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President Bush Releases US Broadband Policy
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Sat Feb 02, 2008 08:30 AM
from the twice-nothing-is-still-nothing dept.
from the twice-nothing-is-still-nothing dept.
Ars Technica is reporting that while most people wouldn't know we have a national broadband policy in place, the president claims that not only do we have a plan, it's working spectacularly well. "That's the main conclusion of the just-released 'Network Nation: Broadband in America 2007' [PDF] report from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). What's shocking about the report isn't what it covers [...], but what it leaves out: it doesn't contain a single extended discussion of the fact that the US has been slipping in a worldwide broadband rankings throughout the decade."
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Dialup (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Dialup (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Dialup (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
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Not shocking (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess we're all tired of ranting about Bush, but... I'm not shocked that his report left out his failures. Bush doesn't admit failures. (He's only admitted one regarding his work as a President, ever: Making some cowboy-style remark like "Bring it on." regarding terrorists.)
Re:Not shocking (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
two words (Score:3, Insightful)
"Mission accomplished."
the only thing I want to hear from that lying fool (Score:2)
Corruption: GWB is just a figurehead, I think. (Score:5, Insightful)
Bush is just a figurehead, a puppet to show the public. The media are full of "Bush" said this "Bush" said that, but he is only reading something someone else wrote for him to say.
Cheney and Rove and others have arranged that the powers of the U.S. government be sold to acquaintances, oil and weapons investors, and others who want corruption.
One contribution that seems to have been made by Karl Rove is not only testing that finds the weaknesses of voters and exploits them, but powerful, well-funded initiatives to prevent strong leaders of opposing parties from winning.
It is all corruption all the time. Part of that is endless war that is destroying the value of our money. Notice that prices are rising rapidly? That's because the value of the dollar is dropping. Oil and weapons investors don't care about the value of the dollar, they get paid whatever they ask.
Parent
So What's New? (Score:4, Funny)
Never let facts confuse the issue. Just follow Cheney and stay out of shotgun range.
hhhmmmmmm (Score:3, Insightful)
- our economy is in a great state.
- Iraq has WMD.
- Iran almost has the bomb.
- the deficit was never balanced when I came in, and it is almost balanced now.
- America has plenty of oil, and gas. We have no need for nuculear or alternative power.
- Our broadband policy is working great!
So now, I am trying to decide if he is still copying reagan, if he belongs in the same place with brittney, or both?Well all of them are "correct" (Score:5, Insightful)
I am not just being pedantic, this is the problem with soundbite politics. It doesn't leave room to properly qualify statements. Take bush senior "no more taxes" or something to that effect. If you read up on it, it is just possible that he spoke the truth, as far as I can judge from europe, he just raised existing one, not created any new ones. On the other hand everyone should have known he was lying because the sentence also means he was promising the complete eradication of ALL taxes. "No more slavery" doesn't mean "no increase in the number of slaves" but the abolition of slavery entirely.
Soundbite politics, a great evil that is slowly destroying democracy.
Parent
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Thanks.
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Modern nations need a culture of innovation. (Score:4, Insightful)
The transformation of South Korea from a war-ravaged nation to a technological powerhouse where inividual homes and apartments have affordable fiber links better than many hosting companies in the US is one such example. They embraced development and technological progress, and so they have rocketed ahead in terms of living standards and quality of life.
Meanwhile, we have the US focusing so much energy on religious issues. So much time and potential is wasted arguing over the merits (or lack thereof) of "Intelligent Design" and creationism, for example. If a small fraction of that effort was put towards technological advancement, such as the installation of fiber to all American homes, America could be doing some very great things. But as the current trends are, this seems very unlikely.
It's just a suspicion, but I think you might (Score:4, Interesting)
The current administration has been fixing numbers for 8 years. No child left behind was about numbers, not education. The death toll in Iraq was about numbers not the war. (Iraqi and mercenary deaths don't count) Just about everything this administration touched was about numbers to show the public. They were not planning on the housing crash catching them before they got out of office. There are miles and miles of dark fiber in the US that were paid for with tax dollars and higher service fees. Are they in use? If they are, it's not for joe bloggs ISP service.
In South Korea, the government mandated the tech revolution. In the US the government will not do so, leaving it to private companies who then leave out the little guys that are not profitable customers. This is the major difference. For some reason, after these guys pay off their government officials here in the US, they don't feel that bragging rights about how they provide the BEST service in the US bar none is necessary. Note, more bars != best service, and advertising should always be viewed with a healthy overdose of cynicism.
The current spin doctors know (at least 4 out of 5 of them) that it's the numbers, not actual service value that counts. Our government has shown them how this works. You can do anything, as long as you have a plausible story and numbers to show you are right. After all, the ONLY intelligence data that the rest of us knew about was that Saddam had WMD, and the NUMBER of concurring agencies and or countries was convincing... but I digress.
