Thats not what they said.

<I wish they’d bar companies that have failed to build out their rural service areas for more than a decade from accepting this money

If your ISP already took millions and didn't do what they said they would last time, that should disqualify them for another grant.

>because they cannot afford to lay dozens of miles of fiber in order to serve a hundred households? You want to keep us country folk in the dark ages? Because that’s what it sounds like.

Sounds like starlink may make more sense for your home and community than fiber. There is obviously a density threshold where laying fiber is not cost effective.

They never qualified it as taking millions and not building out; the only qualifier included was not building out for a decade, which includes my ISP.

My ISP has applied for these funds to bring fiber to my property. The original statement asserts they should not be allowed to receive funding. You seem to feel the same way, unless you genuinely believe that Starlink is in any way comparable to fiber. To be clear, it is not even close, and it never will be.

Rural citizens do not deserve to be left behind with speeds that are an order of magnitude slower than what everyone else has. We subsidize other utilities to reach everyone, and we have decided internet is critical to our society. It is time for everyone to pony up to fund access for everyone.

I can see that reading. I took it the other way given the larger context of concern about paying providers like starlink for service that will never be delivered.

I dont think starlink is the same as fiber, but I also dont think fiber is a human right or even relevant for most people given a reasonable alternative.

If you choose to live away from civilization then you’ve chosen to forgo the benefits of civilization. It’s ridiculous that we massively subsidize people who made the voluntary decision to live in a way that makes providing infrastructure for them cost prohibitive.

It’s a free country and you can live in a cave on top of a mountain if you want, but you shouldn’t get to demand that the government spend millions of dollars to run fiber up the mountain to your cave.

That is exactly what we do for power and phone, which are no more difficult to bring in than fiber. If you live in the city, you have made the choice to subsidize rural citizens.

We spend millions of dollars on shiny buildings, parks, and other infrastructure in the city. Is it ridiculous that rural taxpayers massively subsidize those things just because you have made the decision to live there?

It’s a free country and you can live in the city if you want, but you shouldn’t demand the government provide more services for you than it does for its rural citizens.

Or do you think people should be given fundamentally and grossly differently opportunities, based solely on where they happen to live? Remember, before you annswer: not everyone gets a choice where they were born or live.

Indeed. Fiber as a last mile solution for true rural areas is a non-starter. Source: I also built a small WISP and still maintain my own microwave service, and use Starlink as a backup.

Why? We managed to get power lines and phone lines to pretty much every house even in rural areas. Why should laying fiber be a "non-starter"?

Fiber can even run aerial on those same power lines. It doesn't have to be buried, which could help some of the more remote areas that already have power.

Exactly. We decided internet is as important as any other infrastructure service. It is only infeasible when people decide that rural citizens do not deserve it.

Indeed, it is hard for me not to read this thread in that light; I’m guessing those that seem to oppose subsidizing rural fiber either already have theirs or have simply given up all hope of it ever happening.

I live in a small EU country, and we had the same issues here.... we solved them by municipalities building fiber (usually when (re)building the roads, because it's cheaper then) and ISPs just renting it out. There's actually EU fuding for that and ISPs aren't forced to invest where they don't want to (but have to pay rent to the municipality).

Don’t bother. I used to live in a small EU country as well.

Even in the tiny rural village I lived in the last couple of years before I moved to the US, they did pretty much what you’re talking about (with the details being slightly different). Still, in true US fashion, this problem is deemed “uniquely American” and thus can’t benefit from the plethora of wheels invented overseas to solve this issue.

In my case, the fiber was paid for 50% by the municipality and 50% by a group of ISPs accessible for any ISP that would like to offer services, only realized if at least x amount of households would sign a promise they’d sign up for a contract with one of the ISPs for at least a year once infrastructure was completed.

This was easily accomplished because the ISPs offered a €30/month 1Gbps symmetrical connection in an area with shitty sub-10Mbps DSL that was at least twice that price and expensive asymmetrical DOCSIS at more than triple that price.

Here in the US, I’m in a rural area where the “best option” is 1Gbp down/20Mbp up at 4x that price.

Also, don’t underestimate how much people in the US hate taxes and governments spending money on useful things. My area has a volunteer firefighter department that cannot handle the entire area and has been trying to expand its tiny little footprint for the last decade.

Aside from the lack of equipment, the firefighters can’t even park at their fire station and instead have to park at a paid parking spot.

Just last month, there was a ballot initiative to raise the property taxes by $0.02, averaging to an annual property tax increase of a few dollars, so that they could fund the much-needed expansion of the fire station.

Of course, it failed. If the county were willing to fund fiber for the community here, there would be riots. Still, at the same time, everyone is always bitching about the internet and the lack of any cellular signal from any of the carriers.