Billion-dollar US broadband bonanza awaits Biden's blessing – what you need to know

US broadband is about to get a major cash injection through the $1.2tr bipartisan infrastructure bill approved by the House of Representatives on Friday. The bill, passed by the Senate in August, is expected to be signed by President Biden in the next few days. "The Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal will deliver $65 billion to …

[Anonymous Coward]

Latency sufficient to support real-time applications?

I read that as "gaming". I do believe that knocks out all those satellite infestations being launched unless the players want to be slaughtered by lag... even at that minimum distance, the data still has to be routed after it reaches the ground stations, so they're ALWAYS going to be "underserved" compared to the rest of the population.

Besides - do we really need to make EVERYTHING in our lives vulnerable to sunspots and solar flares?

[Kimo]

After last year, Zoom is high on the list of real-time applications.

[rcxb1]

<blockquote>Latency sufficient to support real-time applications? I read that as "gaming".</blockquote>

Not at all. VoIP and video conferencing don't work well with laggy connections. A big problem for remote desktop protocols to as well, though to a lesser extent.

<blockquote>I do believe that knocks out all those satellite infestations being launched</blockquote>

The 20ms advertised by Starlink should be perfectly fine for most everything. Perhaps not high-speed stock trading...

[Anonymous Coward]

What that is is a 20mS PENALTY for using the service on top of lag and delay from the ground station to wherever you were planning to connect.

Saying they have a 20mS service is really misleading to the general public. They don't. They have a 20mSec OVERHEAD.

[bombastic bob]

Their claims do not sound that far off though.

speed of light suggests that 500 miles of altitude (low orbit) would take about 3msec on each leg of the trip if it is directly overhead. Add equipment and queue delays like any router and it does not sound that bad at first. But to make that work you need a LOT of those satellites. This as opposed to something in geosync orbit (around 22,000 miles) that would be ~120msec each way.

[ArrZarr]

The new internet satellite constellations cannot be considered in the same field as traditional geostationary satellite internet.

Starlink satellites sit between around 550km up.

Geostationary orbit is 35,786km up.

It won't be able to compete with a decent FTTC connection, but the two systems are leagues apart.

[joed]

another wealth transfer under the cover of good intensions

Somehow I can see IPSs and techbros/hipsters that want to settle countryside (but did not want to lose "civilization" link) as the greater beneficiaries of yet another government handout than the rest of society that stayed in remote places because they either wanted to be left alone or appreciates lower cost of living there (being undesirable by those who just have to have it all). As usual we'll all chip in to support "high society's" vision of enlightened lifestyle that everyone should aspire to.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: another wealth transfer under the cover of good intensions

Who Gives and Who Gets?

Explore the Balance of Payments between States and the Federal Government

rockinst org / issue-areas / fiscal-analysis / balance-of-payments-portal/

Check it out "bro".

[doublelayer]

Re: another wealth transfer under the cover of good intensions

Out of curiosity, why did you do that to the URL? We can have valid URLs in our comments here. We can even have clickable links here. No need to do that unless you have some secret plan I am not understanding.

[IGotOut]

Re: another wealth transfer under the cover of good intensions

How does rat taste?

Just asking as that's about the most abundant food grown in cities these days.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: another wealth transfer under the cover of good intensions

I live in "poor farm country" in mid-west Canada; Saskatchewan to be precise.

You have NO idea just how connected farm technology is nowadays, with tractors and equipment that drive pre-programmed GPS-tracked paths to data collection systems that harves the *data* from that equipment as it operates in the field. Farming IS "high tech" nowadays if you want to be competitive.

So if even the farmers in the rural outposts of the midwest need that technology to do their JOBS, I'd say the only people you could be talking about are people in the deserts or something - and they've been doing plentry of encroaching on the desert in Nevada and Arizona for quite some time now. :)

[Kimo]

Re: another wealth transfer under the cover of good intensions

I know teachers in rural Ohio who are working on dial-up speeds. They want to stay in their hometowns and still help their students with current information and tools, as well as be able to do their 6+ hours of grading and prep a night online.

[rcxb1]

Re: another wealth transfer under the cover of good intensions

You should take a look at life on Native American reservations, remote Alaskan villages, and similar. Somehow, not being on the electric grid seems to be rather detrimental to quality of life for all those people, with high incidents of alcoholism, domestic violence, shorter life-spans, etc. Internet access may not be quite as transformational as electricity, but people don't live in remote areas because they want to be without modern services.

[Dinanziame]

I'm sure AT&T and Verizon are delighted to receive free cash that they will never use to improve their network

[J. Cook]

Of course; Just ask the people of New York City that are still waiting for the fiber rollout that NYC had to sue the carrier over from lack of fulfillment.

