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this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023
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Quick! Give the ISPs a bunch of federal dollars to build out their networks so they can quietly pocket it and do stock buybacks!
Why weren't those monetary subsidies just after the fact instead of just paying out on promises? "You'll get x billion dollars when y% of this area has access to z Mbps." But then again I've heard there's monopolies for that in the USA, instead of actual competition.
Government granted monopolies. It's the worst. City / county/ state signs deal with ISP X and give them exclusive rights. Then for some reason they don't spend a lot of time updating anything because they have no competition because of the fucking morons in the government.
I mean, I understand the original rationale: building out infrastructure is super expensive, so the monopoly gives the company an assurance they can recoup investment. But then there's no follow-up! There's nothing requiring the ISP to evolve, so we end up with the same tech as when the contract was signed 20 years ago. At least wireless (LTE, 5G, etc) is promising for competiton, but buying spectrum from the FCC is also f'ing expensive.