Improving rural broadband the $65 billion solution (or boondoggle)?
Rural broadband solution or major boondoggle?
Five steps to consider:
How the $65 billion bill affects business owners, executives, employees, professionals, government officials, low-income families, seniors, students, educators, politicians, start-ups, entrepreneurs, urban and rural communities, and working in offices and remote, or everyone !
1. Government can lead people to broadband, but can't make them THINK
"Under the legislation, states will receive large grants to pay for internet improvements. The legislation extends a federal discount on service for low-income families. And it requires clear, uniform labeling of internet prices that will help consumers compare plans and understand the fees on their monthly bills."
"The bill’s language reflects the idea that the broadband situation varies widely across the country, and that state governments are best positioned to know where the gaps are. But here’s the catch: Any broadband provider that takes the government handout will be required to offer a low-cost tier of service (satisfying the defined speed requirements) in the markets they serve in the state."
Proverb " you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink".
In tech terms "Government can lead people to broadband, but can't make them THINK", from—?Will Rogers "Technocracy wants to do everything by machinery. Machinery is doing just fine. If it can't kill you, it will put you out of work." Best that you know how to make tech your friend than face the consequences. Another Rogers' quote, often misquoted, "All I know is just what I read in the papers, and that's an alibi for my ignorance". "Alibi for ignorance" is generally left off, something I will expound on, and hopefully remove.
"Digital equity, inclusion, and literacy programs are implemented.?The bill includes $2.75 billion for the Digital Equity Act, which will help states develop comprehensive plans to ensure equal access to the internet for historically underserved communities, and to fund projects that make the internet more accessible, such as?WiFi hot spots in schools?and digital literacy programs for seniors.?The intent is to help close the digital divide, which tends to hit low-income families and communities of color the hardest."
"But the viewpoint of progressives—that fast internet is pointless if people lack the skills or equipment to use it—eventually won out." (note: no need to get political on viewpoints, it's reality!)
The key phrase is literacy programs. Important link for success. Much like business development many times the missing link, when autopsies are done on failures.
Clear objectives along with benefits, must be included, starting with education and training programs. Classes for students and adults. Low-income families will require monitored incentives and financial assistance to participate. Same for seniors. Rewards for success might include a lower price tier for broadband.
Educate on use of broadband for online education, online business, getting best prices, finding best jobs, and how to sell your products and/or services. How to get low cost medical assistance, telehealth, telemedicine, and monitor lifestyle. Many health issues can now be monitored and avoided through non-intrusive motion based systems, avoiding video and audio personal privacy issues through Internet of Things (IoT) broadband devices. Families with elderly parents, or relatives with disabilities living remotely (across town or country) are alerted real-time when established lifestyle variances (falls) occur via their smartphones.
Featured on Saturday Today Show, August 21st, 2021, hospital level care from the comfort of your home, particularly for the rural and underserved markets. I participated in similar remote trials with my UAMS Neurologist located in Little Rock, 140 miles away, for Parkinson's.
Key features of Medically Home’s virtual and physical care delivery model include a 24/7 medical command center staffed by an array of clinicians and an integrated care team in the community who deliver care to patients at their bedside. This turnkey, purpose-built care delivery chassis that integrates with the patient’s electronic health record.
Value must be tangible and immediate!
"Field of Dreams" without passion will become just another subsidized government cornfield withering in the hot Iowa sun. With passion it can be a true "field of dreams".
In the article below I mention several people stimulated by passion and opportunities to make their dreams, a reality! By finding a need or creating a want - Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Kevin Costner.
2. Cheaper and better options already in place
"Also removed from the Senate bill were provisions that would have encouraged municipal broadband networks, which are built and run by city and town governments, often in cooperation with private-sector companies."?
Amazing how competition can solve a problem faster, with less cost, than relying on the government.
If you do your homework, you'll quickly come across the impact Google Fiber had on cable systems. Also you will find how Google with "unlimited" resources failed. A lesson for municipalities entering the broadband business. IT AIN'T EASY, and IT AIN'T CHEAP!
Google Fiber, although unsuccessful, had a major impact on the speed (pun intended) cable operators rolled out next generation broadband.