It's all about numbers. If you have money with large numbers on it, you can get the fiber to your house from any ISP. The problem is that there is no incentive for private businesses to provide superior service to your home if they can continue to rob your wallet every month for something that it a little better than dial up. Notice how the commercials try to convince you that their service is 'broadband', lightning fast, and other terms that intimate super fast speeds. They never talk about real data rates so again in this case it's about numbers. If they hide the numbers you are lead to believe it's all good. You will not see one US company compare their customers to the top three ranked countries in the world for Internet service. That would be using the numbers fairly and we in the US just won't stand for that kind of non-sense. It's just un-American.
Parent
First mover disadvantage (Score:5, Insightful)
My first trip to the USA was in 1998, and back then I saw adverts for DSL connections costing less than I was paying for dial-up here in the UK. On my last trip (last year), the adverts were for more than I pay for a faster connection. This kind of technology comes in cycles. The first to deploy the infrastructure gets the fastest connections for a few years. For the next few years, they get incremental advances based on what you can squeeze out of the existing infrastructure and then they hit a brick wall. The countries with the fastest connections are always the ones who deployed their infrastructure most recently.
Slipping behind is not something the US should be worried about, it's a natural artefact of this kind of technology deployment. They should be worried if they don't have any plans for leapfrogging ahead again (fibre, WiMAX, and so on).
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Canada is bigger than America is,
Canada: 9,984,670 km
United States: 9,826,630 km
yet the population is significantly smaller:
Canada: 33,170,700
United States: 303,290,000
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States [wikipedia.org]
Broadband access in Canada:
25.0%
rank: 9th
Broadband access in the United States
22.1%
rank: 15th
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_broadband_users [wikipedia.org]
if my home country of Soviet Canuckistan can do better than the United States, the world's
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Canada: 80% of the population lives within 300 miles of the US boarder.
There is a whole hell of a lot of Canada that has no one living there so no broadband has to be run there. US broadband is in very poor shape, but so is Canadas. The point you're arguing is like arguing who gets last and who gets next to last in a race. Both runners still lost.
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Even wirelessly it gets tough to service that kind of area, never mind make a profit. Sure, the infrastructure is cheaper than laying cable or fiber, but it's still expensi
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That's why it may actually be wise not to move first, e.g. on Iraq.
f they don't have any plans for leapfrogging ahead again (fibre, WiMAX, and so on).
Too late: 100 Mbps fiber to the home and WiMAX are already deployed in Europe.
Re:First mover disadvantage (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
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Deploying high technology infrastructure is problematic because it changes to rapidly.
You mean the government has not yet started subsidizing the telcos to ugrade their technology, throw more tax payers money at it, and then when it comes for telcos to start providing services to us, they turn around and start blocking torrents, filtering stolen music, look at mail headers, abort net neutrality, and make sure the last mile problem never really goes away.
Considering, that Bush Republicans have always favored pouring our money to corporate coffers, it would seem another effort to make more m
Good point. But not in this case. (Score:2)
It isn't like US moved first, then everyone deployed "what was next" to outdo the US. The US moved first, and most countries followed in its footsteps deploying the same technology. The problem is why other countries were able to continue to move forward to outdo the US, while US growth stopped. The "cycles" you talk about are faster abroad, and slower in the US, and that is the issue here, not the existence of cycles.
My $670 Comcast Broadband Bill (Score:5, Interesting)
Well guess what? I spend over $55 per month for my Internet service. And that includes $0.76 in taxes. Do I pay it? You bet. Hell, I'm an IT guy, so connectivity is important to me. But regular "non-IT" people? Is broadband worth $670 per year to them?
$670 is more than my telephone bill. It is even more than my monthly electric bill. That's right, I spend substantially more on Internet connectivity than on Telephone OR Electricity. Let me tell you, I'd give up broadband way before I gave up electricity or telephone.
So, all-mighty-report-writers, here's a clue: many American families aren't going to be able to pay that kind of price.
Re:My $670 Comcast Broadband Bill (Score:5, Interesting)
And FWIW, I pay more (twice as much) each month for electric and for cell phone than I do for broadband. And don't get me started about heating costs, transportation costs, and food costs, all of which dwarf my broadband bill. In fact, having broadband allowed us to cut our cable bill (we do a lot less TV watching so we don't need lots of channels), and it allowed us to cut our landline bill (using VOIP) as well, so in the end it almost pays for itself.
Parent
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President Bush Releases US Broadband Policy (Score:2)
On the topic of politics in broadband.. (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Government doesn't need to define "broadband". Defining broadband to be X bits per second doesn't mean we automatically get fatter pipes. It just means that what we get is no longer called "broadband," if it doesn't meet the definition.
