Biden announces $930 million going into ISP pockets in effort to expand internet access to out-of-touch Americans who can't read this headline

The federal effort to expand internet access to every U.S. home has taken a major step forward with the announcement of $930 million in grants to shore up connections in dozens of places where significant connectivity gaps persist. Those places include remote parts of Alaska and rural Texas. The so-called middle mile grants are intended to trigger the laying of 12,000 miles of fiber through 35 states and Puerto Rico. The middle mile is the midsection of the infrastructure necessary to enable internet access, composed of high-capacity lines carrying lots of data quickly. The expansion is among several initiatives pushed through Congress by President Joe Biden's administration to expand high-speed internet connectivity.

solidgrue,
@solidgrue@lemmy.world avatar

I object to your editorial post title on the grounds that it trivializes a real issue: rural broadband access in the US just SUCKS.

Rural America is a LOT of miles of nothing with a critical minimum of subscribers. Federal subsidies make DSL available to these households while the cities enjoy unfettered access to Gigabit speeds and faster. It's hardly fair access when most of those DSL providers are Sinclair affiliates.

It's an uncanny divide just from the standpoint of access-to-internet-media, but rural communities generate a TREMENDOUS amounts of data that the Dept of Commerce, USDA and FDA all could use to track US cattle herds, crop health, soil health fertilizer use and pest controls. Backhaul is key here, and the telcos resent being paid to run miles of fiber to cover pastures with LoRA or 5G.

I forget whatever my point was, but everyone should have good Internet access.

bryanuc,

while the cities enjoy unfettered access to Gigabit speeds and faster

I wish I did. One provider at 500Mbps, one at 50Mbps, and a cellular provider that kind of works at 12-100Mbps. Very much in a suburb/city area. I'd sooner say put the $930M to breaking up the internet provider monopolies.

llama,
@llama@midwest.social avatar

ISPs in the US: Can we still charge $100/month for basic internet?

US Gov: Yes but now you actually will have to allow data to transfer across your network.

ISP: First of all, how dare you?

solidgrue,
@solidgrue@lemmy.world avatar

If you live in a market within TV broadcast range of any significant Metro, then you have access to dedicated Internet feeds (DIA, in the parlance) under tariff for a cost. That cost may well be thousands of dollars monthly recurring, but it's available. Sign on the line and wait 180 days for provisioning.

My point is, even a fraction of that access us unavailable to rural communities because there is not infrastructure, full stop. We the US taxpayers funded it, and the telcos pocketed it and crowd poverty.

This next round of funding is sorely needed but I expect the same BS because the FCC is toothless. Ptui.

astrsk,
astrsk avatar

The problem is we tried this before with the subsidies and grants for a major fiber backbone that got half built and the rest of the money pocketed while prices skyrocketed and speeds barely rose. The same thing happened when broadband definitions got rewritten to define faster base speeds— ISPs increased speeds to meet the minimums but also increased the prices.

I’m worried this money will just be pocketed again.

solidgrue,
@solidgrue@lemmy.world avatar

Maybe there will be audits that s time?

Narrator: There would be no audits

AnonTwo,

This was my concern as well when I read this. I hope there were plans to have some sort of oversight....

riskable,
riskable avatar

I am with you on rural America getting the short end of the Internet stick! It's just that historically we've given ISPs over $400 billion dollars and they didn't hold up their end of the bargain:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-book-of-broken-promis_b_5839394

Giving them more money isn't going to solve the problem. We're at that phase of the game where we need to stop letting them scam us and just do it ourselves. We already build our own roads which is vastly more complicated and requires much more money than laying fiber. If we can make interstates we can lay down fiber optic cable.

We can charge ISPs for the privilege to use it and make different ISPs compete on the same physical network. That's how it works in many countries and it's a perfectly legitimate way to make ISPs incredibly angry which I think we can all agree would be an ideal outcome. If they don't like it we can set up a time next week between 10AM and 4PM to wait for us to show up to discuss. When we don't show up we will make them call to reschedule 👍

CarrierLost,

Rural broadband access is abysmal. We moved from a large suburb to a rural area in 2020, and trying to get reliable high-speed internet has been the biggest struggle of all.

cakeistheanswer,

Fixed wireless has been a godsend if it's around you. I'm rural but sitting one airborne hop from backbone fiber. I can vouch its the same tech as the futures trades ride downtown.

In IL there's a few providers that spun up in the wake of a tornado. Its not competitive with what I could get in the suburbs, but its better by far than the wireline out here.

CarrierLost,

Yeah I’ve got fixed wireless now. We don’t even have the option for wired here. DSL isn’t accepting new subscribers (wouldn’t want it anyway) and there’s no cable.

I tried to get my power co-op to run fiber (or allow it to be run) on the existing poles, but I just got a generic response about cost efficiency and maintaining standards for customers. It seems like an easy solution to me, but they won’t even consider it.

cakeistheanswer,

Had the same issue, my neighbors are grandfathered into DSL I can't get. Local cable wire is offered 2mb, any extension for fiber was a 20k dig.

If you're fighting with a utility over pole space you might have some latitude with your county if you can make a case you're isolated, without a vault close. I'll tell you I didn't get too far, but I'm fighting a railway and numbered highway too that made it a state issue immediately.

