New minimum speed for US broadband connections

Forrest Christian (List Account) lists at packetflux.com
Thu Jun 3 21:41:35 UTC 2021


On Thu, Jun 3, 2021 at 10:21 AM Baldur Norddahl <baldur.norddahl at gmail.com>
wrote:

> But isn't that just proving my point? If you can do 2,4 Gbps per
> frequency, why are the WISPs whining about a 100 Mbps requirement?!
>

The problem is this, in the US:   If the government decides anything under
100Mb/s second isn't broadband, what happens is that any location that
doesn't have 100Mb/s on a given date (usually shortly after the definition
changes) is eligible for subsidies which are only given to a single
provider for them to build out 100Mb/s within a given amount of time, such
as 5 years.   Even if they do have 100Mb/s the ability to state that they
have covered an area is often tied to providing "facilities based" phone
service. So if a WISP doesn't have 100Mb/s right now, or isn't providing
phone service (which few people want anymore), the government gives away
money for a competitor to come in and overbuild the WISP.  There are often
various strings attached that prevent the average WISP from either applying
for or obtaining these funds.

Note the above is a general description, and each iteration of broadband
subsidies have had different rules, but the general description of the
problem is consistent across iterations.  For example, the first batch of
subsidies were only available to incumbent telephone companies.

The sad thing is that this results in less broadband deployment.   These
subsidies rob WISPs of capital they could and would use to expand into
areas where there is very little to no service at all today.   This is
because the subsidies usually end up going to overbuild the WISP's "cash
cow" locations where they provide what you would consider good quality
internet at a reasonable price.   This overbuild (with a subsidised
competitor) reduces the ability for the WISP to obtain capital to expand
since many WISPs are financed using cash flow, and not by other sources of
revenue.

-- 
- Forrest
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