CenturyLink has announced that the company intends to take $3 billion in government subsidies to shore up the company's broadband network gaps. According to the CenturyLink announcement, the telco will take $500 million a year for six years from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)'s Connect America Fund (CAF). In exchange, it will expand broadband to approximately 1.2 million rural households and businesses in 33 states.
While the FCC now defines broadband as 25 Mbps down, these subsidies require that the deployed services be able to provide speeds of at least 10 Mbps down.
"Our acceptance of the CAF II funding continues our commitment to further bridge the urban-rural digital divide by bringing high-speed broadband to households and businesses in many of CenturyLink's most rural markets," CenturyLink said.
CenturyLink also nabbed $75 million in phase one of CAF funding, which at the time required the telco to deploy speeds of at least 4 Mbps to under-served regions. The telco says its CAF II six-year build-out plan should be finalized over the next few months, and the expansion of DSL services is slated to begin in early 2016.
This is so stupid. Why do we give them taxpayer handouts to build a network which they will overcharge back to us? Why doesn't the government just get out of the way for towns to build their own fiberoptic infrastructure just like they build their own roads, water, sewage, etc?
Why does Telecom think accepting tax dollars is ok for them but when a Municipality tries to build a network that might be partially funded with tax dollars it a big NO NO.
Does anyone else think this is a rip off? $3 billion for only serving 1.2 million customers, I'm more than willing to bet that CenturyLink is going to make a decent profit from these tax dollars, definitely doubt it'll all get spend on expansion...
While the FCC now defines broadband as 25 Mbps down, these subsidies require that the deployed services be able to provide speeds of at least 10 Mbps down.
