FCC must start winding down low-income program as Congress fails to add money.

The Federal Communications Commission is about to start winding down a program that gives $30 monthly broadband discounts to people with low incomes, and says it will have to complete the shutdown by May if Congress doesn’t provide more funding.

  • just_change_it@lemmy.world
    444·
    10 months ago

    I’m completely for shutting down the affordable connectivity program

    The ISPs should have to provide the service at a minimal rate to same said families and also offer 100/100 minimum service to anyone in the regions they operate. It shouldn’t be subsidized by the government, it should literally be the cost of doing business for the business. Write up a bill, make it law, giant fines for not keeping a certain level of 9s in terms of availability and capacity.

    Fuck government subsidies to big companies with huge profit margins. I work in IT, I know how the technology works. I know what it costs. I know that they do not need to charge anywhere near as much as they charge and they’d still make a killing, even with all the boots on the ground collecting paychecks.

    • ono@lemmy.caEnglish
      16·
      10 months ago

      I’m completely for shutting down the affordable connectivity program

      The ISPs should have to provide the service at a minimal rate to same said families and also offer 100/100 minimum service to anyone

      Maybe reverse the order of those ideas, so as not to make the lives of people who are already struggling even harder.

      in the regions they operate.

      ISPs would then have an incentive to avoid operating in poor neighborhoods. Mitigating that could be tough, given that internet service deployments are already patchy in many places.

      Another approach might be municipal broadband, which big ISPs have been lobbying against for ages, often successfully.

      • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
        41·
        10 months ago

        Point 3: That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence

        Also, conservatives say the exact same thing about public utilities to privatize them, the exact opposite of your claim

        I’ve seen huge government systems at work, currently seeing one, and man it’s a lot of things but the word “efficient”? Nope.

        Private companies are supposed to do this, yes, but under very strict government rules. Internet access should be treated as a public utility, executed by private companies