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The Internet Communications

White House Announces $40 Billion in Broadband Funding (theverge.com) 125

Posted by msmash from the moving-forward dept.
President Joe Biden is getting closer to distributing more than $40 billion in funding to support broadband expansion nationwide as part of his administration's goal to connect all Americans to high-speed internet by 2030. From a reportL: The funding, authorized in Biden's 2021 bipartisan infrastructure package, will be distributed proportionally to states based on need with each state receiving at least $100 million. Monday's allocations were made using broadband coverage maps that were recently updated to include more than one million new locations.

"Just like Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered electricity to every home in America through his Rural Electrification Act, the announcement is part of President Biden's broader effort to deliver investments, jobs, and opportunities directly to working and middle-class families across the country," a White House official said in a statement Monday. 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.
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White House Announces $40 Billion in Broadband Funding More

White House Announces $40 Billion in Broadband Funding

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  • Muncipal internet (Score:5, Insightful)

    by akw0088 ( 7073305 ) on Monday June 26, 2023 @01:23PM (#63634128)
    Stop giving comcast, at&t, verizon, frontier, etc money. They have in the past accepted funds and then did not deliver on the promise to lay out lines, have the cities who are creating the burdensome permitting the right to lay their own fiber so at least it's government controlled and not paid out to some CEO's and mid level management

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by jjbenz ( 581536 )
      akw0088 gets it.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      What's the alternative? Red states don't trust the gov't doing it, and it would take a while for smaller competitors to catch up enough to do the job. It would even take the gov't time to ramp up even if we did go the "socialism" route.

      In politics, never ever say "X is bad" without giving the alternative to X, otherwise I'll pluck your eyebrows bare.

      • Re:Muncipal internet (Score:5, Interesting)

        by rcb1974 ( 654474 ) on Monday June 26, 2023 @03:13PM (#63634464) Homepage
        The alternative? Starlink? How about leaving things as-is, i.e. no high speed Internet at all for some rural areas? Why is the Federal Government so hell bent on getting every household connected via high speed Internet? Is it so that they can enact new nefarious laws that assume everyone has an Internet connection? Example: we will be recovering all cash and replacing it with our new digital dollars that we can use to better track and tax your purchases.

        • Re: Muncipal internet (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Plugh ( 27537 ) on Monday June 26, 2023 @03:27PM (#63634518) Homepage
          This. Personally I chose to live in the middle of the woods. My Internet connectivity is not a problem for city dwellers to pay for any more than I should be taxed to handle their municipal waste

          • I too live in the middle of the woods by choice, and wouldn't have it any other way.
            The nearest town is 12 miles away and is 9k people. Access is by a windy and hilly two lane road, and the terrain is almost completely forested (with a few farms/small holdings). Even then, even then! a small-time local company managed to string fiber out to us. gigabit fiber.
            Before that we had starlink for 20 months, it was almost flawless and fit any definition of broadband.
            And before that we used a cellular hotspot, it to

        • You could always move to SF if you want to use cash. They have a city ordinance that requires all businesses accept cash, despite many businesses wanting to do the exact opposite. Turns out, when you have no cash registered, it's a lot harder to rob the place!

      • What rural state ever said, "oh no, mr. government telecom guy, please don't install fiber to our farms and small towns!"?

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Tablizer ( 95088 )

          I'm surprised a conservative politician hasn't claimed expanding broadband is way to spread "decadent Hollywood and commie propaganda".

    • But.... that's socialism! [youtube.com]
    • Could we please stop forcing money on these do nothing welfare queens?

    • I believe they did indeed lay fiber. Its all dark, unused. The rest of the cash went into pockets of C Levels. Without requirements to have residents confirm they get good speeds and a copy of their bill at a reasonable price, then all bets are off.

      • Well, I think I recall reading somewhere that the intention here isn't to actually provide internet to rural America, but more as a vehicle to slosh money around to people's pockets. If you think about it that way, they are very effective at what they are doing. What kind of political power does rural America really have? What other incentives could be at play?
    • AT&T did what they were paid to do, lay fiber optic lines along my rural road. They were not paid to hook up any homes, most like mine several hundred yds off the road. Cable is strung on the power poles but that stops 1 mile from my home. I have made a down payment on Star Link.
    • Exactly.
      Using taxes to put in private internet, or just pay for it, is total BS.

