Probably the worst cause is that the people in charge of creating and
appropriating for funding actually think the internet is a series of tubes
and pipes

On another note regarding what the internet is, I'm trying to bring my kid
in as an intern/apprentice (slave labor I can hit) so I have him doing the
khan academy computer program. It's decent primer for new guys, it's free
and it allows you to track progress. Maybe send a few senators through it

On Fri, Mar 5, 2021, 2:01 PM Adam Moffett <[email protected]> wrote:

> Final comment before I shut up: The idiots I'm thinking of in all cases
> DID bring service to people who previously didn't have service.  So it's
> not as though the program was entirely useless.  I'm not aware of a
> circumstance where the operator didn't put in a a real effort to reach the
> unserved households they were supposed to reach.  So I'm not accusing
> anyone of fraud and I'm not saying rural broadband funding is inherently
> bad.  You will also never, ever, read a story about someone who got
> broadband funding to build cable on a road and actually built cable on that
> road because that's just not an interesting thing to disect.
>
> I guess I'm just saying sometimes there are dumb people, and sometimes
> they end up in a position where there are consequences to what they do.  I
> think if we're already primed to assume fraud and corruption then we look
> at suboptimal outcomes and assume there's fraud and corruption there.
>
> "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by
> stupidity."
>
>
> On 3/5/2021 1:11 PM, Mathew Howard wrote:
>
> Well, no, if somebody is saying he can do 100 down AND UP with CBRS LTE,
> he's just plain lying (or an idiot), even if it is only 1 cpe... and it's
> in the same room as the eNB.
>
> On Fri, Mar 5, 2021, 11:51 AM Adam Moffett <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> I've seen physical audits to confirm that when we submitted for
>> reimbursement for 100 base stations that we actually deployed 100 base
>> stations.  There are financial audits of course, and they'll harp on any
>> perceived irregularity until they're satisfied.  Sometimes the physical
>> auditor wants to see some examples of deployed CPE.
>>
>> In NY Connect and NY Broadband, the project plans had to be reviewed by
>> an outside engineering firm chosen by NY State.  That firm was supposed to
>> assess the technical feasibility of the project.  For wireless coverage we
>> had to tell the firm how we projected coverage and they attempted to
>> duplicate it and confirm that it wasn't made up.  But if they were told
>> "the system has xxDb of gain and coverage is projected to -90RSSi because
>> this spec sheet here says the CPE will connect at -90" then that's what
>> they'll go by to verify that you projected it accurately.  If anybody just
>> drew a circle they would not have made it past the feasibility study.
>>
>> I never saw or heard of a "testing node" to verify coverage in the field,
>> but if they could raise it to the CPE height used in the projection and
>> measure down to the signal shown on the map, then it would have been
>> totally fine.
>>
>> If you had a reasonable projection of coverage and a reasonable
>> projection of capacity then you'd pass feasibility study.  The issue is I
>> don't think anybody put the coverage and capacity side by side and said
>> "you can't connect -xx RSSI and ALSO sell yy Mbps.  It's one or the
>> other".
>>
>> .....see I think the difference is you're assuming there's graft or
>> corruption when the reality is that it's just an idiot operator who's being
>> managed by an idiot regulator.  The system will catch the truly incompetent
>> people, but if the operator is marginally competent and also can talk a
>> good game then he can get funded.  It might help if he also plays golf with
>> a senator, but that's not strictly a requirement (nobody I was involved
>> with did that level of hobnobbing).  See most people on this list are here
>> saying "100Mbps disqualifies me as a WISP from getting this funding."  But
>> right now, there's some clown saying, "I can do 100Mbps with my CBRS
>> LTE."   And he's RIGHT as long as he's careful about how many subs per base
>> station and what SNR's he's connecting, but he'll be WRONG if he promises
>> to do that for every census block out in the woods.  In spite of being
>> wrong, he can produce documents from the vendor and empirical testing to
>> "prove" he's right.  He's only wrong when all the pieces come together.
