California can offer a cure for midwest derangement syndrome

2 September 2018 by Steve Blum
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Monterey County’s former U.S. congressman, Sam Farr, used to call it “midwest derangement syndrome”. That’s the condition that seems to afflict federal agriculture department subsidy programs, including broadband development grants and loans.

It’s real. The agriculture department’s Rural Utilities Service (RUS) has a long track record of favoring small states with lots of small farms in small counties. In other words, the sort of rural communities that predominate in the midwestern and southern U.S.

California has places where you can find traditional family farms with traditional farm families in residence.… More

It’s small ball, but at least U.S. congress is playing the broadband game

30 July 2018 by Steve Blum
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Two broadband-related bills were passed by the U.S. house of representatives last week. Both focus on the federal broadband bureaucracy rather than infrastructure deployment or service upgrades, but at least there’s the hope that something will come of it.

House resolution 4881 was carried by representative Bob Latta (R – Ohio). It aims to promote “precision agriculture”, which seems to be just another way of saying “ag tech”. But it’s really about bringing modern broadband service to unserved rural areas.… More

Federal farm bills crank up broadband speed, options

2 July 2018 by Steve Blum
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It’s farm bill time again in Washington, D.C. Every five years or so, congress reauthorises and rewrites rural development and (urban and rural) food stamp programs. The U.S. house of representatives and the senate passed their own bills, and each has good news for broadband infrastructure development. So far.

The version passed by the house specifically allows the federal agriculture department’s Rural Utilities Service, which runs the major rural broadband infrastructure programs, to fund middle mile projects.… More

Federal ag department looks to co-ops to lead broadband development

16 April 2018 by Steve Blum
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At least one member of the Trump administration isn’t trying to smack local broadband initiatives with a preemption sledgehammer. Agriculture secretary Sonny Perdue spoke to a gathering of representatives of rural electric cooperatives. Those are (usually) small electric systems that are organised as buyer cooperatives – electric customers are the owners. The federal agriculture department has been subsidising them for more than 80 years. Many of those co-ops have branched off into the broadband business, also with subsidies from the agriculture department’s Rural Utilities Service (RUS).… More

Trump outsources rural economic development to wireless broadband companies

9 January 2018 by Steve Blum
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U.S. president Donald Trump put privately funded wireless broadband at the top of his rural economic development agenda yesterday. In a speech to the American Farm Bureau Federation, Trump embraced recommendations made by a government task force he created to define rural economic development policy. The task force report labeled rural connectivity “essential” and “fundamental for economic development”, and leaned heavily on wireless solutions.

“The task force heard from farmers that broadband internet access is an issue of vital concern to their communities and businesses“, Trump said.… More

Rural broadband wins a round in the battle of the Beltway swamp

23 August 2017 by Steve Blum
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I might have been wrong about Sonny Perdue. He’s the former governor of Georgia and lifelong agribusinessman that is now the Trump administration’s agriculture secretary. At the least, my critique of his background didn’t take agribusiness-as-usual into account.

The Rural Utilities Service (RUS) is part of his domain – it’s an agency within the federal agriculture department that, among other things, gives out loans and some grants to pay for broadband service upgrades and expansion in rural areas.… More

USDA embraces 25 Mbps broadband standard even as FCC dumbs it down

15 August 2017 by Steve Blum
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Somebody knows when to crank it up.

The minimum acceptable broadband speed in rural areas is now 25 Mbps download and 3 Mbps upload. At least according to the federal agriculture department.

The Rural Utilities Service (RUS) offers loans to broadband providers – cooperatives and small telephone companies frequently tap the program – for service upgrades in areas that meet the agency’s requirements. One of those requirements deals with the speed and availability of existing service – if a provider is expanding into new territory, then at least 15% of the homes in that area must be “unserved”, as defined by RUS.… More

Federal broadband development swamp heads south

29 April 2017 by Steve Blum
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The south rises again.

If you were hoping that Donald Trump’s campaign promise to drain the Beltway swamp was going to shake up the agriculture subsidy machine that funnels broadband development money to the south and midwest at California’s expense, then it looks like you’re going to be disappointed.

The U.S. senate confirmed former Georgia governor Sonny Perdue as agriculture secretary this week. He has spent his life in the southern farming industry, as a boy growing up on a farm, as a veterinarian, as governor and as a commodities trader.… More

Antique tech is good enough for USDA, so it must be fine for everyone else

5 May 2016 by Steve Blum
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We’re upgrading to Pong next year.

All of a sudden, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s – and, consequently, the Federal Communication Commission’s – belief that slow 10 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload speeds are adequate benchmarks for rural broadband infrastructure development makes sense. Technologically, the USDA is a decade behind everyone else. That’s an entire lifetime in Silicon Valley dog years.

I had signed up for a USDA webinar on the new round of the Community Connect broadband grant program yesterday (which sets an even lower, 4 Mbps download standard).… More

Faster broadband standard set by federal agriculture department

19 April 2016 by Steve Blum
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It’ll get there eventually.

Minimum speeds for guaranteed broadband infrastructure loans from the federal agriculture department have been raised. The Rural Utilities Service (RUS) opened another round of loans earlier this month, and upped the benchmark speed for both area eligibility and funded infrastructure from 4 Mbps download/1 Mbps upload to 10 Mbps down/1 Mbps up, for wireline and fixed and mobile wireless projects.

That brings the RUS minimum speeds in line with other federal broadband subsidy programs, particularly the Connect America Fund program run by the Federal Communications Commission, which will be giving more than half a billion dollars to incumbent telephone companies in California alone.… More