      Instead, we need to push municipal fiber internet esp. in poor areas. However, what should happen is that fiber should be put into these areas and wired not just to the homes, but to the local businesses, government, but above all, the schools.
      Then allow a homeowner to get on to that local intranet for dirt cheap, with the ability to pay for other services such as Internet, security, TV, Voip, etc. that are offered by priv

  • Telcos are already working on spending it. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nightflameauto ( 6607976 ) on Monday June 26, 2023 @01:27PM (#63634144)

    Give this a month or so and it will be spun into "larger telcos are better position to leverage this funding blah blah blah," and a few months after that we'll see it all disappear into C suite bonuses for saving money by not doing what was promised to get the funding.

    At this point, the only way we're getting a real broadband rollout in America is if the government just does it. Every other move just results in taxpayer money going right into the coffers of the biggest players in the market, with nothing to show for it. But hey, at least Biden's able to spin this as helping the middle class. Pffffffft. How politicians can say that shit with a straight face anymore is utterly beyond me.

    • i would rather not have internet access than have mommy as my ISP. That's just chilling to even think about.

      • i would rather not have internet access than have mommy as my ISP. That's just chilling to even think about.

        Not really what I had in mind. Have the government create the infrastructure (the actual wires / fiber / etc.) and still have the shit-awful telcos run the ISPs to the end-user, playing on the government owned infrastructure for a cut of the profits. Wouldn't even have to be much, just something to reverse the trend of shoving billions at the worthless pukes for nothing, over and over again, just for the CEOs to take it all in bonuses.

        • Keeping the corporations involved is bad in every way.

          People overwhelmingly rank municipal utilities of every kind higher than private ones. There have been some spectacularly bad counterexamples, but they are relatively rare. In particular people rank municipal broadband systems much higher than any private ISP.

          The government can spy on you no matter what. Not only should you never forget Qwest [wikipedia.org] but what you apparently don't know is that your ISP is required to capture your traffic and provide it to the fed

          • Why I didn't bother addressing that particular concern is what should be the common knowledge that the government is watching everything you do online no matter how the traffic is routed. Anybody that believes otherwise is living in some heavy denial.

            • Well, you should have done, because that's literally the only potentially real drawback to having the government provide your internet access... and as you say, it's not a thing. Private industry will tend to do a worse job providing a utility because of the profit motive.

              • Government watches everything online. Every company involved in the process is giving them direct access. Letting them control the infrastructure won't change a thing in that regard, so it seems a pointless "look at the obvious" thing to talk about.

                • So what you're saying is that there's no drawbacks to municipal broadband worth mentioning? 10-4, good buddy.

                  • So what you're saying is that there's no drawbacks to municipal broadband worth mentioning? 10-4, good buddy.

                    *SHRUG* I mean, if you live under the mistaken impression that corporations are protecting you from big bad government, maybe. But that would be a mistaken impression, and has zero to do with the infrastructure argument. My slight autism is separating those into two completely different discussions because, really, there's zero fighting the government poking at everything you do online. Or elsewhere, if they have access.

        • The government can't create things. It owns or operates exactly no factories. It doesn't own the poles or lines, nor does it employ people to build or maintain them.

          So, it isn't "for nothing", it's to pay for the material to be produced and work to be done.

          • The government can't create things. It owns or operates exactly no factories. It doesn't own the poles or lines, nor does it employ people to build or maintain them.

            So, it isn't "for nothing", it's to pay for the material to be produced and work to be done.

            I was speaking to history. We've (collective government we there) paid the telcos over and over and build out their infrastructure. They do nothing, pocket the money, then a few years later start begging for money to do the job again. It's a never-ending cycle. And it truly needs to stop.

  • ...will just be used to buy back stock and increase executive bonuses at the big monopoly ISPs.

  • Waste (Score:3, Insightful)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Monday June 26, 2023 @01:33PM (#63634172)

    Ok, so how is this even going to be enough to connect up all the mountaineous regions and in the wood and places like that? Ted Kaczynski's cabin in Montana? No way. The $40 billion should have gone to companies like OneWeb, Kuiper, and SpaceX (Starlink) so they can launch more satellites to offer more broadband low-latency satellite internet. Without satellite internet, there's guaranteed to be areas with gaps in coverage.

    • The idea should be to reduce those numbers to the smallest amount possible. If it's reasonable to install fiber/coax to a remote location that should be the obvious priority for both speed, stability and future considerations.

      If we are 80% broadband deployed today and this act gets us to 95% served with wired broadband we can deal with satellite for the remaining 5% but asking more than that from satellite is not a great idea or use of funds in the current enviroment.