>>
>> -Adam
>>
>>
>> On 3/5/2021 12:21 PM, Steve Jones wrote:
>>
>> I see traffic counters set up on random rural roads for no good reason
>> (probably is a good reason) all over. There isnt any reason to not have
>> official testing nodes (I thought there were) to verify. Wireless coverage
>> can be propagated, and should be more than a circle on a map. I didnt like
>> it when this all began, When we were providing our data to one of the
>> mapping agents I called for assistance, basically was told to lie(ish).
>> list our coverage of what we "could" cover within 7 days. and that was very
>> loose, we had tranzeos laying around and that was enough for "could cover".
>> Irritated me to be grey area honest
>>
>> On Fri, Mar 5, 2021 at 11:03 AM Adam Moffett <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>> A lot of them already work that way.  In NY you don't get a grant until
>>> you've built something and then you get reimbursed for it.  CAF gives you
>>> monthly distributions and does not cover any up front capital at all.  I
>>> haven't seen every program, but the ones I have seen all required you to
>>> spend your own money first and then get reimbursed after.
>>>
>>> But think about why does that even matter?  The two sources of data they
>>> have are both unreliable:
>>>
>>> 1. Reports from the end user who's ignorant.
>>>
>>> 2. Reports from the operator who might also be ignorant (or liar).
>>>
>>> They'll have what % of users are bitching at us, and how good are the
>>> excuses from the operator.  Whether you distribute the funding before or
>>> after construction won't change that.  Distributing afterwards means you
>>> can't take the money, buy a ferrari, and drive to Mexico.
>>>
>>> Besides....LOT's of people build shit networks with their own money.
>>>
>>>
>>> On 3/5/2021 11:53 AM, Steve Jones wrote:
>>>
>>> this is why i wish they would go to recovery awards. you get your money
>>> AFTER you serve the area and verify. A whole lot less grift when playing
>>> with your own money. Ill get shot here, but I think no funding for anything
>>> other than a hardline solution like fiber should be available anywhere
>>> within X miles of any town of population.
>>>
>>> On Fri, Mar 5, 2021 at 10:39 AM Adam Moffett <[email protected]>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> There's too much emphasis on Mbps, but my guess is the political
>>>> decision makers observe that cable and fiber companies selling 100M+
>>>> generate fewer complaints from constituents than wireless operators
>>>> offering 25Mbps.
>>>>
>>>> <rant mode>
>>>>
>>>> I'm not going to name any names, but I've seen a few grant funded
>>>> wireless networks who qualified for funding by "offering" 25mbps that they
>>>> couldn't actually deliver consistently.  You can do 25Mbps if load isn't
>>>> too high, SNR is good enough, not too many inefficient low mod stations,
>>>> etc.  If the design is built with maximal capacity in mind, then you can do
>>>> 25Mbps for sure, but to qualify for funding they typically have to hit
>>>> every household in a geographic area so they focus too heavily on coverage
>>>> rather than capacity.  They'll get projections showing coverage down to a
>>>> -80 RSSI when really they couldn't deliver that 25Mbps consistently unless
>>>> everybody was getting -65 or better.  (I saw one using -90 for projecting
>>>> coverage in a grant application, and ALSO using excessively generous system
>>>> gains in their link budget based on recommendations from some fool doing
>>>> tech support at the VAR.)
>>>>
>>>> There's reasoning motivated by the requirements of the funding.
>>>> They're told they HAVE to offer 25mbps AND they HAVE to cover 100% of the
>>>> people in a given area, and they end up stretching to try to make both
>>>> things true when they really can't ever both be true at the same time.
>>>> They'll never admit it. They've made it true in their own minds so they can
>>>> talk to the regulators about it and feel that they aren't lying.  End
>>>> result is a funded network with poor performance and constituents bitching
>>>> at somebody about it.  The politician getting bitched at doesn't understand
>>>> the root cause and couldn't prequalify applicants on any other criteria so
>>>> they just increase the required Mbps.
>>>>
>>>> I think usually these guys aren't really liars, they're just ignorant.
