105
The funniest part is that it's his voters lol
The news will probably never reach them.
To be fair, this federal program was a cluster eff since they started it in about 2010. It passed a bunch of grant money through to the states, which all did different "things" with it. Most held semi-public meetings and planning sessions for 5-10 years or wrote detailed planning documents but never delivered any physical infrastructure (actual results to the residents).
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.
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.
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.
Speak for yourself.
My city is rolling out fiber.
Funds allocated throughout the years have NEVER actually gone to providing/increasing broadband in rural areas.
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.
Yeah but does Iran have nukes? Checkmate!
I would think the tech bros running things would want more people to train their models on.
I would think that Muskrat would like more customers for his satellite internet business.
This is exactly what some of my extended family uses because there’s literally no other option. Not even cellular.
This isn’t even up in the mountains or something. This is just rural Alabama where kids are struggling to do homework because they just don’t have access, and it all but guarantees that their technology skills will remain woefully outdated.
I remember when they had DSL not that long ago and I would turn off updates on everything because it was a complete waste of time to attempt.
My grandparents lived in rural OK and had dial-up until 2018 when they finally were able to get a 2mbps DSL line. It really wasn’t much faster than the dial-up.
You mean it wasn't able to be saturated?
As slow as 2MBit/s is, relatively speaking, it's still magnitudes better than dial-up.
Yes, I mean it never hit its rated speed. Also that many modern sites didn’t work any better than they did on the dialup anyway.
I got mine, even though it’s 1 gb down 300 mb up, but it’s still rural fiber.
taxes subsidized it and we get to pay extra https://nationaleconomicseditorial.com/2017/11/27/americans-fiber-optic-internet/
Capitalism perverts all good intentions. It twists them to make a quick buck.
It's a cancer on society.
Rural voters overwhelmingly voted for this. I have no sympathy. I'm downloading shit fast as fuck. And I'm using my symetric fiber to seed 24/7 the following torrents: CDC data removed from gov websites, data leak from Patriot Front (a local fascist movement in USA), and war crimes committed by IDF in Gaza. Plus a lot of porn.
Cheers, shitbags! You got what you voted for.
All of whom voted for this. So.
Do you have any idea what you're talking about? No.
It doesn't matter what rural areas vote for. They're all gerrymandered to shit just like the cities are.
The political elite on both sides have a good chunk of us fighting each other instead of them. So, congrats on falling for the same bullshit.
Do you have any idea what you're talking about? No.
I’ve seen more than my share of “red” counties. They’re only gerrymandered when there’s an obvious threat to red state hegemony. Full of good people who fall for stupid lies every goddamn time despite the world of information available to them. The FoxNews miasma that hangs like suffocating humidity in every auto garage and bleak box store parking lot. The fist of Jesus in every lifted truck window.
Take your “both sides” bullshit to someone else.
Why do you think the Democratic party, once well known as the party of the working class, no longer holds that distinction?
Who says it doesn't?
There's your answer.
Election results say it doesn't. Because they've alienated a huge majority of the working class. Because blue collar workers overwhelmingly vote against the Democratic party in the US.
You can call them all uneducated buffoons all you want, but in doing so, you are only proving my point that the Democratic Party has alienated them totally.
Blue collar workers overwhelmingly bought Reagans plastic coated flag-waving bullshit and started voting against their interests consistently. By the time Fox News and talk radio rolled around they were completely fucking brainwashed. Still are today.
I don’t see how calling them undereducated buffoons is an argument for or against whether the Democrats have alienated them either way.
And for the record, they were only too happy to vote for flag waving white Jesus over the future of themselves or the country. They alienated themselves.
Tell me again what the voter turnout percentage was?
The vast majority of us are so used to our voices not being heard that we don't even bother voting. It doesn't change anything.
You keep talking about how they voted "for" this and that, without even understanding that most people in the USA didn't vote for anything at all.
Sure, I'll do a simple web search for you.
It was 64%.
The most since 1908
So, the "most people in the USA didn't vote for anything" is incorrect. Most registered voters did (if you're including infants and the deceased, well that changes the math a little bit).
And if you didn't vote, you get what you get. And what you get is chaos and incompetence. Excellent plan, non-voters.
What's an average Internet connection like in the USA? How many megs down?
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.
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.
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.
most areas have ISP monolopies, which is somewhat understandable given the high infrastructure costs etc. For that reason they should be regulated as utilities, but aren't because high speed internet isn't legally "essential" in the year of our lord 2025.
It's not understandable at all. The telcos took nearly a trillion dollars from tax payers back in the 2000s to get broadband to everyone in the USA....and they basically stole it.
…and they basically stole it
It's the American way. We're honestly lucky that it wasn't feasible for the big telecoms to build their own versions of the Internet, or there'd be several of those too.
$150 on Comcast monopoly for 200 down. I use more than 1.5tb a month and a static ip so need a business plan...
Wow. Every time I read about Comcast I'm reminded why I hate them so much.
I pay $89/mo for gigabit fiber and a static IP through a local ISP. Not comcast. Hopefully never again.
Hnnng, I'm so glad I don't have to pay for a static ip
They own half the state :/
this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2025
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