      Also it's not a great political ask cur

  • More? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by iluvcrap2000 ( 9417277 ) on Monday June 26, 2023 @01:33PM (#63634174)
    What happened to the BILLIONS They Gave to the Companies to Put Broadband in rural areas? They Didn't do it. and Kept the money and the Gov't wants to give them MORE? How about forcing the companies to Complete the projects before giving them more Money? OH! and How about DEMAND Them to LOWER Prices too? They Take PUBLIC Money, Make a Profit and Charge the Customer More!? Why? Corruption! Wake up!

    • Public money allows them to build an unassailable monopoly which then allows them to charge whatever prices.

    • Re:More? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by nightflameauto ( 6607976 ) on Monday June 26, 2023 @02:08PM (#63634282)

      What happened to the BILLIONS They Gave to the Companies to Put Broadband in rural areas? They Didn't do it. and Kept the money and the Gov't wants to give them MORE? How about forcing the companies to Complete the projects before giving them more Money? OH! and How about DEMAND Them to LOWER Prices too? They Take PUBLIC Money, Make a Profit and Charge the Customer More!? Why? Corruption! Wake up!

      What boggles my mind, truly, is how transparently stupid these bills are. With all the overhead, all the time, and all the words put into bills like this, at no point does anyone in the entire process say that the companies getting this direct injections of taxpayer money have to do anything to justify it. Like, in the real world, most of us give money to someone, it's usually for some reason, and if that reason isn't met, there are consequences. But in the big business / government circles, it's just big business demanding money, government handing it over, big business pocketing it, then coming back and saying they need more money to start the cycle again.

      It has to be by design. This shit is a feedback loop of stupid at this point. Nobody can justify it, yet it keeps happening. Over and over. And now Biden's trying to spin shoving taxpayer money into corporate coffers for no return is somehow helping the middle class? What?

      I think it may be time for someone in government to gird themselves up and actually do their job. Create a real consequences level of blowback for these companies that just constantly pilfer the government funds for things they refuse to do if they don't follow through. Money for nothing was a catchy jingle on MTV, but should not have ever turned into a way to keep giant corporations flush.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Dusanyu ( 675778 )
        You forget what bills like this exist. it's to Make it look like your doing something useful while Sliding in a few Billion into other porkbarrel projects that would not get funding otherwise.

      • Nobody can justify it, yet it keeps happening.

        " ... the NTIA could get tangled up in a lawsuit if it tried to use the federal law to preempt state ones."

        Meaning, if, the states complain loudly, the US government won't object to their pro-monopoly tel-co laws and policies. We've seen this in a few areas of government, mostly the issues of police rights and 'tough on crime'. Then again, US states have objected to other law-enforcement laws: Eg. Real Id..

      • The money isn't to help the middle class, it's to reduce inflation. That's the name of the bill, right? And naturally it does this by creating money through borrowing and dumping it into the economy, thus increasing inflation. Wait...

  • How frustrating (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Pollux ( 102520 ) <`speter' `at' `tedata.net.eg'> on Monday June 26, 2023 @01:36PM (#63634184) Journal

    Just like Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered electricity to every home in America through his Rural Electrification Act...

    Make no mistake, this bill is NOT the equivalent of the Rural Electrification Act. That bill provided loans to electric cooperatives across rural America, many which still operate today. This bill provides subsidies to private corporations (via the states).

    Corporate America is winning the battle against municipal & and cooperative broadband, and they're using this bill to help do it. [theverge.com]

  • Because it worked so well last time (Score:4, Insightful)

    by CEC-P ( 10248912 ) on Monday June 26, 2023 @02:02PM (#63634262)
    They gave a mountain of cash to ISPs in the past, they gave it to the execs and lied about their numbers, so now they're trying it again? I mean, this is Biden family level of corruption. There's bought and paid for Senators and then there's this.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Xenx ( 2211586 )
      I agree that there is a risk of the money not going where it's needed. However, I don't agree with the corruption claims. Corruption would mean the intent was to get the money into the hands of the corps. I just don't see that here. At worst, I see a potential of poor management of funds. That said, there is definitely nothing worse with regards to Biden than many of the Dem/Rep before.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by skogs ( 628589 )

        Poor management of funds for sure. Most likely could also be categorized as fraud, false advertising, and if it was a contract instead of a damned giveaway then it would be failure to implement contractual obligations.

