Six lawsuits against FCC's 5G idiocy – that $2bn windfall for telcos – is bundled into one appeals court sueball

Re: It ain't all about poor cities and states

Unfortunately, Washington seems to have forgotten that we're not on the right coast, and has started tolls on things.

Carpool lane? yeah, pay a toll, and any old idiot can go flying down it. Of course, they then randomly jack the price up if there's a traffic jam. (Don't ask where the money goes, they aren't telling...)

Oh, you want another bridge over the Puget Sound, and the existing one was paid off and the toll booths closed down and legally not allowed to be re-opened? Yeah, we'll make that a one way bridge, and toll the new bridge going the other way! (No sunset clause in it's financing, and again, no telling where the money is going...)

All that money going *somewhere* and they have still been regularly making noise about raising taxes on things to pay for the roads and transit projects.

Re: It ain't all about poor cities and states

"If it says I-280, it should be free."

Note to anyone visiting the SF Bay Area: Interstate 280 is NOT free, in fact it cost us tax payers quite a bit of money. However, there is NOT a per-use fee, so don't expect to find toll booths.

OP may have been referring to one of the other three I-280s (New Jersey, Ohio, or Illinois-Iowa). The three-digit Interstate numbers are not unique, and since I-80 runs coast-to-coast, there are plenty of I-x80 roads.

There are also two roads that used to be I-280s but were renumbered, according to Wikipedia.

In any case, I'm not sure what OP's point about the Federal Interstate system was supposed to be. The Interstate system is a collection of Federally-subsidized, limited-access, multilane highways. They're "Interstate" because they're supposed to facilitate interstate commerce, which is why there are Interstate highways even in both isolated states (that one in the middle of the Pacific and the one you can see from Russia), and even major (two-digit) Interstates in the Contiguous 48 that are confined to one state.¹

There's nothing about the Interstate system that says states aren't supposed to be able to impose additional per-vehicle fees. The Feds subsidize Interstates - they don't pay the whole cost. Many Interstates in the eastern half of the country have tolls, including the Big One, I-90, much of which is tolled east of Wisconsin.

Offhand, the westernmost Interstate toll I can think of is I-70 outside Topeka, Kansas.

In any case, though, while I can appreciate that many people don't like toll roads, I can't see how this is specifically the violation of some compact, explicit or implied, between the government and the people. Indeed, I can't help but feel it makes a certain amount of sense to have road users pay a greater proportion of the cost of road maintenance. (I know, money is fungible and tolls only notionally go toward paying for roads. Still, this means people who drive on toll roads throw a few extra pennies in the pot.)

¹OK, I may be exaggerating a bit, since the one I'm thinking of actually extends over two miles into a second state, and I don't have another example in mind. But close enough.

Re: It ain't all about poor cities and states

Unfortunately, you can't choose which tower your phone will connect to.

You can actually.

Each cell tower has a unique identifier associated with it, which with the right software installed on your phone you can see of all the cell towers around you in range. Also, with the right software, you can prevent your phone from connecting to cell tower identifier you put on a blacklist (or conversely use a whitelist).

This is admittedly a fairly advanced - and onerous - task, requiring rooting phones and so on, not to mention the possibility of losing all comms if you put all of your own telco providers cells on the blacklist, or even worse not using comms but having to pay roaming fees for all your comms.

But it can be done.

(managed to double-post, so withdrew the other one.)

Re: $270 per site per year

So if I decided I wanted to hang some 5G antennas on light poles the city should let me do it for $270 per pole? High band 5G licenses will be pretty cheap due to how much spectrum is being opened up, so mom and pop ISPs could easily spring up and do this. Somehow I think AT&T and Verizon would see things differently if a lot of local competition for fixed wireless sprang up and took advantage of "their" light-touch regulation environment. I think it is easy to see that it would be a problem if a dozen other people decided to do the same the poles were just bristling with antennas. One way you prevent that is for the city to set the rate - higher in bigger cities where more competition is likely (and cost of land is higher, blocking a lane off when guys are up on a pole is a lot more disruptive to rush hour traffic, etc.)

Re: $270 per site per year

That's just part of the cost of doing business.

Yeah. I'm not seeing the problem here.

Of course, I don't give a damn if I never see 5G in my lifetime, either.