It sounds like they're basically just sending money to the states, so how efficiently it gets spent will depend largely on the state governments.
In Texas they're absolutely going to give all of the money to big telecom companies to help them buy other big telecom companies, in California they'll perform 20 years of environmental reviews before proudly giving DSL connections to 7 undocumented immigrants in Fresno, in Florida they'll use it to create an alternative anti-'woke' internet with Great-Firewall-of-China levels of content censorship and dial-up level connection speeds, and in New York, the money will simply vanish, and nobody will know where it went or be particularly interested in finding out.
But in smaller / better-run states, the money might actually do some good.
Oh man I laughed so hard over this. I'm hoping California uses this to help fund the municipal broadband program they are starting next year. My understanding is they have bypassed the environmental reviews for the project.
Or just contracting with fiber layers directly to lay fiber.
It would be simpler to just do it when they update the interstate highways…. But they sat around with their thumbs up each other’s asses too long and can’t wait for that.
The telecommunications expansion of the 90’s resulted in fiber running under the street in front of my house. I’m not allowed to access it, though, because Century Link prevents the local utility company from connecting it to any homes.
Since Century Link doesn’t serve my area, I had to use cellular satellite internet when I moved here, which was too shitty for my WFH job of ten years. And there was nothing else, so I lost my job.
The lesson here is that opportunities to fleece the government keep coming around, and you can either come up with a way to join the pirates or walk the damn plank.
Jesus christ that is bleak. Any idea what the public reasoning was for allowing Century to block your local utility, or if they even fucking attempted a public reason?
Most city councils and state legislators are more or less owned by ISPs. there probably wasn't ever really a public reason given- just a lobby group saying 'you should vote this way, now enjoy your dinner.", and there was never any public comment because, who the hell has time to watch what their legislators are actually doing?
I’m pretty sure no reason was made public - I’ve never found any information in archives. I was stonewalled by the public utilities company for almost a year before they finally admitted, privately, that I’d never be connected due to the Century Link stranglehold. I did find an article from 2019 detailing the inadequate infrastructure that CL was refusing to upgrade, so maybe they can’t handle the load and won’t invest in a captive area? It’d probably mess up someone’s bonus.
I had something similar with CenturyLink. They were the only provider where I lived at the time, and they charged $60/month for 500kbps down. When Comcast started to run cable up my road CenturyLink went bonkers and sued until Comcast just stopped.
Now I pay Ziply $35/months for 8Mbps down, and while that's still sad it feels lightning fast after CenturyLink.
They should start with reversing the laws that don't allow local governments to compete with ISP's and let the citizens get in on many of the fiber networks that the cities/states have already implemented. Get a little competition going here for gods sake!
Huge, if true. I think a lot of people in rural areas need to be exposed to something besides Christian radio....
And it really could benefit people who have jobs that can be WFH now--people could live in these dying towns with real incomes, money to spend, and kids in the school systems.
States will be expected to submit their plans for using the funding by December. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), housed in the Commerce Department, plans to approve these plans before next spring when it will begin allocating 20 percent of a state’s authorized funding and infrastructure deployment can begin. By the end of 2025, at least 80 percent of the funding will be allocated.
The White House is expected to release the amounts each state received by Monday afternoon.
Here's hoping they have to submit actual plans that ensure Americans receive broadband availability. And that the fed actually reviews them and posts stipulations if they don't spend the money as they said and if that money doesn't enable what they promise.
I live in Romania and I upgraded to a 10Gbps fiber to home $10/month subscription almost 2 years ago. They pulled the fiber wire in my home around late 2013 when I started with a 1Gbps connection.
Unfortunately for americans our country prefers to compete with africa rather than europe. Its why wireless is becoming a competitor with wired even in major cities.
There was something that resembled free market anarchy in telecom when internet was brought to Romania, which is why it developed so fast. No big telecom cartels that stifled free enterprise like in the US of A.
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