>>>> They listen to a vendor telling them a product can deliver eleventy
>>>> thousand Mbps without understanding the qualifying conditions.  They'll
>>>> test with one or two CPE with perfect signal to "prove" that it's true.  I
>>>> think they're honestly surprised when they call me in to troubleshoot and I
>>>> have to tell them that there's not much wrong with their network and it
>>>> just can't do what they're trying to do.  There's really nothing to fix
>>>> except go to each CPE location and try to make them all 30 SNR.
>>>>
>>>> If you have to qualify for a grant by offering 100Mbps to EVERY
>>>> household in EVERY eligible census block in an entire town, then you are
>>>> going to have to do it with fiber or coax.  There will still be people
>>>> trying it with wireless, but they'll only be the most egregious liars and
>>>> fools.  Eventually the government agencies will stop being technology
>>>> agnostic and just say "no fixed wireless".
>>>>
>>>> <disclaimer>I do know some things, but I don't actually know what
>>>> motivates this specific decisions.  That part is conjecture.</disclaimer>
>>>> </rant mode>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 3/5/2021 10:20 AM, Mathew Howard wrote:
>>>>
>>>> You would think that since they bothered coming up with excuses why the
>>>> current standard isn't good enough, they could at least come up with a
>>>> number based on their imagined need, instead of just coming up with a
>>>> random number with no basis in anything other than "100/100 sounds good".
>>>>
>>>> It's not that hard... according to them, Zoom needs 3.8mbps upload per
>>>> 1080p stream (and obviously everybody in the house absolutely needs to be
>>>> using 1080p), so lets say a lot of households are running 5 simultaneous
>>>> Zoom sessions (which I'm guessing is actually fairly rare)... that's
>>>> 19Mbps, so throw in some overhead and make it, say 25Mbps. That's
>>>> realistically going to be way more upload bandwidth than the vast majority
>>>> of people ever need, so why exactly do we need to make the standard four
>>>> times that?
>>>>
>>>> I guess it's one way to only fund fiber, which probably isn't a
>>>> terrible idea if we're going to insist on throwing tax payer money away on
>>>> such projects.
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, Mar 4, 2021 at 10:21 PM Steve Jones <[email protected]>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> As long as they're tossing arbitrary numbers for need out there
>>>>> without any fact based justification I think we should get carte blanche 
>>>>> to
>>>>> do as we please to make it happen. No need for ROW, we will take the O out
>>>>> of OTARD and give it  a big fat REeeee. Dont want us running cable through
>>>>> your living room to your neighbors house? Move. That 300 year old oak is 
>>>>> in
>>>>> the way? Federal money for husqvarna solutions. 1 watt per mhz? F that,
>>>>> 1.12 gigawatt at the cpe. We will burn those obstructions out of the way,
>>>>> make it disappear like micheal j fox in a Polaroid.
>>>>>
>>>>> On Thu, Mar 4, 2021, 9:29 PM Ryan Ray <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Just create another CBRS database and let's get a huge swath of
>>>>>> spectrum dedicated to PTMP without huge fees for rural areas. Lots of
>>>>>> places where we could service 700-800 people if only more spectrum was
>>>>>> available and it wouldn't impact anyone else in that band. If it does? 
>>>>>> Shut
>>>>>> it off. Spectrum feels like such a wasted resource. We could be doing so
>>>>>> much more with it, we understand how it propagates and software can now
>>>>>> handle that on the fly in order to allocate to as many people as 
>>>>>> possible.
>>>>>> I honestly think a fluid and dynamic database like this is the future of
>>>>>> wireless.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Thu, Mar 4, 2021 at 5:45 PM Steve Jones <[email protected]>
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/4/22312065/fcc-highspeed-broadband-service-ajit-pai-bennet-angus-king-rob-portman
>>>>>>> Meth and kickbacks. They need to just free up 500mhz-120ghz for just
>>>>>>> WISP use. Then each wisp can have a ton of spectrum to get that porn to
>>>>>>> every device
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