Sacramento Might be Undergoing a Broadband Policy Reboot:
Senator Lena Gonzalez, the original author of EFF's sponsored S.B. 1130, has introduced the next iteration of that effort with S.B. 4. We go into more detail about the legislation here. But, in short, the bill would affirmative embrace the small local government/non-profit model of broadband by creating a state-backed bond financing program that would enable them to take 30- to 40-year, long-term, low-interest loans to finance fiber. The legislation also makes more modest adjustments to the California Advanced Service Fund grant program, with a handful of concessions agreed to after discussions over a previous version of this bill. But, in concert with the bond program, these changes would still yield a powerful formula for ending the digital divide.
Companion legislation in the Assembly led by Assemblymember Aguiar-Curry (A.B. 14) has also been introduced and indicates a merger of support from both California's Senate and Assembly on the path forward. This is welcome news, and EFF intends to support both bills as they are brought together. Local governments, particularly in rural California, are eager to take matters into their own hands, having seen the successes of other local governments in states such as Utah. There, 11 local governments banded together to build open access fiber infrastructure to enable local private competition and multi-gigabit services.
In this session, S.B. 4 and A.B. 14 should be considered the means to enable smaller local government fiber. A.B. 34 will be well-situated to address problems for major cities such as Los Angeles, where systemic digital redlining against low income users is occurring today.
[...] Last on the docket is A.B. 34, authored by Assemblymembers Muratsuchi, Garcia, and Santiago. It would add a multi-billion dollar bond initiative to the ballot in November, for voters to decide if the state should empower local communities to build their own solutions. The details of the legislation are still being worked out. But, if it is designed correctly to enable communities well situated to take on multi-decade economic development plans to provision fiber, EFF will support it and let our California members know.
[...] EFF has found several other bills that have been introduced in Sacramento that pertain to broadband, but many are lacking details at time of publishing; it is still early in the legislative session. EFF is looking into several of these, though we may not be involved in all of them. But for those interested, here is a list of other bills that have been introduced and a short summary of each:
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 17 2021, @10:41PM (2 children)
https://archive.org/download/TerryADavis_TempleOS_Archive/videos/2017/2017-07-12T04:47:05+00:00%20-%2008JewishPig.MP4 [archive.org]
Hail to the king, baby!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 17 2021, @10:50PM
The king is dead buddy, the king is dead.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 17 2021, @11:47PM
Jmichaelhudson is the new Terry. He is looking for the nearest train tracks right now.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 17 2021, @10:47PM (2 children)
Therefore we can expect hard lobbying against it by the major providers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 17 2021, @11:37PM
Until they find a way to access the funds for themselves while bypassing the requirement for laying any fiber.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 18 2021, @12:03AM
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/05/dont-let-californias-legislature-extend-broadband-monopolies-comcast-and-att [eff.org]
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Thursday March 18 2021, @12:21AM (6 children)
So I read that linked arnicus crap. They are literally claiming ISPs are discriminating against people based on race. Why? Oh, because black communities don't get high-speed fiber.
How about this: I'm on comcast's cheapest plan. 25Mb/s, $20/month including all fees. That's more than I need for my job where I administer storage arrays, VMWare farms, AIX - not just w/ ssh, but often on VDI, and do some presales with large media presentations. All while I stream tf1 from france on my chromecast and my wife watches some chinese youtube videos. Plenty of speed for all that to go at the same time.
So, fiber. I don't need it, I don't want it, I don't want to pay more for shit I don't use. Yes, it may be cool to torrent a movie in 5 minutes instead of an hour, but why? I click play while it's downloading and it finishes before the movie's done. Who pays more for gigabit here? 5 people out of my team of 17. This is in an upscale community, with highly paid people, with highly tech jobs.
So the question is, what demand for those speeds exists in "das blacks neighbor'hood' these spinster faggots are claiming comcast is being racist against? I'll answer that. Zero. So why run fiber if no one's going to buy it in those neighborhoods? Well, according to their article, doing otherwise would be racist. I guess not having a Bentley dealer in those Poor neighborhoods means the auto industry is racist too. And not having a fried chicken place on every corner in my neighborhood is racist against whites? Of course not they'd say - that's just supply meeting demand.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday March 18 2021, @01:54AM (1 child)
Sacramento area is more White trash than Black trash; motherfuckers with black shorts, white socks pulled up to their knees, Tapout T-shirts, tribal tattoos, walkin' pitbulls, listening to Limp Bizkit and saying "yo" every other word. And Sacramento area also has Stockton, the secondmost mecca of meth, the firstmost being Salton Sea area.
The idea behind getting municipal broadband to flyover states, in actually rural areas, is noble. The ideology behind getting it in California is to get more trash of all colors to spend money streaming Jewish bullshit like Netflix or Disney Plus or Hulu, since apparantly a lot of other money laundering outfits were, and are, being dismantled in the age of COVID.
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Thursday March 18 2021, @04:11PM
classic stupid conspiracy-theory redneck. hey redneck, here's a hint for you - when you hit reply to a post, and then type a bunch of random shit that has nothing to do with what you're replying to, you might as well type "I am too stupid to read, but listen to my rant about the jews." I fully support you doing what you do btw. Just like I fully support some random fat idiot who hasn't showered in a month dancing on the street while covered in his own shit. You are the personal clown to many people, and we thank you for your service. Dang it's gotta be shitty to live your life. And you don't even know it. And you have no way out, because your brain has a physical defect preventing you from having a good life.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 18 2021, @01:59AM (3 children)
They ask for 10Mbps, you idiot, the max they have is up to 256kbp over unreliable copper. So unreliable that sumtimes it kills them - hence BLM.
(Score: 0, Troll) by fakefuck39 on Thursday March 18 2021, @04:20AM (2 children)
ah yes, that lack of cable in population-dense urban hellholes. it's unfortunate the south side of chicago and the bad part of LA, only has that 100yo copper telephone wire.
now here in the real world, where people can read at least the summary and the abstract of the article, we're talking about gigabit and faster not being available in poor urban areas, and it's dumb republican rednecks stuck with the rural copper. all 50 of them per 50 acres of land. you literally have an unwashed sock where people have a brain.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 18 2021, @05:03AM (1 child)
So you idiot is able to read the summary but lacked the ability to comprehend "that would enable them to take 30- to 40-year, long-term, low-interest loans to finance fiber.". It's not surprising, happens often to idiots.
(Score: 0, Troll) by fakefuck39 on Thursday March 18 2021, @03:46PM
Why does financing or paying for it outright matter? We're all talking about how Gigabit fiber is not needed in poor neighborhoods, because the people living there won't buy this unneeded service. The article ignores that it's not built because it's not wanted by the users, and claims it's not built because ISPs don't want to run fiber to certain homes because black people live there. What the fuck does that have to do with an ISP being able to take out a loan? Why would they take out a loan to build a service no one is interested in buying?
I'm going to guess you have issues with shoelaces, and have velcro shoes. Because really stupid and dense people like yourself are to dumb to recognize you're dumb, you will always double down and call everyone an idiot. It's like a guy in a clown suit yelling at everyone at the office they don't know how to dress for work. You say things, we laugh at you, then you say more things, and we laugh at you more. And you'll never understand why. But you don't need to - you're just here for us to laugh at and be entertained. You'll never have another purpose in life besides being our clown. There's nothing you can do or say to change that.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by SpockLogic on Thursday March 18 2021, @12:13PM
Oh, the horror! The big ISP's will have to compete on price and service so let the market sort it out. But no, they don't want competition. Why do they hate capitalism so?
Overreacting is one thing, sticking your head up your ass hoping the problem goes away is another - edIII