Anatomy Of A Boondoggle: How The US Broadband Plan Led To WV Buying $20,000 Routers For A One Room Library
from the scam-scam-scam-scam dept
Back in 2009, we warned people that the President's mega-hyped "broadband plan" really just looked like a massive gift to large incumbent providers, who were about to get an influx of taxpayer money, which would translate into next to nothing in terms of actual broadband deployments. Indeed, we've seen an awful lot of waste happening under the program, which is finally starting to come to light. Recently, the NY Times profiled widespread waste in the program, suggesting that hundreds of millions of dollars are either being wasted or are part of various boondoggles to squeeze cash out of governments:Nationally, $594 million in spending has been temporarily or permanently halted, 14 percent of the overall program, and the Commerce Department's inspector general has raised questions about the program's ability to adequately monitor spending of the more than 230 grants.Perhaps nowhere are the details more apparent than in West Virginia. Ars Technica summarizes a recent report that is incredibly damning. The smoking gun? A $20,000 router installed in a one-room library the size of an ordinary trailer. But that's hardly the worst of it. At least that $20,000 router is being used (even if it's under-utilized).
Part of the reason for buying that router, rather than a cheapo one that would have sufficed, was that it would enable other services, including things like VoIP. The state bought 77 of them. Turns out that 75 are just sitting around collecting dust. And none of them can use the VoIP system they need.
Ironically, the routers can't even be used for VoIP in some key cases. The state police already have a VoIP-based phone system, but the new 3945 series routers did not come with "the appropriate Cisco VoIP modules" to work with the system. The state now has to spend another $84,768 to purchase those modules; without them, the state police can't use the routers, only two of which are actually installed and operating. (For those keeping score at home, this means that 75 $20,000 routers are depreciating in a state police warehouse somewhere in West Virginia.)There's a lot of finger-pointing going on, but when it comes down to it, this is not at all surprising. Throwing billions of dollars into the broadband space with little reasoning or oversight always leads to questionable behavior. So why do we keep doing it? Are there ways the government could spend on infrastructure and have it be powerful. Sure, but the Broadband Plan clearly was not it. And we're only learning about the abuse and waste now, after the money's been spent.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: boondoggle, broadband plan, expensive routers, routers, west virginia
Companies: cisco
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
The real housewives of Grantville.
It doesn't matter if it's government or corporations you're talking about.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
you didn't think the info would come out before the spend, did you? how do you think those involved would have gotten their backhanders if the money wasn't spent first?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
On the other hand...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
How does that even work? VoIP should just work fine on any sort of TCP/IP connection... I bet they're (Cisco) are just blocking VoIP traffic on purpose to make you/them pay more ('s funny since they were already paying way too much) and if they encrypted their traffic it would work without a problem.
A $20,000 router? What? Is this one of those scenarios where companies force you to pay more JUST because you have more money to spend?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
"this is not at all surprising."
How about next time you write that, Mike, you just DROP the story? Because for once you'll be right.
This is another staple in the "gov't waste" series used to pretend to be worried about it and thereby build up credibility. -- And yet never a word here about the $83 BILLION that taxpayers are STILL giving to bankers!
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-20/why-should-taxpayers-give-big-banks-83-billion- a-year-.html
Take a loopy tour of Techdirt.com! You always end up at same place!
http://techdirt.com/
Mike may sell T-shirts with Techdirt logo, but I bet his lunch dates are open.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
He had one last week, he tweeted about it.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: "this is not at all surprising."
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: "this is not at all surprising."
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
I believe the specific modules they are talking about are the gateway modules between the voip/ethernet network and the PSTN (Public-Switched Telephone Networks). They usually have 1 or more T1/E1 connections with the PSTN and allow for folks to access the phone network outside of their voip network if they need to. They also have modules that allow you to connect existing phone networks to VOIP.
Why every router would need one is beyond me. They should have a gateway to get out to the PSTN somewhere local, but they don't need 7 routers within .44 mi with the same requirement.
A $20,000 router? What? Is this one of those scenarios where companies force you to pay more JUST because you have more money to spend?
Yeah. And I thought our 2821 was overkill for what we use it for.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: "this is not at all surprising."
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: "this is not at all surprising."
[ link to this | view in thread ]
It's a $5K router
The routers are available on the 2ndary market for $4.5-$5.5K each.
