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.
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.
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 👍
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.
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.
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. #
Here in #FascistFlorida, municipal broadband is prohibited by state law.
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.
Maybe there will be audits that s time?
Narrator: There would be no audits
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.
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?
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.