What’s the over under on how much of this is going to wasted on fraud, graft, and theft? I put it at $31 billion. This is going to be like poverty programs where it becomes an excuse for politicians to dole out taxpayer money to their cronies to “fix” a problem and then they just keep moving the goalposts so that the problem is never actually “fixed.”
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden is kicking off a more than $42 billion plan to give every American household access to high-speed internet by 2030.
That works out to almost $5000 per unit served. I am sure Elon Musk could fix the situation for substantially less than that.
In the city I live in, Allo is putting in fiber optic lines all through town, and I’m sure they are spending tens of millions of dollars . I’m sure they got most of funding through the government
It’s already Uniparty approved, so I expect the initial $42B to be augmented at regular intervals to cover the inevitable escalating costs… especially if they think nobody is watching. This is meant to provide free service to urban areas under the rationale that they’re getting maximum initial bang for the buck and they’ll get to the suburbs later and out to the boonies much later. Later and much later as in never.
Rather than handouts this should be reimbursements. There is a pretty solid history of telecoms screwing over states after making big promises. Most of these companies built their backbone on subsidies provided by the taxpayers.
But, first and foremost we should be opening up the last mile to everyone who wants to use it. Allow locally owned telecoms to exist and compete, forcing the big telecoms to compete with each other. Open up the poles for all. Getting rid of the wired monopoly that we currently have established. There is no reason why we shouldn’t have 3 or 4 options for coax and the same for fiber at this point. Things are better than they were 5 years ago, but they still are not ideal. We pay WAY more than the rest of the world for WORSE service, speeds, and data caps.
Starlink is helping out. But it still can’t handle the capacity that would be required and won’t be able to for another decade at best, which is one of the reasons they have waitlists to sign up even now.
My in-laws that live 1.04 miles outside of Sturgeon Bay (right near the Culvers) are in a cellular dead zone, and Spectrum refuses to extend their coax out to them. It is fortunate that they can now finally get Starlink if they choose. But that is the ONLY option for them at over $100 a month, plus a $500 install cost. They have NO affordable options. It’s sad.