Ah, the wonderful USF. Here’s my take on USF. It’s a perfectly wonderful intent whose implementation has gone horribly horribly wrong. Instead of equalizing economic incentives for infrastructure between rural, urban, and suburban areas, it has heavily tilted the incentives in favor of the highest densities that still qualify as rural while pretty much screwing over everyone else. Extremely high density urban areas still have sufficient economic opportunity over lower infrastructure cost per user to attract some development. However, Suburbia is the biggest loser in this equation. Don’t get me wrong… I’m perfectly fine with the idea that I need to make a small payment to subsidize delivery of decent network infrastructure to underserved areas. What bothers me is that I’m generally paying this tax to enable farmers in the middle of nowhere to have better network infrastructure than I can get at my own location. I’m happy to subsidize equality of connectivity, but it galls me to have to subsidize GPON for others while there’s not even a glimmer of hope that anyone will usefully lay fiber in my neighborhood in the foreseeable future. Owen
On May 29, 2018, at 07:23 , ML <ml@kenweb.org> wrote:
$100M+ in federal dollars goes a long way.
On 5/29/2018 10:17 AM, Mike Hammett wrote:
Is that PennRen\Kinber?
----- Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions
Midwest Internet Exchange
The Brothers WISP
----- Original Message -----
From: "Matt Hoppes" <mattlists@rivervalleyinternet.net> To: "Lamar Owen" <lowen@pari.edu> Cc: nanog@nanog.org Sent: Tuesday, May 29, 2018 8:27:17 AM Subject: Re: Impacts of Encryption Everywhere (any solution?)
I am incredibly rural in Pennsylvania and pay about $.50 per megabit.
On May 29, 2018, at 09:23, Lamar Owen <lowen@pari.edu> wrote:
On 05/28/2018 06:13 PM, Matthew Petach wrote: Your 200mbit/sec link that costs you $300 in hardware is going to cost you $4960/month to actually get IP traffic across, in Nairobi. Yes, that's about $60,000/year. I live in the US of A, and this is what 200Mb/s roughly would cost me as well here in Rural Monopoly-land. Rural ILEC also has the CATV business, and, well, they are _not_ going to run cable up here. I've actually priced 150Mb/s bandwidth from the ILEC over the years; in 2003 the cost would have been about $100,000 per month. As of five years ago 10Mb/s symmetrical cost roughly $1,000 per month, the lion's share of that being per-mile NECA Tariff 5 transport costs.
The terrain here prevents fixed wireless. The terrain also prevents satellite comms to the Clarke belt (mountain to the south with trees on US Forest Service property in the line of sight). I get 1XRTT in one room of my house when the humidity is below 70% and it's winter, and once in a blue moon 3G will light up, but it's not stable enough to actually use; it's the speed of dialup. If I traipse about a hundred yards up the mountain to the south (onto US Forest Service property, so, no repeater for me) I can get semi-usable 4G; nothing like being in the middle of the woods with an active black bear population trying to get a usable signal.
I'm paying $50 per month for 7/0.5 DSL (I might add that they provide excellent DSL that has been extremely reliable) from the only ISP available in the area.
I remember a usable web experience not too long ago on 28.8K/33.6K dialup (it was quite a while before said ILEC got a 56K-capable modem bank). DSL started out here at 384k/128k. On the positive side, we have a very low oversubscription ratio, so I actually get the full bandwidth the majority of the time, even video streaming. I also know all the network engineers there, too, and that also has its advantages.
(Yes, I am aware that rural living is a choice, and there are things worth a great deal more than bandwidth, that it's a tradeoff, etc.)
So it's not just '3rd-world' countries with expensive bandwidth.