Yet more spending on infrastructure that was already paid for decades ago and will likely never get lit up.
Edit: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-book-of-broken-promis_b_5839394 for those who don’t remember or are too young to remember. We’ve literally already paid this over 10 fold… They’ve weaseled their way out of all the requirements every time. This is why any “infrastructure” bill pertaining to internet (at the very least) is a joke. This is just the government writing a handout check to ISPs.
That’s why they should make becoming an ISP something much more achievable legally, and not try to pay existing ISPs for something “universal”. Then the problem is going to be solved really quick, almost as quick as laying cables.
Supply and demand are real, because they provide motivation for both sides, the consumer and the provider. Not the case with such bills.
How much do you want to bet that most of this money will be squandered by the local monopolies that exist right now? They will take the money and show nothing for it. Just like the last time they received money from the federal government to improve rural internet access.
I’m all in on that bet
Honestly, essentials shouldn’t be (majority) privately owned. This includes water, sewage, electricity, most roads, and internet.
To me, as the cables in the US are privately owned it seems that unless you “luck out”, you essentially have 1 realistic option for internet. I’ve been told that it’s fairly regional, so apparently it’s not so bad in the major cities.
In ~99% of NZ the internet (fibre) cables are either crown-company owned (essentially state), or joint owned by private/public. This essentially makes EVERY ISP buy their bandwidth off the cable owner. There is no ISP monopoly (only a physical cable monopoly), and just like power companies, changing ISP’s is trivial. I think a lot of europe does something similar too, and apparently some cities in the US do this too.
I have read a few articles on this. Does anyone know what they mean by “universal”? That brings to mind the thought of the government offering a public option for ISPs, which I just don’t see Biden doing (I would love to be proven wrong).
Or is this money just going to be given to corporate ISPs who will probably find a way to continue to jack up the price for the consumer all while being subsidized on their expansion?
If the later is the case, are we just throwing around the word “universal” now?
“universal” here is meant as “everyone in America can buy it”, right now there are lots of places in rural America where high speed internet just isn’t available at any price (except for satellite, which has its own problems)
Regarding your guess of what it is, it’s kind of even worse than that - this is far from the first initiative like this, and every time the ISPs just pocket the money, do barely any actual expansion, and call it a day.
So at the end of the day, as a country we’ll probably wind up with unchanged (or worse) internet prices, more or less the same coverage in rural areas, and 42b poorer in tax revenue
But hey, some ISP execs are probably going to get some fat bonuses, so we have that to be thankful for
I’ll believe it when I see it. They have been promising high speed internet for over a decade here, yet my only options are still 7 meg DSL and satellite.
They’ll use this money to get your 7mbps connection reclassified as high speed broadband.
I know this feels like mockery from a person with GPON to the door, but people like you still existing may be the reason the Web hasn’t gone completely apeshit in bandwidth usage.
This exactly. I don’t want to seem pessimistic, but there have been BILLIONS given to ISPs to ensure internet infrastructure implementation. The only thing that has occurred consistently is ISP CEO’s have gotten pay raises and bonuses.