"The original provision didn’t make it into the bill, but the Senate bill did adopt a threshold of 100?megabits per second for downloads and 20?Mbps for uploads. Cable companies argued that their networks aren’t capable of supporting faster upload speeds and that they weren’t needed by most consumers."
I cover that in my article below "No one buys a Lamborghini to drive to Walmart! Really?".
Main point before municipalities get trigger happy, check current broadband services and coverage by telecommunications companies. Amazing how many times I have seen cities fighting a grudge match with "your money" (taxes) against a company with services you prefer (again with your money as a subscrber). Simple math you could theoretically double your cost for broadband. Simple terms you could end up financially supporting both sides.
You might be pleasantly surprised. Look for current broadband availability coverage; and download and upload speeds.
Note: The wake up call for current broadband providers is developing better programs for the low-income families. Finding ways to serve areas that have been redlined, as not economical. Major focus of new $65 billion bill.Something that could be better addressed jointly with local community leaders. At least in the planning process.Which may, or may not, be expedited with government assistance.
3. Fear of not getting what you deserve, being left out
"Consumer Reports supports the right of communities to choose for themselves whether to invest in municipal broadband systems. The same position is held by?three-quarters of Americans, according to a recent nationally representative?survey of 2,565 adults?(PDF) conducted by CR."?
Obviously the right of communities to choose for themselves whether to invest in municipal broadband systems is important. Even with "good to great" current service, the threat is leverage against quality drop-off or lack of timely innovation.
More importantly in communities with "poor or failing" broadband service, this right should always be supported.
That said, be careful what you wish for! You still have to do your own due dilligence to determine what choice makes sense for your community. Don't let inside or outside biased influencers drive your decision making process. Everyone has a history, good or bad; seek facts and balance in your discovery. Realizing technology changes rapidly, and past decisions made other places with the best technical analysis may no longer be relevant.
4. Current broadband economic development plan not working (aka broadband is an enabler, not a panacea)
How to determine if your economic development strategy is working.
Biggest mistake is thinking that spending millions on broadband alone will cure your economic development stagnation.
Broadband is an enabler, not a panacea.
领英推荐
An example in the editorial on the right, "Investing in digital", is Clarksville, Arkansas with 85% broadband coverage, and 24.7% poverty level. (additional information not in article 6.7% annual median home price increase, Clarksville, zip 72830, has an unemployment rate of 5.2%.?The US average is 6.0%. Clarksville has seen the job market decrease by -2.3% over the last year.)
Newspaper editorial touts importance of municiplal fiber owned network to connect city owned electric, water, and wastewater utilities, but fails to report any successful economic development results. Electric company has been owned by city, good or bad, for over 100 years. In opposition to the editor's opininion, probably not a good footstep to follow in, based on dissimilarities to other cities.
How do you measure broadband economic development success?
Factors to consider -- poverty level, unemployment rate, annual median home price increase / decrease.
Having a high poverty level, low unemployment rate, and below average median home price increases are indicators your plan isn't working. What has to be done? Focus on the right thing for your community!
Check out recent newcomers, and build a file on their reasons for move. Nothing more important than anecdotal data and word of mouth.
Social media can be your best friend or worst enemy. It's word of mouth transmitted at Internet speed.
The typical home price in the US is up a record 13.2% compared to last year, according to Zillow. Some parts of the country (Austin Texas) have experienced 35% increase in median price of housing.
Example: Harrison Arkansas has 22.8% poverty level, 3.4% unemployment, and annual home appreciation in 2020 - 2021 follow.
2020 - Annual appreciation of 3.3% for Harrison homes (Zillow).
10.9 Avg. - 3.3 (Harrison) = 7.6% appreciation difference
2021 - Annual appreciation of 7.3% for Harrison homes (Zillow), sounds great!
But regionally
16.9 Avg. - 7.3 (Harrison) = 9.6% appreciation difference (Harrison lost ground)
In other words, home appreciations were nearly 10% less, on average, than others in region. Important consideration for tech jobs, and non-permanent employees, not so much for retireees.
