White House announces $40 billion in broadband funding
Kata1yst@kbin.social to 
News@kbin.social – 90 points – 
theverge.com
States will receive at least $100 million
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Kata1yst@kbin.social to News@kbin.social – 90 points –
$40 billion for outdated and outclassed infrastructure. Brilliant.
Would be better spent ripping the current fiber infrastructure that exists from the hands of isps holding it hostage and expanding it.
Or just contracting with fiber layers directly to lay fiber.
It would be simpler to just do it when they update the interstate highways…. But they sat around with their thumbs up each other’s asses too long and can’t wait for that.
We did this though, in the early '00s. Look up "dark fiber". The infrastructure is there, but everyone refused to use or maintain it.
The next step would have been to make ISP a state provided utility, and in corpo-murica that's just tooo commie to accept.
We did that! Then we promptly undid it '\__(°~°)__/`
The telecommunications expansion of the 90’s resulted in fiber running under the street in front of my house. I’m not allowed to access it, though, because Century Link prevents the local utility company from connecting it to any homes.
Since Century Link doesn’t serve my area, I had to use cellular satellite internet when I moved here, which was too shitty for my WFH job of ten years. And there was nothing else, so I lost my job.
The lesson here is that opportunities to fleece the government keep coming around, and you can either come up with a way to join the pirates or walk the damn plank.
Jesus christ that is bleak. Any idea what the public reasoning was for allowing Century to block your local utility, or if they even fucking attempted a public reason?
Most city councils and state legislators are more or less owned by ISPs. there probably wasn't ever really a public reason given- just a lobby group saying 'you should vote this way, now enjoy your dinner.", and there was never any public comment because, who the hell has time to watch what their legislators are actually doing?
I’m pretty sure no reason was made public - I’ve never found any information in archives. I was stonewalled by the public utilities company for almost a year before they finally admitted, privately, that I’d never be connected due to the Century Link stranglehold. I did find an article from 2019 detailing the inadequate infrastructure that CL was refusing to upgrade, so maybe they can’t handle the load and won’t invest in a captive area? It’d probably mess up someone’s bonus.
I had something similar with CenturyLink. They were the only provider where I lived at the time, and they charged $60/month for 500kbps down. When Comcast started to run cable up my road CenturyLink went bonkers and sued until Comcast just stopped.
Now I pay Ziply $35/months for 8Mbps down, and while that's still sad it feels lightning fast after CenturyLink.