Thursday, February 4, 2021

Senate Passes Broadband Bill

 Leftnenant Governor Delbert Hosemann issued the following statement.

The Mississippi Senate approved a bill yesterday which would expand connectivity and accessibility of reliable, high-speed Internet across the state.  Senate Bill 2798 allows energy companies to lease “dark fiber,” or fiber deployed along power grids currently unused for mass internet connectivity, to any Internet Service Provider.

All revenue derived from leasing the fiber would reduce electric costs to ratepayers.  The bill now moves to the House for consideration.

“Reaching the last mile down the last gravel road in every community is an education issue, an economic development issue, and a healthcare issue,” Lt. Governor Delbert Hosemann said. “We can help change the trajectory of Mississippi by simply lighting up infrastructure which already exists throughout much of our state.”

Senator Carter agreed: “A major driver for me in authoring this legislation is the next generation of Mississippi leaders. Increasing connectivity opens the rest of the world to our children. We saw the importance of Internet access grow during the pandemic, and it is only going to increase from here.”

The legislation is part of a series of efforts aimed at increasing broadband accessibility in Mississippi.  Senate Bill 2559, also authored by Senator Carter and passed by the Senate today, allows the Public Service Commission to contract with federal agencies to provide a better map of broadband availability.

During the 2020 Legislative Session, the Legislature enacted a $75 million program to build out fiber and increase connectivity in the State using federal Coronavirus Relief Funds.  Grant recipients, including electric cooperatives and others, matched the money for a total investment of $150 million. 

To view Senate Bill 2798, visit http://billstatus.ls.state.ms.us/2021/pdf/history/SB/SB2798.xml. To view Senate Bill 2559, visit http://billstatus.ls.state.ms.us/2021/pdf/history/SB/SB2559.xml

Kingfish note:  Meanwhile, over at Cape Canaveral last night: 

 

 

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just curious, has this capacity been in place a while and if so would that have worked before companies spent all that time, money and effort putting in fiber?

Anonymous said...

@Kingfish
1 sufficient CME will reduce Starlink to so much spacetrash. It’s a nice backup meme ISP, but satellite link will never compete with terrestrial fiber or wireless.

Anonymous said...

1:35 -- not so fast there. How about for regions of the earth (there are many, including the US & MS) where nobody runs fiber and there is non-existent 4G/5G data service. Hell, my local EPA has been under construction for their grand fiber-to-every-home (aka Presley's Folly) for 14 months and they *still* can't tell me when I'll get service from it. But they're borrowing from Co-Bank and getting taxpayer money at a furious pace...

Don't know what the "CME" or "meme" you're referring to means, but go look at the comments from current Starlink beta customers across Canada, the U.S., and now other countries. I used Hughesnet and 3G wireless hotspots for years and they sucked. I'll sign up for Starlink the day they offer it to me -- regardless of my EPA's offerings. I really like the electrical service and rates I get from my EPA -- a lot. But I think they're in over their head with fiber to every service address -- on the order of 40,000 drops and over a hundred million dollars when/if it all gets done...

Anonymous said...

My brother lives in Corinth and he just got 1Gbps (symmetrical) rolled out by his electric co-op with an option for a 2Gbps symmetrical. 80/month for 1Gbps and 99/month for 2Gbps. No data caps.

Anonymous said...

State government will come to the rescue around the time that every rural Mississippian already has access to 3 providers. Remember that they bragged they were going to put computers in every classroom back in the 90s? Ha. Every classroom got one computer. Without internet. They are still sitting there.

Anonymous said...

I think George Jetson at 1:35 has introduced terrestrial fiber into the conversation. Stand by for Spock.

Anonymous said...

It’s about fricking time. Living in rural areas and having to depend on expensive and pitiful Hughsnet or Viasat is a drain on the brain and pocket. $120.00 a month for shitty download speeds of 25 mbps and then getting the brakes put on you if you watch two movies. It would be extra nice to kick Directv to the curb as well $195.00 a month for the same lame moves shown on 100 different channels. This should have been done years ago.

Anonymous said...

Access speed doesn't mean throughput @ speed will be realized.

Anonymous said...

I hope it's better than AT&T .

Anonymous said...

3:47,

My relatives in Tupelo got 1Gbps symmetric fiber service from AT&T in 2017 for $80/month. Wish I had it out here in the sticks (sigh...)

Some users need that kind of bandwidth, but very few really do. It's lower latency, large/no caps, and consistently dependable connections that really count. Traditional satellite internet lacks all three. Starlink satellite is still early in its beta program with only 10,000 or so users. But it appears that it will successfully, if not completely, address those 3 concerns and provide pretty good speeds...

Anonymous said...

Yazoo Valley Electric just hired a new general manager “from within” with no college degree and needless to say not an electrical engineer And complete farce. The good ole coop board was asleep or their oxygen tanks ran out during the vote. This fine Cooperative Energy coop isn’t introducing jack to its customers.

Cy N. Bahackel said...

And they still can't stop the extended-car-warranty guy calling from India.

Meanwhile, after sixty years of use, the light on my brown, plastic rotor-dial has finally gone out.

Anonymous said...

4:28 PM
No kidding. This should have been done back in the early 2000s, but all the big ISPs took the money and ran. I think the only good thing was when MCI went bust and Verizon laid a bunch of dark fiber throughout the state.

6:43 PM
Absolutely. It's not 'needed', but it's certainly nice to not ever have to worry about anything hogging bandwidth. But being able to VPN to work while working from home and still be able to download large files at speed is super nice. Also great when I have to transfer multi-gigabyte files to work servers from home with not bad wait times.

Anonymous said...

This farce sounds like good politics - hell, the King stated today that after he passed this (I think he forgets that its actually the Senators that get to vote) Mississippi will be Number 1 in the nation with Broadband service!

All it took was this one little bill and we jump from bottom to top, at least in his predictions. Or are the proclamations.

This sucks just as much as Presley's Folly sucks with the EPA's suppossedly getting into the game, using COVID dollars and other gubment money. Just as in rural water service, those at the end of the line are not feasible economically - even when using other folks money. And by the time the get the economically feasible residences served, the system will be as out of datee as my AOL dial-up service.


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