So the real question becomes:
How could WVA bypass proper process and give Cisco $20K each for $5K routers they did not need?
Sure, there's economies of scale of buying all the same thing, and if they were paying the used price only some of those would be oversell compared to a $1-$2K 2000 series router.
But still...
E
[ link to this | view in thread ]
To quote Church from Red vs. Blue...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: On the other hand...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re:
Another this week too. :)
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: To quote Church from Red vs. Blue...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
6 months later we've got universal broadband, in a secure, resistant mesh coverage over the entire continental US.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Public Library Internet Costs
We have about 40 computers between staff and public use. Our peak internet usage is usually after school when students use our WiFi with their school issued iPads. We contract with ENA Services of Knoxville, TN for "10mb Egress" internet service. The cost is $2215 per month. The federal government, through the E-Rate program, covers 80% of the cost. In addition, we get a state grant that covers about 70% of the remainder. The bottom line is that our library pays $125 per month for a service that costs $2215 per month.
The $2215 per month sounds outrageous to me. Is this a fair rate? Is the federal government being gouged? Are there sweetheart deals involved? Verizon, ATT and others provide 10-15mb service to small businesses in our area for $100-$200 per month. Am I comparing oranges to oranges? Am I missing something? I would appreciate advice and thoughts from anyone on this board that has expertise in this area.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Fraudulent green initiatives, hyper waste, mega fraud, crony capitalism, and demagoguery.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
The problem is, not enough rich people will get richer, this falls under 'socialism' and it will benefit everyone equally, that's not going to fly for our representatives, who are often more worried about getting richer then the good of citizens.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: "this is not at all surprising."
You can still, you know, be a loon, but, damn, how about changing it up a bit?
The irony is that I've been wondering why folks continue to feed you and yet .. fuck.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
fraud
When the law actually does it's job and they go after the worst criminals they can save or recover a lot of money for the taxpayer, But they are spending so much of theor time to prosecute what should be civil cases they just do nto have the means to also go after the real crooks, those that are stealing money , cash in their pockets not jst a file on the computer that has no value to anyone.
This will all come out and everyone will show mock suprise and disgust but nobody will be punished, well maybe the perosn that looked at the equipment but was not in any way responsible for it being purchsed.
Sickening how corruption is so blatent , but then they know the laws and they knwo they will get away with it, god they probably have information on any judges that would be hearing these cases so are felling very smug,
The only way to make the system work is to work against it, Google is starting to show how to do that with google fiber, supplying a dream at crazy low prices and doing it while still making a profit.
Somewhere someone is going to be cringing every time they see the words google, and they know that they have shown the big 4 isp's for what they are, lazy do nothing monopolists. Who will suffer once they are ignored by the public and new networks are built by local governing bodies who might take a small backhand but not the billions that the top 4 get legally.
Imagine what Google could have done with the billions givent o the top 4 , they could have approached almost every city and started installing fibre to the house with 1gb speeds. They would probably by now have managed to cover at least 50% of the country, and the size of the country is irrelevant , there are countries with a much lower population per acre than America and they have amazing broadband, at prices the American population could only dream of.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
If you're too big to be properly accountable then, it doth seem, you are too big to fail. Last stop: sheep masquerading as citizens? Or wolves masquerading as sheep?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: "this is not at all surprising."
Right, and since when does anything you say make a difference to anyone?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Keine Überraschung
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: To quote Church from Red vs. Blue...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: "this is not at all surprising."
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Public Library Internet Costs
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: It's a $5K router
I'm pretty sure that if it's anything like the rest of their "Enterprise" level gear you cannot download patches and firmware upgrades with out a valid service contract, which on average I've noticed costs about 10% of the initial cost per year.
One time I bought a small business Cisco firewall/router on "the secondary market", and damnest thing, if I had more than 10 devices on the network at a time, one of them would get it's connection out to the internet dropped. Turns out the thing had a 10 user license. *facepalm* Currently it's warming an AV rack in my friend's living room as his needs come in *way* under 10 routable IPs.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: "this is not at all surprising."
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
Other than this giving your racism a much more "acceptable" face, would you care to look at the actual history of these things and notice that no single party is at fault.
The problem is a government in the pocket of big business, and the public wants to believe the lies they are told about how this will benefit them.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]