The marketplace can define what it considers broadband. Government only needs to ensure there is a marketplace free of monopo
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Did Sprint begin its WiMax investments in 2006 with expectations of profits in 2 quarters?
Did T-Mobile purchase vast quantities of Spectrum for a deployment of 3G in 2009 (back in 2005)?
Are the Cable companies making investments into DOCSIS 3.0 for 2009-2010 deployments?
Time and time again, people ignore that companies whose names are not AT&T are investing in the future of broadband. You want someone to blame for the poor state of com
Misleading Rankings (Score:5, Informative)
For example, you can readily get a 30mbit cable connection here. Telstra Bigpond's cheapest full-speed cable offering [bigpond.com] is $39.95 a month... And includes 200 megabytes of data. After which you pay 15 cents for each additional megabyte. (And they charge for uploads as well as downloads.)
Yes, you can get fast, reasonably-priced internet access here. And if you use it, you'll hit your monthly quota in one minute.
The smaller ISPs mostly don't engage in such blatant theft, but all of them have download limits, often quite small. Which would you prefer: 6mbit speed with no limit, or 24mbit and 5GB a month?
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If you don't even use 5GB/month, you definitly won't notice the difference between 8mbit/s and 24mbit/s. I have had both, and can say that you probably won't notice the difference even if you use 100GB/month.
How much coverage? (Score:5, Informative)
I think the fallacy here is that they're probably counting technologies as "broadband" that shouldn't really be considered. ISDN is not broadband. Counting Satellite as broadband is a mistake, too. If you've ever used it, you know what I'm talking about. You can't count the cellular 144k as broadband, because in practice, it's not really faster than dial-up, and you can't count a $1000/month leased line as broadband, because most people aren't going to pay 30% of their income to cover their broadband connection.
We can't delude ourselves with fake numbers and expect to know what's really going on. We're holding on to our past glory not even realizing that we're becoming less and less relevant every day. Sure, we built a nuclear bomb and put a man on the moon, but do you know of anyone in today's workforce that was part of either of those projects? Our highway system, built in the 50's, is great, but there's a heavily travelled bridge down the street from me that's been out for 2 years. The World Trade Center got knocked down over 6 years ago, and there's still a giant smoldering hole in South Manhattan because we can't see past our greed and get our crap together. We have a president that thinks scientific advancement is sinful, and an aging, over-extended military that can't even defeat a bunch of disorganized rebels in two third-world countries.
I hope and pray that we soon get our stuff together. I don't think it's too late yet, but it's getting pretty close.
Black is white, up is down. (Score:2)
I'm speechless.
Bush's hidden talent (Score:2)
Not many know of Bush's hidden technical talent. For example, he recently found errors in Fermilab's calculations [theonion.com]. Don't underestimate the man.
Bush's US Now 100% Broadband (Score:2, Insightful)
Because Bush defines "broadband" as 200Kbps (yes, kilobits). And "everyone" means that even if only one person in a ZIPcode could buy 200Kbps broadband, that ZIPcode is checked off as if everyone in it could get it. And considering the $TRILLIONS Bush has burned in handouts to his cronies (especially the telcos, these days his favorites), the definition of "affordable" is left as an exercise to the reader.
Those relatively few readers whose b
Compared to Sweden.. (Score:5, Interesting)
So why to we have faster and cheaper connections?
* Smaller population (9 million). Although we are do not have a high population density (20/km compared to 31/km for the US), the problem does not scale in a linear fashion.
* Über-centralization. In the US you have states, counties etc, all that have some form of local identity, laws and business. Sweden only has the national level. There are no local ISPs.
* We've paid for it. While it might seem that we are paying less for faster connections, in fact we are not. We are and have been paying it through taxes. Sweden is a very socialist country. Although our ISPs are privately owned they are given enormous subsidies to make sure that every man, woman and reindeer gets a broadband connection no matter where they live. In essence, we in Stockholm are through taxes financing the building of broadbroadband connections up north where it is not economically feasible.
So all in all it's a combination of population, geography and politics.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
So you should be able to get it in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, etc. You can't get it anywhere - even when the population is extremely concentrated.
* We've paid for it.
So did we. [newnetworks.com] We aren't centralized, but virtually every single state wants fiber at the state level. They just can't force the telecos to do it.
US Broadband Policy? (Score:5, Insightful)
The details probably look something like this:
- Grant telephone companies retroactive immunity.
- Allow wide-ranging, warrant-less surveillance of internet traffic.
- Profit!!!!
And PS - Stop terrorists!
Hopefully they'll make whatever drug Cheney is smoking that let's him say with a straight face they've never violated anyone's civil liberties widely available. That should smooth over any remaining restlessness in the sheep.
