerating.

Instead, those of us in rural areas would all be running a million different portable generators. And both "sides" (in actuality, it's only one side) of Congress would be perfectly okay with that.

NYDude25
join:2007-08-23
Massapequa, NY

NYDude25 to mlcarson

Member

to mlcarson
Basically you are asking for the someone to subsidize the cost of connections to rural customers. Rolling out miles of cable/fiber across the country isn't free, and it needs to be maintained after rolling it out. So someone has to pay for all of that.

It sounds like you are saying "I don't want to live near other people, but I want other people to help pay for my connection."

jcouch93
join:2002-01-29
Kennesaw, GA

1 recommendation

jcouch93

Member

That was the entire point of the REA. Also, what do you think the slush fund the telcos have been using for years (the USF) has been used for as it certainly doesn't appear to have been used to provide broadband to rural areas.
Kearnstd
Space Elf
Premium Member
join:2002-01-22
Mullica Hill, NJ

Kearnstd to NYDude25

Premium Member

to NYDude25
I am guessing 100yrs ago you would have been against the REA too.

NYDude25
join:2007-08-23
Massapequa, NY

NYDude25 to jcouch93

Member

to jcouch93
The money in USF-HC fund goes to subsidize telco costs in rural areas. The FCC wants to switch it to subsidize broadband costs in rural areas, but there is argument over the choice to use wireless broadband in those areas, but wiring up the areas is cost prohibitive.

tschmidt
MVM
join:2000-11-12
Milford, NH
·Consolidated Com..
·Republic Wireless
·Hollis Hosting

tschmidt

MVM

said by NYDude25:

but wiring up the areas is cost prohibitive.

It is true the more rural the area the more expensive it is per household to deploy fiber.

Let’s put cost into perspective. There are about 130 million residences in the US. If we assume a cost to wire everyone at $2,000 per household the bill comes to $260Bn. A lot of money to be sure but not too bad spread out over a decade or two. By way of example in today’s dollars the cost of the the Apollo program was about $200bn, Interstate highway systems about $500bn and the 2014 defense budget is $750bn.

Internet access today is as important as electricity and telephone were a century ago. Without it citizens are unable to full participate in the society. If we could afford rural electrification a century ago during the height of the depression we can certainly afford to wire up the country with fiber today.

The other thing that has been pointed out is for most of us, even with broadband access, the choice of providers is extremely limited. This gives ISPs incredible leverage over how and by whom the Internet can be used, hence the need for Net Neutrality. This is at odds with the technical specification of the Internet as an egalitarian end-to-end network open to all players. FTTP needs to be split into wholesale and retail components. The physical first-mile fiber network is operated as a regulated common carrier, open to multiple companies that use the physical network to deliver end user services.

/tom

NYDude25
join:2007-08-23
Massapequa, NY

NYDude25

Member

There are huge differences between internet access today and the rural electrification that happened years ago. The internet technology is different from electric technology. In just the last 20 years, we have gone from dial up to DSL to cable to fiber as well as 3g, LTE, and others. Electric lines are pretty much the same as they were a century ago. The FCC says it will cost upwards of $350 billion to wire up high speed internet fully throughout the country. The country certainly doesn't have that money sitting around to spend, and besides, there are private companies willing to spend that money to wire up the country.

If the government came up with a plan to reduce the amount of regulations that companies currently find cost prohibitive, and other enticements for wiring rural areas, they could have a free market solution to the issue.