What Did 'Broadband Czar' Harris Do With the $40 Billion Appropriated for Internet?

[royamcr]

Originally Posted by The_Waco_Kid

doesn't nearly 3 years of endless committees and meetings before 1 dollar is doled out prove the point the Government is incapable of doing anything in an efficient manner?

how many companies across the nation have been putting in internet infrastructure for nearly 40 years now? thousands of them ready to go.

was the Government waiting for these companies to figure out how to do this when they've been doing it all along?

and you are right about Solyndra and yes i knew all about it and you omitted one thing .. they were criticized for faulty financial models that also contributed to their demise, despite raising all that cash.

Again like I said before, internet in rural communities has existed for a long time, just not high speed. Companies like verizon and google just aren't going to fiber up 100-500 houses 100+ miles out in middle of nowhere... there are thousands of these little communities.

Government is paying, they have every right to make sure everything is documented and the right vendors and contractors are selected. RFP process and responses take time. Detailed contracts have to be written, revised and then signed before one foot of cable is ran.

[txdot-guy]

What some people don’t understand is that the government, while not being as efficient as a private company might be, is most times the only one to even consider a project because they are the only ones who have the capital and the wherewithal to invest in projects that others would never consider.

That doesn’t make the government evil. It’s just that size and determination has a quality of its own.

[DEAR_JOHN]

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/1g92TIuVSrw

[royamcr]

https://www.wpri.com/target-12/cox-c...internet-plan/. Interesting article about the rollout in Rhode Island. Not a lot of details on what cox currently offers or considers affordable high speed data. Cable companies typically have 10x download speed vs uploading so not true high speed data.

[Tiny]

Those crazy knuckleheads in Washington D.C. have done it again! They allocated $42.5 billion to bring high speed internet to rural America. This was part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021.

According to the link below, 99.97% of U.S. households already have access to high-speed internet. There are 130 million households in the USA. Do the math and you'll see that apparently we're spending $1.1 million per household to bring high speed internet to rural America!

Here's a puff piece paid for with your tax dollars, describing the "Biden-Harris" Administration's magnanimity in bringing this program to states across America:

https://broadbandusa.ntia.gov/news/l...ion-high-speed

But wait, almost three years after the legislation was passed, ground hasn't been broken on a single project!

Please note below that President Biden tapped Kamala Harris to lead this program. Those of you here who continually whine and bitch about how little she accomplished as Border Czar have no appreciation for how much less she accomplished as Rural Broadband Internet Czar! Please get your priorities straight.

Excerpts from

The Harris Broadband Rollout Has Been a Fiasco
Three years after the $42.5 billion subsidy passed, not a single project is underway. Here’s why.

Government makes many promises, the Biden Administration more than most. Results are another story. For the latest example of the latter, consider the “internet for all” plan that President Biden tapped Kamala Harris to lead. Fiasco is the word for it.

The 2021 infrastructure law included $42.5 billion for states to expand broadband to “unserved,” mostly rural, communities. Three years later, ground hasn’t been broken on a single project. The Administration recently said construction won’t start until next year at the earliest, meaning many projects won’t be up and running until the end of the decade.

Blame the Administration’s political regulations. States must submit plans to the Commerce Department about how they’ll use the funds and their bidding process for providers. Commerce has piled on mandates that are nowhere in the law and has rejected state plans that don’t advance progressive goals.

Take how the Administration is forcing providers to subsidize service for low-income customers. Commerce required that Virginia revise its plan so bidders had to offer a specified “affordable” price. This is rate regulation.

Brent Christensen of the Minnesota Telecom Alliance recently reported that none of his trade group’s 70 or so members plan to bid for federal grants because of the rate rules and other burdens. “To put those obligations on small rural providers is a hell of a roadblock,” he said. “Most of our members are small and can’t afford to offer a low-cost option.”

Commerce hoped to spread the cash to small rural cooperatives, but the main beneficiaries will be large providers that can better manage the regulatory burden. Bigger businesses always win from bigger government.

Commerce is all but refusing to fund anything other than fiber broadband, though satellite services like SpaceX’s Starlink and wireless carriers can expand coverage at lower cost. A Starlink terminal costs about $600 per home. Extending 5G to rural communities costs a couple thousand dollars per connection. Building out fiber runs into the tens of thousands.

