> That money comes almost entirely from a special tax on those same companies. It's like adding a 10% sales tax to each iPhone or Pixel and then giving the money back to Apple and Google to subsidize phones for people in need. It'd be weird to call that "money we've ... given them."
It is quite literally "money we've ... given them."
You are wrong in that the subsidies are not a tax on the companies. The subsidies are a fee collected from the subscribers by the companies on behalf of the government.
Those subsidies are then distributed to different incumbents, based on applications. This distribution is not based on which companies collected and how much. The collection and distribution are disconnected.
So to summarize, it is indeed "our money", since it's being collected from us and if it wasn't we'd get to keep the money hand have cheaper service. It is also "given" away as a subsidy to incumbents.
In other words, "money we've ... given them."
What's wierd is not that we give them our money. What's wierd is that this is not a regular tax, but a fee tagged on to telecom services. But hey, it's far easier to tax by proxy, call it a fee and somebody else do the dirty work. At least rhen you don't need to call it a tax.
"...ISPs don’t actually build what they get the money for. One used hundreds of millions for trips, expensive food and wine, and luxurious parties while not actually delivering anything. The $200 billion handout in the Telecommunication Act of 1996 was supposed to fund fiber to the home. Instead:
> other countries made sure the money went into ground wiring and other upgrades. The U.S. lacked the regulatory will...and thus, the phone companies were able to simply spend less and not be held accountable."
And here's a newish example. This is the consequences of fundamentalist orthodoxy and foundational mythology:
"EPB wanted to build out its gigabit fiber network to many of these same communities using money it has on hand or private loans at no cost to taxpayers. It would then charge individual residents for internet service. Instead, Tennessee taxpayers will give $45 million in tax breaks and grants to giant companies just to get basic infrastructure built. They will then get the opportunity to pay these companies more money for worse internet than they would have gotten under EPB's proposal."
Isn't that business model of the ISP - you invest in infrastructure and then collect profits from it, selling subscriptions? The existence of ISPs is the proof that they do want to invest - otherwise who did the investments?
> ISPs want to maximize their profit, not the speed of their internets.
How this is contradictory? If you have faster network, you can have more people subscribing and paying more money.
The key here is the need to invest more. The ISPs would rather milk the existing investment. It is also not a given that people would pay enough more for a faster network.
The speed standard is used to funnel money to the incumbents. The incumbents are supposed to improve and/or upgrade their speeds or coverage to match these standards in return for these subsidies, but reality has a way to get in the way. In practice the incumbents pocket the money and deliver whatever they feel like.
If this is true, then the meaning of the article is "FCC was going to spend tons of money to bribe ISPs into upgrading everybody to unrealistically high speeds, but instead they decided they would spend slightly less money to have ISPs to upgrade everybody to still unrealistically high speeds, but slightly lower, which wouldn't be happening in any case because there's no enough infrastructure to support it".
It is quite literally "money we've ... given them."
You are wrong in that the subsidies are not a tax on the companies. The subsidies are a fee collected from the subscribers by the companies on behalf of the government.
Those subsidies are then distributed to different incumbents, based on applications. This distribution is not based on which companies collected and how much. The collection and distribution are disconnected.
So to summarize, it is indeed "our money", since it's being collected from us and if it wasn't we'd get to keep the money hand have cheaper service. It is also "given" away as a subsidy to incumbents.
In other words, "money we've ... given them."
What's wierd is not that we give them our money. What's wierd is that this is not a regular tax, but a fee tagged on to telecom services. But hey, it's far easier to tax by proxy, call it a fee and somebody else do the dirty work. At least rhen you don't need to call it a tax.