Posted on 07/10/2011 6:26:20 PM PDT by MindBender26
On FNC, Gov Huckabee just revealed the cost to you and me to bring Broadband internet service to rural areas through Obama's Stimulus package. It was $349,000 per home, and you and I paid it!
In Montana, it was worse. The program made Broadband available to a total of 7 homes that did not have it available before, at a cost to you and me of $49,000,000. That's $7,000,000 per home.
The total cost was $7.2 BILLION... and we... and our kids... and their kids, paid the bill!
And does anyone doubt that Obama is trying to destroy America?
Check out reply #27
More political lies; this time from the right.
Ditto. I’ve tried to get line of sight at the farm for the last two years... nada.
Rumor was that this program was to bolster the system in the area with another tower.
Another government FU.
wow. And I thought verizon’s $80/month air card charge was alot of money!
We lived about 30 miles east of Fresno, California, in the Sierra Nevada foothills. There is no cell phone service there and no high-speed internet. We figured out the answer to the problem ourselves — we got a satellite dish at a cost of about $99 per month. Pricey, but a lot less than $7m!! Sheesh! and this arrangement let us upgrade whenever it made sense.
I had a big huge fight with WB when we were on satellite and got cut off completely for two weeks(!) I asked WHY in the WORLD we couldn’t get as much bandwidth as we wanted and were willing to pay for. After a lot of hemming and hawing the rep told me the Fed Gov limits how much they can sell to any individual user and that it MANDATES cutoff after violating the satellite Internet Terms of Service. I did NOT prompt her to blame the gov’t.
As a suburban American I have a right to cheap productive rural land with a house built on it to use for vacations and to bug out in case of collapse. The Federales should buy one for me for $100,000 and your taxes should pay for it
BTW if your fellow rural dwellers get their cooperative act together you can probably bring in a high speed wireless internet system to serve 10-20 families. Might even be Gov't grants for that.
Of course you do!
We also deserve power restoration when high-density areas get theirs. Our roads should magically be snow plowed. Our gravel road pot holes should be there one day, then gone the next. We deserve mailboxes no more than 20 feet from our front doors. We also deserve to simply plop our trash outside and expect it to be gathered up and whisked away by the trash fairys once a week.
For “FREE.” We pay our taxes and have rights, too.
I knew it. We have rights, man! ;^)
How do you figure the right is lying here?
Broadband has become as much about basic infrastructure in 2011, as dial phones were in the 1960s. It is needed before commercial growth can take place. It is as fundamental to growth as having roads and bridges.
You may not remember the “Bell System” which had a policy of universal service. But they understood that having a phone in every house was more important to the growth and strength of the entire nation, than just having phones in the profitable suburbs and cities. They lost money on the rural phone lines but they made it up on other business lines. It all worked out because it made nationwide opportunities and made us number one in world communications capability at that time.
The government rewarded them and their success by busting them up. They sent Bell Labs to France and millions of US manufacturing jobs to Asia and pushed the USA from leader in communications to its current second tier capability. S Korea and many others have better communications now than the USA.
We need to assure that basic infrastructure, the building block of opportunity and strengthening the nation (not arts museums, Statue of Liberty, and good restaurants) are available nationwide. Broadband has become basic infrastructure just as phone lines were 30 years ago. You cannot start and run a business without it.
Improving and rebuilding our national infrastructure is what should have been done with the stimulus money instead of giving it to politicians in states to get reelected.
I agree that the nationwide upgrade to broadband needs to be a priority, but prudently with common sense because we are not the same fiscally strong nation we were 30-40 years ago.
I remember hearing about this program a few years back and thought, ya right see if it ever happens out here in bush Alaska, ha. It still costs 1500 to install sat internet & 150/month. Coming from someone that remembers DSL, but ain't ready to move back to an urban area for it, at no price.
Wasn’t the “Universal Service Fund” Algore cast the tiebreaking vote on supposed to cover all the rural internet charges? It’s been on phone bills for years. (see “USF”)
Which, by Huckabee's account of things, is entirely missing.
Crooks!
No, the point is that you laid blame on the “right” and I don’t see any evidence of that here. Huckabee is saying that the program is a monumental waste of money for the results which would explain perfectly why you haven’t seen much good from it. Where is any blame for the right in that?
Actually, Ma Bell split that up themselves. They split off equipment mfg., from service and gave Lucent the Labs.
You obviously didn’t read the posts. See mine, #32.
Hughesnet formerly Directway has the same issues as Wildblue. Their only difference is how they cap and throttle their customers.
What ever happened to co-ops?? Back in the 50’s we lived in a very rural community with no phone service. The community got together and started a phone company for basicly cost.
On the idea of locally owned/municipal WISPs:
There are many around the country seeing various types of success. The local wimax guy is caught in red tape hell because our township can’t figure out how to zone a tower for commercial use rather than personal. And there’s another nasty flynin the ointment. It works like this:
1) Town X has around 2000 people. The council, mayor, etc. have heard from their citizens they want broadband access at home, schools, local businesses and so on.
2) Town X’s officials contact major ISP’s like Cox, Comcast, Verizon and so on but they’re given the same answer by all: it would cost too much money to deploy for such a small population. Town X appeals again but gets nowhere.
3) the Citizens then decide to create their own network using local dollars. They have the plans drawn up, contracts are negotiated, costs are determined and the residents are thrilled...and it all comes to a screeching halt.
4) One of the big ISP’s files a lawsuit, alleging that a governmental entity is acting in place of an existing corporation and using tax dollars to fund it. That they weren’t interested before doesn’t matter — they can afford the lawyers to keep deployment tied up for years.
It’s a mess that shouldn’t exist, but there it is.
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