The ultimate irony would be if the next administration started using some of these tools. Funny the right wing never thinks about that until someone is investigating them. Then they're all about civil rights. Just like Bush was all about fiscal conservatism after the Democrats got control of Congress.
Hypocrites.
I don't see anything about the net-taps (Score:2)
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060515-6829.html [arstechnica.com]
Obama's Is Better (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/technology/ [barackobama.com]
He supports net neutrality; content filtering conducted by parents, not the state; reforming the universal service fund to help subsidize broadband, and a whole lot more.
That's why Wu supports him, and why I do too.
Everybody CONTINUES to ignore the elephant in the (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem with broadband in the U.S. is AT&T.
That's _all_. AT&T(the new SBC) controls something like 60% of the US telco market. AT&T has no interested in next-gen broadband. Ergo, at least 60% of the US will be stuck in broadband hell.
Look at other providers. Most cable companies provide unlimited downloads (up to something ridiculous, like 200-600 gb per month). Comcast is 8-16 Mbps. RCN is 10-20 Mbps. Even the smaller providers are 6-15 Mbps. And every one of these companies is serious about deploying DOCSIS 3.0, bringing node population way down, and boosting speeds to the 50-100 Mbps range in the next year or so.
Look at Verizon. It's on an ambitious "wire our entire footprint with fiber" plan, at vast expense (hundreds of billions). Currently advertising 15/5 Mbps service, it is well known that they are designing the system to easily support 200+ Mbps connection (and provide enough bandwidth for the forseeable future).
Look at Sprint/Verizon Wireless/T-Mobile. T-Mobile is on track to launch a nationwide HSDPA 3G network by the end of the year. Sprint/Verizon have rolled out EVDO RevA nationwide, and are currently planning Revs B and C. Sprint is also on track with a massive WiMax deployment nationwide.
Look at the FCC. We're radically reorganizing the airwaves to free up huge blocks of spectrum for large investments into 2-way highspeed digital transmission. We're preparing for a complete transition of all broadcast from standard def analog to HD digital, and the subsequent free up of airwaves.
And of course, these developments proceed fastest in markets with competition. Verizon is pushing FiOS to 25 Mbps in Comcast markets, where Comcast has moved its cable to 16+ Mbps. Optimum Online is at 30 Mbps in competitive markets.
Competition works. The markets push these large behemoths to invest in new technologies, and they are rolling out this stuff as fast as can be expected. Towers are being refitted, huge quantities of equipment are being purchased, and the various ISPs are tearing up the streets installing new copper and fiber.
All of that, except in AT&T territory. Which is, of course, most of the country. Compared to all of this, AT&T's plan is a hybrid fiber-copper network (that all the cable companies and Verizon rolled out years ago), blanketing markets with advertising claiming that you don't need more than 6 Mbps down, and 768k up; and, of course, using its monopoly profits to underprice its broadband (we can only sell you 3-6 Mbps, but you can get it for $14.99 a month!).
Figure out a way to fix AT&T, and the rest of the industry will drag us into the future, and you'll see that our regulatory framework makes sense. Ignore AT&T, and no amount of incentive will fix things, because those robberbarrons running the company will figure out a way to pocket the money and continue to not invest in anything.
Eisenhower & Interstate Highway System (Score:5, Interesting)
Republicans have terrible long term memory. Bush did not heed his father's caution about invading Iraq. Likewise, in forging this do-nothing policy, he forgot about another Republican- Dwight D. Eisenhower. One of Eisenhower's greatest achievements was a Interstate Highway System [wikipedia.org]. The highway system was completely funded by the US government and had tremendous impact the economy that lasts till this day. Goods and workers trek across that system everyday creating the life we have the today. The things we take for granted today would not exist without those roads. A national broadband network can have similar impact for the 21st century. Instead of cybertrekking across small roads like we do todays, we can move across superhighways.
The US economy and society would benefit from this system great. Huge broadband pipes makes sending any form of data across that network practical. Advertising, entertainment, and commerce would get more opportunities. For those who don't like DRM, broadband could cut out those media companies behind the RIAA and MPAA that sit between the consumer and the artist. Scientist and student can have access to huge libraries all from their computers. Our economy grows on ides and such network would allow those ideas move efficiently.
With a recession oncoming, private businesses aren't likely to build such a system anytime soon. Banks are still licking their wounds from the housing fiasco. I can imagine that they will be too shell shock to give loans for a broadband network. The US government is the biggest spender in the world and it doesn't matter if it wastes money on a technology that would be obsolete. I believe that governmental investment is the only way to get a broadband system off the ground.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Because it is expensive to build that infrastructure. In order to recoup costs, most providers ask for monopolies within a given area. In short, they are going to the *government* to be granted a market monopoly. I don't know about you, but that doesn't sound very free market at all.
So you might want to keep in mind, all that amazing broadband architecture will likely only happ
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