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Government Broadband

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This National Broadband Plan is about a year old but somehow I've never heard much about it until a friend sent me a link today. Here's the website for you to see, Broadband.gov. The "Plan" was part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act stimulus. The goals and implications of this subsidized broadband all seem extremely ominous to me, particularly as a way of injecting the FCC's control into the internet.

Wiki states the goals of the "Plan" as:

* 100 Mbit/s service, capable of downloading an hour-long standard definition TV program in 30 seconds, will be affordable to residential customers everywhere. Verizon, Comcast, and Cox planned to offer this speed, and Cablevision already did, for $100 a month. Time Warner Cable planned to offer 50 Mbit/s for $100 per month.

* Emergency service workers will all be connected to high-speed service.

* a program similar to No Child Left Behind would have the goal of making all children "digitally literate".[4]

* ambitious energy demand and supply management goals, which amount to universal secure megabit-or-better connections between buildings, and up to a gigabit within buildings

And of course this is all being spearheaded by the FCC itself. I guess I'm just a little shocked you don't hear more about this. Obamacare is certainly evil, but I think if anything else deserves widespread denunciation and defunding it is this. What looks like it will lead to a huge wedge into the door of internet censorship.

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I remember reading about this last year. I would argue that if such a plan was ever passed, it would have even worse affects than Obamacare. It's as though people don't understand how the Internet works, as though people think it's magic. Companies of course charge money because of the maintenance required of hardware, in addition to anything else about customer service. Who will provide this 100Mbit/s service? I'm presuming ISPs would be simply forced, and soon enough reliability or quality of service will drop dramatically. If the norm is $100 per month for that speed, what would it mean for that to become "affordable"? 5 dollars a month? Seems to be a terrible idea even for the people who want the Internet to be provided for all people at all times. There seems to be little plan for the "how," just that it'd happen. The only thing that could mean is some government favor to an existing company, or forcing companies to comply with regulations, or both. You probably don't hear enough of it because there is appeal to the extent that introducing government control to the Internet is appealing to conservatives and liberals, albeit for different reasons. Either control content that's corrupting society, or control the technology to altruistically provide for society.

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I remember reading about this last year. I would argue that if such a plan was ever passed, it would have even worse affects than Obamacare.

It already has passed. It passed with the "Recovery Act" stimulus of '09.

Watching the presentation video from the FCC head is a parade of buzzwords and empty slogans as usual. He makes vague suggestions that the U.S. is falling behind in areas of internet and technology as reasons for supporting the plan. Of course that's a blanket accusation the Left uses all the time. That America is not "keeping up" with whatever it is their Platonic ideal wishes. This made me realize how bizarre it is to see Leftists supposedly desiring for America to be #1 (in internet technology, or healthcare etc.). When the Right shows a dogmatic and quasi-nationalist support for America First, they mock them. But when the Left wants says they want the U.S. to excel at something it's just cover to take control.

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