        Most of the executives should have charges brought against them and threatened with billions in fines to recoup money ill spent and jail time to force the next guy to really think critically on whether or not they want to accept those funds or not.

      • I agree that there is a risk of the money not going where it's needed. However, I don't agree with the corruption claims. Corruption would mean the intent was to get the money into the hands of the corps. I just don't see that here. At worst, I see a potential of poor management of funds. That said, there is definitely nothing worse with regards to Biden than many of the Dem/Rep before.

        There's a pattern to this shit that makes the corruption all but legally spelled out directly in the bills themselves. Every time there's some heavy-lift expected of a fairly profitable business sector, it's assumed the government needs to pay for it. Yet nowhere does the government stipulate that the companies receiving the money have to actually use the money as intended. At least, they always leave enough loopholes that the end result is almost always stock buy-backs and C suite bonuses. To claim it isn'

  • Rural residents who crave broadband can just sign up for Starlink [starlink.com]. Problem solved. Fed gov't efforts to improve rural broadband are a joke and are just pork to corporate campaign donors and to score a few easy political points with voters.
    • "Starlink internet costs $110 per month with a $599 one-time equipment fee. Starlink RV internet costs $135 per month with an up-front $599 equipment fee. Starlink Business costs $500 per month with a $2,500 one-time equipment fee." Yeah, that's pretty much the main reason why I don't have Starlink, although I might get it after I retire and live fulltime at the beach. Which has another problem: the equipment is going to rust out pretty quickly.

      • I'm not so sure about the rust issue. The Starlink dish is mostly plastic, and people have been mounting them to boats for years now without issue.

      • Yes, but why should I subsidize your fiber when you can pay for your own Starlink? I don't recall asking you to subsidize my coax or run fiber for me.
    • Just sign up? I have been on the Starlink waiting list for over 2 years for my mom's house in WV. For now shes stuck with Hughes satellite which is utter crap.

  • reimbursement (Score:5, Insightful)

    by awwshit ( 6214476 ) on Monday June 26, 2023 @02:36PM (#63634364)

    These programs should be done via reimbursement, where telcos hand in an expense report for work they actually did and the get reimbursed for the work. This part where we give telcos a pile of money and hope for the best is not working.

  • Give this $$ to Starlink, Oneweb, and Kuiper ... and in that order.

    Literally giving it to anybody else is just throwing more money at organizations that for decades have proven their inability to roll out services to anywhere other than metro areas.

  • This should have come with specific plans and commitments to server native lands, the Navajo for instance. Though they need water more than Internet.

    • Reservations are a lot like Africa... no infrastructure in place, they should go straight to solar power and wireless internet!

      • Sure. We can blow some of that nearly billion dollars. Arizona is getting on something, even starlink. Water on the other hand, actually can't drill wells out there like that.

  • $40 billion in corporate welfare that will be spent on hookers and blow and conservatives won't say a word against it..
    • Well, sure, they'll spend some of it on hookers and blow... but the rest of the money they'll probably just waste!

    • So wait, you are mad that the Republicans won't say anything but failed to mention it was the Democrats that crafted the bill and then a Democrat President signed it into law? Sounds like they ALL suck to me.

  • Can't think of an actual economic justification for this, we've already spent 3x this amount over the years on the same need. Perhaps this is just payback for helping out with the censorship system. Or worse yet, it's an advance payment ...

    I hate being cynical.

  • I put down a $150 deposit to signal to Coos Curry Beach Broadband that I wanted something faster than ADSL. But unfortunately, they started on the south end of their service area, and here I am, up on the northwest edge of their service area, one of about a dozen houses on this stretch of beach. So it's marked "Future construction" on their status map, as in they'll think about it after 2025...
  • And the corps get paid again to build out/update their services.
  • I am sure Elon is elated.

  • I'm rural. The nearest city is only 6 miles away but in my area, houses are farther apart (on acreage) and any form of fibre or cable is not cost effective. After waiting 18 months, I got Starlink at a cost of $120/month. It works great. Prior to that, I had two choices. HughesNet with a 10 GB monthly data cap or a private "canopy" type of UHF internet at 3 MB/sec max. Neither worked well.
    Starlink approaches "real internet" but it's expensive but that's the cost of living where I live. My area has so

    • We might be neighbors, I live 6 miles from town (the county seat) of a large rural county in Florida. I have HughesNet but have a 50 GB cap that lasts two weeks. Fortunately I can still watch YouTube so do not notice any slow down. I made a down payment on Starlink but do not know when I am getting service.

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