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Ajit Pai promised faster broadband expansion:
2019 was the second straight year that Comcast lowered its overall cable capital expenditures (though Comcast's spending on line extensions and scalable infrastructure rose in 2018).
This wasn't supposed to happen, according to claims that ISPs and Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai made in order to push through the repeal of net neutrality rules and other deregulatory measures. Pai, who just today released an 11-page list of his accomplishments as FCC chair, repeatedly argued that net neutrality rules caused broadband providers to reduce capital expenditures. After his net neutrality repeal took effect in June 2018, he claimed that the repeal and other FCC deregulation caused investment to rise.
But Comcast isn't the only major ISP cutting investment, as AT&T projects that it will reduce capital spending from $23 billion in 2019 to $20 billion in 2020. Charter Communications said in October that its capital expenditures excluding mobile services would total $7 billion in 2019, down from $8.9 billion in 2018. Verizon reported a small increase in capital expenditures in the first nine months of 2019.
(Score: 3, Touché) by JoeMerchant on Monday February 03 2020, @04:07PM (16 children)
Just imagine how much they would have reduced spending if they didn't get net neutrality repealed!!! /s
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Monday February 03 2020, @04:15PM (3 children)
I have a new prediction.
The first corporate use of non-neutral net won't be some squeeze by ISPs of netflix or youtube. That's too easy to backfire.
It'll be unilateral blocking of sites that displace the ISP's owners. Pirate bay, sci hub, anything vaguely and non-specifically illegal that hurts profits.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 03 2020, @05:29PM (2 children)
Besides morally good but illegal services, maybe more importantly the real victim will be upstarts.
Google Search, GMail, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Netflix are so big that if Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, or Cox tries to charge them extra for bandwidth they can refuse and when customers lose service they'll scream at the ISP more than they'll scream at the service provider. But if you're a new web service trying to compete with the big players, you're small enough that the ISP can charge you extra for bandwidth and bleed you dry, and because you're small you won't have enough loyal customers raising hell with ISP support.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 03 2020, @06:59PM (1 child)
New web services? A few regulations will prevent that problem from ever occurring. Just make sure anyone who runs a website with user-driven content is responsible for monitoring and moderating that content. Then we won't have any pesky new web services and can focus on further entrenching existing monoliths like Facebook and Google into our government.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday February 03 2020, @09:07PM
A modicum of annual fees [vimeo.com] and no ad monetization work wonders for creating the feeling of responsibility into posters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 5, Funny) by aristarchus on Monday February 03 2020, @04:16PM (11 children)
Ah! The Kansas argument! If only they had cut taxes even more, then the power of unregulated capitalism would have been unleashed!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 03 2020, @04:21PM (8 children)
Just think what would happen with zero taxes.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday February 03 2020, @04:24PM (6 children)
You're not thinking big picture enough.
Imagine negative taxes for corporations!
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 5, Informative) by ikanreed on Monday February 03 2020, @04:49PM (4 children)
You mean like this? [fanbyte.com]
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday February 03 2020, @05:43PM (3 children)
I'm thinking something at least that bad.
It's always a wonderful thing when giant corporations get money from the government for not doing what that money was for.
That's why SLS will never get off the ground. It's just too profitable to keep having delays and more cost plus. But I digress.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday February 03 2020, @06:50PM
Hey, I've lived in Clear Lake (Houston) - there's lots of good people there, people who need money for their wives and kids, and boats in the Kemah/Seabrook/Clear Lake marinas (It has the greatest concentration of boats of any region in Texas and claims the third largest fleet of recreational boats in all of the United States). It's not their fault that management keeps changing their mind like a Forever 21 addict changes their wardrobe...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 03 2020, @07:44PM
The government would have just spent in on classified crap like bioweapons but lied and said they used it to save children or something. So if the taxes are to go somewhere it is probably better to activision. Ideally they would not be collected from the people at all though.
https://constitution.solari.com/fasab-statement-56-understanding-new-government-financial-accounting-loopholes/ [solari.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 04 2020, @09:17AM
Sounds like Telstra. The Australian government, having seen the potential of the "DSL" invention paid Telstra a handsome amount of cash to build infrastructure to replace dialup. Telstra put the cash in their back pocket claiming that ISDN will do. They made a killing while the internet was new sucking high fees for MB of data where the lines should have been carrying GB.
Eventually it became too much to cover up. The government insisted that Telstra build DSL capable networks. By then the money was gone. We built a network, Telstra cried, pointing at their huge banks of modems and tonnes of copper.
It was too late.
So the government put their foot down. A "test centre" for "broadband" to build "what America has" in Australia would be built. DSL would be made available to the public. No! Telstra cried, clutching at their fat profit margin, you can't do this to us! We are besties! How could you? The public don't need broadband! Email is tiny! Who would pay so much just for internet? It won't be profitable.
The centre was built in Launceston Tasmania in the late 1990s. When the call went out for volunteers to use broadband instead of dialup the centre was swamped.
Telstra was given the contract to run the "test phase" for introducing broadband to the region.
On the bright side, since Telstra didn't move fast enough, several ISPs got off the ground in the meantime. Iinet. TPG. Ozemail. Now Australia has hundreds (?) Of ISPs.
......
Let's build a fibre network to be the future of internet in Australt, the government said, to bring Australia into the 21st century. We will call it the NBN.
#%#%2%##%36$&CARRIER DROPPED
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday February 03 2020, @06:44PM
I don't have to imagine, I've lived it!
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 04 2020, @09:11AM
Kansas tried this. Cut all taxes, which means not funding roads. Roads deteriorate. Businesses quit using roads. Businesses quit, due to lack of business. This is why now, you cannot drive across Kansas, you have to go through Nebraska. There are no gas stations in Kansas. No 7-11s. There are a few cows left, but if you help yourself to them, that is rustling, and they hang you. Wonderful State, Kansas! Nothing there, anymore, except the wind sweeping down the plain, and Oklahoma has most of that.
(Score: 2, Funny) by fustakrakich on Tuesday February 04 2020, @02:56AM (1 child)
Hey! Show some respect! Kansas won the Super Bowl!
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 04 2020, @08:46AM
Americans are, um, Geographically challenged. Most could not, unless they are NPR reporters, identify Ukraine on a map, that is, a map with no labels, which some people happen to keep in their Evil Secretary of State Lairs. But the fact that Americans cannot identify Manhattan, which clearly is just downstream of Three Forks, in Montana, or Honolulu, which is in South Carolina, or even Athens in Georgia or Miami in Ohio, or Buffalo Wings which are not at all Buffalo meat parts. So, point being, Trump is really not any more stupid than his supporters, it is just that he is as stupid as his supporters, and he thinks that Button and Nipple are countries, like Africa. And Missouri City is obviously the capital of Missouri, just like Jersey City is the capital of Jersey, and New York is the capital of New York, and Nevada City is the capital of Nevada, despite being in California. What a fucking moron the President of the Fucked United States is. I would imagine Senators would be embarrassed enough to vote to remove his ass, and fine intellect with vast ignorance, from office.