CarrierLost,

I think the poles are actually owned directly by the utility, as it’s a “cooperative” instead of a for profit corp. That means that I’m a “shareholder” but to get any policy changes like that made, I’d need to trigger a vote that the other members (customers) would also have to agree to. (Hint: they won’t, because the co-op will tell them it’s gonna raise rates or degrade service)

I’m just going to wait it out at this point. Fixed wireless is working well enough, and progress is coming. Infrastructure will follow the people, and this place is growing quickly.

llama,
@llama@midwest.social avatar

My boss lives five miles away from me but there is a clear border in between where urban ends and rural begins. I was trying to help him with something on TeamViewer and it was really lagging so I asked if he was still on DSL and he said "no I have microwave" 🤦‍♂️

RyanHakurei,
RyanHakurei avatar

This is not universal, though. For example I live in the sticks and am posting this from AT&T Fiber, 2.5G/2.5G

CarrierLost,

True. There are localized pockets, but they’re not common. I’m super jealous, though! :-)

solidgrue,
@solidgrue@lemmy.world avatar

Community-owned broadband is a fun legal zone. Some States are moving to dismantle it, some others to protect it, all while most are mute on it.

Is a muninipality legally entitled to set up its own broadband network? Doesn't matter what you think, the telcos are spending their lobby dollars to prevent it where it has traction. Same for Tribal areas too.

We can talk about "incredibly angry" here: the telco isn't the internet I worked a lifetime to build. Demand more. #

WackyIdeas,

Here in , municipal broadband is prohibited by state law.

AlligatorBlizzard,

That explains why I'd never heard of municipal broadband until I moved from Florida to a small town in rural Minnesota. When I lived there, I had the choice of a municipal Co-op, CenturyLink, or one other big name I can't remember right now. And unfortunately the up front cost and the mandatory one year contract (I was in college at the time) meant I never had it, but by all accounts it was by far the best ISP in town and all of the professors used it.

wrath-sedan,
wrath-sedan avatar

I applaud linking an AP News article as it always drives me batty when major news threads would link an article that is either paywalled or a generally unreliable source. While I agree with the sentiment of your headline (sick and tired of subsidizing private companies for our internet infrastructure) I think its worth noting that the article itself says a lot of the money is going to local and tribal governments as well.

"The grants were awarded to a cross-section of state government agencies, tribal governments and telephone and electric cooperatives. They are intended to trigger the laying of 12,000 miles (19,300 kilometers) of new fiber through 35 states and Puerto Rico."

Also saying "out-of-touch Americans that can't read this headline" makes it sound like you are criticizing rural people for being illiterate and backwards rather than not having internet, which I think comes across as mean-spirited. This program may very well end up enriching ISPs, but connecting people with necessary digital infrastructure is a worthwhile goal regardless of where they live, and while it will likely take compromises with private entities in the short-term, I hope we can move towards treating the internet as the right and public utility that it is.

TechnologyClassroom,

Didn't the US already pay for this and nothing ever came from it?

PhatInferno,
@PhatInferno@midwest.social avatar

We got bigger monopolies i think

SuiXi3D,
SuiXi3D avatar

Great! So just like in the past, the ISP CEOs are gonna pocket the money and continue to jack up their prices and charge every user with a shit ton of fees as they have been since... well, the beginning.

roofuskit,
roofuskit avatar

So I guess we're going to end the old rule of not editorializing headlines?

JWBananas,
JWBananas avatar

Not having AutoModerator is going to seriously suck.

Elengale,
Elengale avatar

We're considering opening up an alternative to a large subreddit (~2M users) here on kbin and this is a bit of a sticking point for us. Even if only a small number of people move over it's going to be annoying to go back to super primitive mod tools.

riskable,
riskable avatar

I always felt that rule was no fun. No fun at all! 😁

Does this magazine even have such a rule? I didn't see anything like that (and on mobile it's not showing me any way to access the description or rules/stuff in the sidebar).

BTW: If my editorialized headline is wrong I'll delete the post but I read the article and it looks like these are definitely grants and not subsidies and they must go to qualifying entities which for these types of grants can only be ISPs (and only the biggest would have the resources to even fall within the scope/apply). I don't even think any reasonable person could say it's even misleading!

My opinion is that the regular news media isn't doing its damned job lately and the evidence is right in front of our eyes: Giving every politician and business a huge benefit of the doubt and not pointing out precisely where and how decisions/changes/actions are going to play out in reality. The reality here is that:

  • Federal dollars are going to ISPs in an attempt to get them to build out infrastructure rather than just building out the infrastructure directly like we do with roads/bridges.
  • People who don't have internet right now really are out of touch (which is sad, honestly) and can't read this headline.
sin_free_for_00_days,

I like your headline!

syd_the_bird,

The objection people had was with the phrase "out of touch." You used it literally because those people have no ability to get in touch online. Yet the phrasing came across as those people were out of touch figuratively.

Draad,

I wouldn't call the headline wrong, but mostly speculation and opinion. Not that those are necessarily bad things.

Recent history certainly backs you up, regarding ISP subsidies. Generalizing everyone in areas that don't have reliable internet access as 'out-of-touch' does rub me the wrong way, though.

The phrase "in effort to expand internet access to out-of-touch Americans who can't read this headline" sounds to me as if you're suggesting that it's not worth expanding reliable internet access to certain parts of the U.S. You may not have meant it that way, but that's how it reads to me.

I think it makes a good example for why I liked the idea that the main post copies the headline 1:1, and any opinions of the OP can always be expressed and discussed in the comments. Instead of many top-level comments being about an editorialized headline by the OP, they'd be about the posted article.

Elengale,
Elengale avatar

I think it makes a good example for why I liked the idea that the main post copies the headline 1:1, and any opinions of the OP can always be expressed and discussed in the comments. Instead of many top-level comments being about an editorialized headline by the OP, they'd be about the posted article.

Very much agreed. There's a good reason why /r/politics opted ultimately to stick with the headlines for topic titles. Let people draw their own conclusions from reading the actual link rather than trying to color their opinions with some lurid 'summary' with a zinger at the end.

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