Technology

Some states / towns hired ISPs who just pocketed the money with no consequences. Some towns even got fed up with no progress and started their own ISPs only to get sued by said corrupt ISP. Looking at you Verizon FiOS.

Still no justification for this money to be funneled to felon musk.

I'm confused. The article is talking about "BEAD" which wasn't passed until 2021. You must be talking about a different program.

I'm sure that there are examples of actually wasted money, but just putting it out there that planning is fucking important. There have been several high profile projects, like Texas high speed rail, where planning was the hard part and the project got canceled as they were ready to break ground because "there was no progress". Cue* Republicans "the government does nothing" after they stopped anything from happening. Infrastructure cannot operate on election cycle timelines.

Digging in the ground and integrating with existing infrastructure isn't just a plug and play operation. Leases and liens need to be sorted out. Estimates of current and future demand needs to be sorted out so you don't install useless networks. Fiber isn't that heavy, but "can the existing conduits under bridges/roads/etc support it and/or do they have room to without a complete replacement" isn't a trivial question for backbone lines.

Winging it just causes more problems as you find things you didn't anticipate and cause delays while having to continue paying contracts so work can resume once the delay is cleared. If you don't, the contractor is on to their next job and unavailable for an effectively random amount of time. While everyone is mad at you that "no work is being done".

It could be done faster, but it would cost more. Because planning is really important to keep multi-million/billion dollar projects accountable and on track.

Speak for yourself.

My city is rolling out fiber.

Most of this money was also "allocated" but not really spent. So at least to Bidens credit money wasn't thrown away, it just sat there not doing what it was supposed to do.

Frontier trounced all over Xfinity here because of this program. I now have fiber vs 300mbps (400 plan). So many blue dots around WV but the koolaid is in the water.

Not true, just got 2Gb fiber in rural WI through a federal grant allocated 2 years ago.

Not entirely, my ISP is a family owned regional cable company and they took the grant and have rolled out fiber across multiple counties.

I get what you're saying about the mega corps, yeah they just pocket a lot of the money. But the smaller ISPs are being smart and investing in their infrastructure to be able to complete.

Never say never. There are actually several areas where I've seen fiber build out from government grants.

That said, they are EXCEPTIONALLY rare and typically scumbag ISPs pocket the money with no consequences, since nobody who writes these laws sets up consequences for failing to deliver.

I would think that Muskrat would like more customers for his satellite internet business.

taxes subsidized it and we get to pay extra https://nationaleconomicseditorial.com/2017/11/27/americans-fiber-optic-internet/

10gig symmetrical for $50/month on Sonic fiber. Still too expensive but I can't believe the rest of the US pays so much for so little, and worse thinks it's a great deal. Typical US speeds are 30 years behind but Americans are so very, very stupid.

I'm getting 270 down and 40 up. Fucking comcast has a monopoly in my area, so I'm paying $120/month for it unless I want to go back to DSL.

Heavily depends on where you live. I live near a big city on the east coast in a largely Blue state. I have 1 gig FiOS internet (up and down). In my area Comcast and Verizon compete for customers so our speeds here are alright. But there are plenty of areas in the US that have absolutely abysmal internet. Either because the area is rural so not much infrastructure has been built up or because the ISP in that area holds a monopoly on the market and doesn't have to increase speeds to keep their customers. I've heard horror stories of people being stuck with like sub 10mbps because there are just no other options.

I probably have pretty close to the top of the curve with 1140mbps up/down according to my plan. In actuality though my speed test reads at 864 up and 859 down.

Highest I've ever gotten was 200 down/10 up. My current is 50 down/10 up.

I pretty much always pay for the highest grade service in the area. Each time I've bought a home, I've researched the ISPs that service it and that also affected what the homes value was to me.

Years ago my neighborhood was wired for fiber, well all except for 24 of our houses because it wasn't profitable, copper still came on our side though... Now that's been turned off so the 24 of us have the option of cable or wireless.

Having to stare at a coil of fiber across the street on the end of the pole (not even buried fiber, its on the damn poles) while I enjoy overpaying for 48Mbps... so fast it must be high speed (seriously debated a wireless link to the house across the street but I'm a stickler for the rules).