[Cliffwilliams44]

It is probably because doing anything in NY state and especially NYC is most often just not profitable. You have to deal with crooked politicians, Unions run my Mafioso, one of the stupidest and most burdensome regulatory environments in the country (i.e. California with all its stupid regulations is not as bad as NY)

I work in Construction, (Big British International) one of the few places we will not do business (besides France) it the Northeast US. We have had too many failed projects up there not because we can't build them because dealing with all that foes on up there eventually turns it into a losing proposition. Not to mention that it always ends in litigation because the government tries to screw us out of the money we deserve to be paid.

[EricB123]

Why does the American government (aka taxpayer, aka some government no limit credit card) subsidizes corporations that are already immensely profitable?

[Cliffwilliams44]

Expanding broad band services into rural areas is just not profitable!

i.e. Kansas has a total population density of 36.5 people per Sq. mile. Most of that is in the large cities. once you get into the farmland it can be as low as 3-4 people per sq. mile!

It would take over 100 years to recoup the cost of running fiber out to these rural areas.

This is what was done in the beginning of the 20th century with phone service. AT&T was subsidized to extend phone service out to rural areas.

Having worked for a British international company and having to work with many Brits in Networking I understand that many of you Europeans just do not have an understanding of the actual size of the US. I can't tell you how many times I had to have this conversation, "You do realize that Dallas to Denver is 663 straight line miles right?" and get the response, "Oh, I didn't realize that!"

[Henry Wertz 1]

Profitability

Thing is, broadband doesn't have to be fiber. 100mbps down and 25 up is pretty easy to maintain with modern wireless ISP equipment, the low population density that becomes a crippling disadvantage to fiber becomes not that big a deal if you get some wireless hardware with some range to it.

Problem in the past has been this cash being doshed out to companies that then spend it to build out (at the time) their cable and DSL networks in areas they were going to build them anyway, as opposed to the underserved areas it was meant for.

[Marty McFly]

The problem....

In my area we have copper in the ground. That delivers a rocking 6mb/s DSL speed. We cannot string fiber along the power poles because the government requires like-for-like. Which means to go any faster is a very expensive fiber direct bury project.

But no one talks about that. They talk about how the telco's are getting free money.

[bombastic bob]

and now, web pages will become even MORE scripty and bloated

just like how Windows became LESS EFFICIENT and PIGGY as CPUs got more powerful, and available RAM increased.

I suppose you might say

"The efficiency of a program or operating system is inversely proportional to the power of the computer that runs it"

- or -

"The efficiency of a web site is inversely proportional to the speed of the network that accesses it."

get used to massive CSS and javascript libraries delivered by nightmarish CDNs like you've never seen before...

(and do not forget that in theory those CDNs could be TRACKING YOU and SELLING THE DATA)

[Cliffwilliams44]

And how much if this will ever get guilt? There will be cost overruns, projects that go POOF! Companies bidding on this work (awarded not for their competency but for their "Wokeness") who will go surprising out of business after the grant money is distributed. (Can you say Solindra!)

Government money gets wasted. 30 years in Civil construction has taught me that! There are many companies in the US that know how to milk this teat!

We would have been better off awarding tax incentives to Communications/Cable companies to expand their networks into rural areas. Make it profitable for them.

How many of these companies are actually going to build this. And if it gets build will they provide service because it will still not be profitable. 20 customers in a 40 sq. mile area is not profitable!

[Anonymous Coward]

We took a different approach in Saskatchewan. Our provincial telco, SaskTel, created under government mandate, was given orders to serve the whole province with high speed.

They did it, and they're still making money - quite a lot of it, actually.

It is perfectly possible to service the community and make money. What isn't possible is to RAPE the community for MAXIMUM profits, like happens in the US and elsewhere in Canada.

[Henry Wertz 1]

Hope it's spent well

I do hope it's spent well. Problem with past broadband investments, a large amount went to large telcos with some buildout requirements but they'd be over 5 or 10 years, so 5 or 10 years later when they didn't meet the requirements nobody came and got the money back from them, it just went into their coffers.

[RLWatkins]

We already paid for that...

... several times over in fact. US telcos have been collecting a "broadband tax" for a couple of decades, amounting to over a half-trillion dollars, to fulfil their commitment to "bring broadband to all Americans". They convinced the head of the FCC, an AT&T lobbyist, that GSM was "broadband" and that they therefore had finished the job, without actually doing it at all.

So... we're going to pay for that all over again? How many times, I wonder, before we actually get it?