Fiber networks will require more permits, which delay construction. But fiber will require more union labor to build. Commerce wants grant recipients to pay union-scale wages and not oppose union organizing.

The Administration has also stipulated hiring preferences for “underrepresented” groups, including “aging individuals,” prisoners, racial, religious and ethnic minorities, “Indigenous and Native American persons,” “LGBTQI+ persons,” and “persons otherwise adversely affected by persistent poverty or inequality.”

Good luck trying to find “underrepresented” hard-hats in Montana. An official overseeing Montana’s program told Congress last month that the Administration has given “conflicting or even new and changed guidance after submitting our plans” and is “slowing states down and second-guessing good-faith efforts.”

The official added that “we have yet to receive clarity on permitting, a foundational component of broadband deployment.” The government system that states are required to use for federal permits, she noted, “will not be available for another 6 to 8 months to evaluate each project’s environmental and historic preservation effects.”

Then there’s this Catch-22. The Biden National Environmental Policy Act guidance requires companies that receive federal funds to consider alternative plans with smaller environmental impact. But the program’s rules disfavor such alternatives as satellites and home 5G.

States must also identify future climate risks and “how the proposed plan will avoid and/or mitigate” them. Broadband providers already safeguard their systems against natural disasters in part with redundant networks, so the extraneous mandates will merely make building more expensive.

Cox Communications last week sued Rhode Island over the state’s plan to “build taxpayer-subsidized and duplicative high-speed broadband internet in affluent areas of Rhode Island like the Breakers Mansion in Newport and affluent areas of Westerly,” where Taylor Swift owns a $17 million vacation home. Cox says there are better ways to spend taxpayer dollars. According to the Federal Communications Commission, 99.97% of U.S. households already have access to high-speed internet.

The broadband non-rollout is a classic of modern progressive government. Authorize money for a cause that private industry could do better, but then botch the execution with identity politics and union favoritism...

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/kamala-h...nion_lead_pos1

Chase Oliver for president!

[Yssup Rider]

Didn’t we already have a thread about this?

[Lucas McCain]

For the OP's reading pleasure.

https://eccie.net/showthread.php?t=3001862

[Tiny]

Apologies to The Waco Kid. I was on sabbatical when you posted, or maybe I had a pre-senior moment. Anyway great minds think alike. We can’t afford wasteful spending.

And thank you McCain and Yssup for steering me to the Waco Kid’s excellent thread, where the eccie brain trust opines on this matter.

I’d appreciate any criticism of my cost estimate of $1.1 million per household for this program. The math is right but my assumptions may not be.

[The_Waco_Kid]

Originally Posted by Yssup Rider

Didn’t we already have a thread about this?

Originally Posted by Lucas McCain

For the OP's reading pleasure.

https://eccie.net/showthread.php?t=3001862

indeed i did start a thread on this topic

Originally Posted by Tiny

Apologies to The Waco Kid. I was on sabbatical when you posted, or maybe I had a pre-senior moment. Anyway great minds think alike. We can’t afford wasteful spending.

And thank you McCain and Yssup for steering me to the Waco Kid’s excellent thread, where the eccie brain trust opines on this matter.

I’d appreciate any criticism of my cost estimate of $1.1 million per household for this program. The math is right but my assumptions may not be.

and in my thread the usual suspects claimed .. "the project is on track". yeah to do nothing any time soon and as i predicted will be a massive waste of funds due to the usual Government over regulation and red tape. Tiny, expect the usual Biden Harris fanboys to offer up platitudes galore for the "Internet Czar Harris".


bahahhahaaa

[Tiny]

Originally Posted by The_Waco_Kid

indeed i did start a thread on this topic





and in my thread the usual suspects claimed .. "the project is on track". yeah to do nothing any time soon and as i predicted will be a massive waste of funds due to the usual Government over regulation and red tape. Tiny, expect the usual Biden Harris fanboys to offer up platitudes galore for the "Internet Czar Harris".


bahahhahaaa

Kamala Harris may have good experience as a prosecutor, politician and senator, but would she effectively and efficiently get things done, as the chief executive of the United States? Her history would argue against that.

We need a man like Calvin Coolidge again.

[biomed1]

Duplicate Threads Merged.

[The_Waco_Kid]

Originally Posted by biomed1

Duplicate Threads Merged.

TWK and Tiny thank you Sir!