"High Cost Support Mechanism - provides support to certain qualifying telephone companies that serve high cost areas, thereby making phone service affordable for the residents of these regions. "
So - right into the hands of the telecom companies.
Which is precisely why they (and techfreedom!) lobbied to kill Lifeline. It cuts into the money they get from USF.
Where they take it to claim they need it to serve rural areas, while simultaneously, wait for it, lobbying states and others to pass laws banning those municipalities from serving themselves. Because then they'd be free of this crap. Meanwhile, strangely, rural broadband penetration and speed still sucks for real, and the telecoms (and again, techfreedom!) strongly oppose things like "defining broadband as 10mbps" or anything that would demonstrate this.
Additionally, the dollars not going to subsidize lifeline go back to them double, because they also get the money from the higher telephone bills. Kind of a neat racket, if you can get it.
In case you want to argue that there are other programs that are getting the money anyway, the one i cited gets billions in funding given to phone companies.
is there such a thing as neutral on this? you're either for or against net neutrality. the only neutral people are those people who are not involved/don't care. and I don't really care to hear from those people.
also the universal service fund is paid for by you and me. the rate we pay is calculated based on what they need to spend and not vice versa. so if we don't pay for 1/3rd of us households we will pay less tax and the fund will be smaller
"is there such a thing as neutral on this? you're either for or against net neutrality. the only neutral people are those people who are not involved/don't care. and I don't really care to hear from those people.
"
You kind of answered your own question. There is such a thing as neutral on this, you just don't like to hear from them :)
Actually, i'm pretty neutral, surprisingly, and i don't really care that much, so i'd fall into your latter category. I only commented because of how much bs the original comment was.
Personally, i don't care mainly because neither side actually gives a crap about me. Only their bottom line. That isn't going to change anytime soon. It's certainly not going to change while the FCC is literally appointed by two parties.
"also the universal service fund is paid for by you and me. the rate we pay is calculated based on what they need to spend and not vice versa. so if we don't pay for 1/3rd of us households we will pay less tax and the fund will be smaller"
This isn't quite true due to how the forecasting is done, but sure, it's lose enough
But we could also stop paying the billions to the telecoms and instead, pay for 1/3rd of the households, for the same price.
:)
But you are also saying that 1/3rd of households fall into this category:
"Establishes a National Eligibility Verifier to verify eligible Lifeline subscribers. Eligibility will be based on participation in SNAP, Medicaid, SSI, Federal Public Housing Assistance, the Veterans *Pension benefit program, current Tribal qualifying programs, or those who can demonstrate income of less than 135 percent of the federal poverty guidelines."
If 34% of america falls into that category, then we pretty much better do something anyway!
> is there such a thing as neutral on this? you're either for or against net neutrality. the only neutral people are those people who are not involved/don't care.
You could say that about anything -- anyone who cares about something has an opinion on it.
What matters isn't a lack of interest, it's objectivity, which is what you apply to each side's argument to figure out who is wrong.
And notice that really all of the arguments against network neutrality take the form "if you don't let ISPs leverage their wire monopoly to monopolize over-the-top services too then they won't upgrade the wires."
And we know how to prevent that from happening. Keep network neutrality, and authorize a bond issue to fund municipal fiber in any location where the incumbent doesn't offer high speed service within a fixed amount of time.
That makes the truth or falsity of their argument irrelevant -- if it's false then they'll make the upgrades anyway, if it's true then we'll build municipal networks, and in either case the result is fast neutral networks.
Their way is to destroy over-the-top competition and then in many cases they still won't upgrade.
I'm neutral on net neutrality - I think legislating it is just treating the symptom rather than the real problem - a lack of competition. I live outside the US and in the places I've lived, I've never once worried about net neutrality since I can trivially change between many providers. I'd prefer they target the actual problem of local infrastructure monopolies rather than patching the symptoms, but I guess doing what they can is better than nothing...
https://techpolicycorner.org/trumps-opportunities-on-tech-po...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2014/09/05...
These are the folks behind "don't break the net", which some folks may remember (http://dontbreakthe.net/)
and in case, you want to engage substantively, it's funny who benefits by shutting down lifeline:
Those "spiraling, out of control costs" are paid for by the universal service fund.
Where would that money otherwise go: https://www.fcc.gov/general/universal-service-fund
"High Cost Support Mechanism - provides support to certain qualifying telephone companies that serve high cost areas, thereby making phone service affordable for the residents of these regions. "
So - right into the hands of the telecom companies.
Which is precisely why they (and techfreedom!) lobbied to kill Lifeline. It cuts into the money they get from USF.
Where they take it to claim they need it to serve rural areas, while simultaneously, wait for it, lobbying states and others to pass laws banning those municipalities from serving themselves. Because then they'd be free of this crap. Meanwhile, strangely, rural broadband penetration and speed still sucks for real, and the telecoms (and again, techfreedom!) strongly oppose things like "defining broadband as 10mbps" or anything that would demonstrate this. Additionally, the dollars not going to subsidize lifeline go back to them double, because they also get the money from the higher telephone bills. Kind of a neat racket, if you can get it.
In case you want to argue that there are other programs that are getting the money anyway, the one i cited gets billions in funding given to phone companies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Service_Fund#Connect...
That's the one of the famous ones that has pretty much given phone companies billions and gotten us nothing actually in return.
Personally, i'm fine with that money all going to anyone but a telecom company, even if they aren't "low enough income" for you or whatever.