5. What are the elephants in the room?
A. One of the biggest could be Elon Musk. For those who wrote him off as a flake, may want to second look. After Tesla and SpaceX successes. If you saw Jeff Bezos, Founder of Amazon, in his early interviews on CNBC; he was remembered more for his dorky laugh than what he said, and did. Bezos and Musk continue to battle for world's richest person.
I have written about Musk's many creations: Tesla, SpaceX, and Starlink. Impact of electric cars and satellites providing gigabit speeds are imminent, and results will be disruptive. The?White House said?that it was aiming for (50%) half of all new vehicles sold by 2030 to be electric powered, portraying the shift to?battery power?as essential to keep pace with China and to fight climate change. China is becoming recognized as the world leader in the manufacturing of quality electric cars (Forbes Magazine). More outside country, than inside pressure to meet Biden's goal. If you still have doubts, might recall the ridicule associated with the early poor quality of Japanese cars, as well.
Note: Important point is Starlink (satellite) has gigabit-speed, and just 20 milliseconds of latency. This will create a location agnostic work network reducing need for fiber.
"Given the size of the U.S., it seldom makes financial sense for internet companies to lay cable or fiber lines. Because Starlink is wireless, it offers a solution to this conundrum. As of publishing, 24% of rural Americans say that access to broadband remains a?major issue."
"The response to Starlink's internet service has been overwhelmingly positive from the few customers receiving service."
"Unlike other satellite internet providers, Starlink's LEO satellites promise to offer low-latency broadband speeds regardless of where you are. While Starlink was first boasting speeds of 1 Gbps, it's since upped that target to?10 Gbps. To put that into context, users would be able to download a 4K movie in less than 30 seconds. Starlink would be a major boon for people living in rural parts of the world."?
Following comment added 08/24/2021
"Shift from local hands-on, community driven? to large corporate company's focus on maximizing return on investment. Focus now on low hanging fruit while low income and high risk locations are redlined (not reason officially). Matter of economics, question is whether government has the best solution with grants or private industry?
Might check around and note entrepreneurs came up with Dollar Stores a solution for markets not covered by big box stores - Walmart, Target, etc. Point is there are people like Elon Musk with non traditional ideas could be the elephant in the room."
B. Government owned utilities versus privately owned. Elections can create frequent changes, and increased costs.
Vision can't be executed due to key management and employee turnover.
Municipal bonds are the responsibility of the residents and property owners. You could be paying double for your broadband services to the city and private telecommunications broadband providers, as a subscriber.
C. Racism
If you can't remove racism stigma, the majority of opportunities for higher paying jobs from high speed broadband are eliminated, even before presented. Forever a blue collar, low to medium pay, community. I have spent two years researching it on my home community, and have come up with that conclusion.
Check my over 100 articles filed under my Linkedin profile which details the facts, and unchallenged results.
If you watched the video piece on Harrison racists' billboard aired August 18th, 2021, produced by KY3 (Springfield, MO), you'll find the excuses given for billboard remaining up are indefensible. If you haven't, you can click on link above. Eyesore and stain on image pales in comparison to actual economic damages in the billion dollar range!
Questions never asked in video (never got an opportunity to interview Robb) -- who sold him the land and financed the billboard property? Same for property that Attorney Jason Robb bought for his law office located strategically midway between City Hall and County Courthouse. Jason Robb Law Office is also the registered address for the Klan via Arkansas Secretary of State (no longer Zinc). Robb is general counsel for Klan, and he and his father, Tom Robb are members of Russian Facebook clone VK. With all the Russian hacking, the Robbs. make it easy for Moscow to access dissidents. REvil, Russian speaking hackers are responsible for shutting down Colonial Pipelines and largest beef supplier, JBS, as well as others for ransom. No doubt any involvement in VK has to be viewed as an opportunity to breach US security. Removes any first amendment rights arguments. A local cybersecuity nightmare that's being ignored!
Robbs' are the genesis for the Harrison moniker "most racist town in America" the 11 hate groups were carefully crafted by only one family, and accepted by SPLC (experts on racism, but vulnerable to padding hate groups to increase donations). More than any other city, noted by a British tabloid, at the urging of the Robb family. Something that I have provided meticulous detail (and proof) on over the past 2 years to no avail. Now even accepted in Harrison's Wikipedia description.
No other town has this issue. They understand the consequences.