Internet service to come to more people in MS
A Public Service Commissioner explained the FCC is giving internet providers in the state money to provide internet access to more people who live in rural areas.
Posted: Dec 15, 2020 8:06 PM
Posted By: Bronson Woodruff
STATEWIDE, Miss. (WTVA) Good news for Mississippi: broadband internet service will soon be available for people in the state thanks to funding from the Federal Communications Commission. This is the largest amount of money that’s ever been invested in our state,” Public Service Commissioner Brandon Presley said.
He said a spokesperson for the FCC made an announcement last week: the FCC will give $495 million from the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund to internet providers in the state so they can bring internet to those who don’t have a way to access the web, unless they visit places with public WIFI, such as McDonald’s.
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SpaceX recently won rights to $885 million in government subsidies for high-speed internet from a Federal Communications Commission program.
The goal of the $20.4 billion program, called the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, is to coax companies to bring high-speed internet service to underserved areas of the US.
SpaceX s subsidies will go toward Starlink, its growing satellite-internet service. In exchange, the company has to offer service to about 642,000 homes and businesses across 35 states.
The FCC rules require that SpaceX offer those customers internet service at rates that are reasonably comparable to rates offered in urban areas.
Is Starlink Internet the Answer for Rural New York?
While underserved communities will be happy to have access to faster Internet, satellite service can be expensive. Starlink’s “beta” service costs $99 a month plus a $499 upfront cost to order the Starlink Kit. by Geoff Herbert, syracuse.com / December 14, 2020 Shutterstock
(TNS) Tesla CEO Elon Musk is aiming to bring high-speed Internet to largely rural areas in Upstate New York, but it won’t be cheap.
Business Insider reports the Federal Communications Commission has awarded Musk’s company SpaceX with more than $885 million in federal subsidies for its satellite Internet broadcast system known as Starlink. $20 million of it will be spent in New York state over the next 10 years, serving more than 13,000 potential customers.
As the dust settles around the first phase of the FCC s $9.2 billion Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) auction, one US Senator has taken aim at a longtime telecom provider and its plans to deploy 1Gbit/s services in West Virginia. The stakes are simply too high to provide nearly $250 million [for services in West Virginia] to a company that does not have the capability to deliver on the commitments made to the FCC, wrote Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican from West Virginia, in a letter to the outgoing chairman of the FCC.
Capito argued that Frontier which won a total of around $371 million in RDOF money for rural broadband in eight states should not be trusted to use the cash to deploy gigabit services in her state.
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