The funding under the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment Program is authorized by the $1 trillion 2021 infrastructure law US President Joe Biden championed
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 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
Diet internet. Now with even less net neutrality!
Basically exactly what I was worried about. I hate it when my pessimism is validated.