Government remains the all-time, undisputed champion – of pointless expenditures of our money.
Since the inception of the Internet, government has attempted to pretend it can be an Internet Service Provider (ISP).
Since the inception of the Internet, we have accumulated mountains of evidence that government is awful at pretending to be an Internet Service Provider (ISP).
“For decades, local governments have made promises of faster and cheaper broadband networks. Unfortunately, these municipal networks often don’t deliver or fail, leaving taxpayers to foot the bill. Explore the map to learn about the massive debt, waste and broken promises left behind by these failed government networks.”
Undaunted by the avalanche of failures and facts, government has time and again spent ever-increasing amounts of money on pretending to be an ISP. Addled President Joe Biden’s is the biggest money dump to date:
“In November 2021, President Biden signed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act into law and provided $65 billion for broadband.”
We have allegedly been wasting these hundreds of billions of dollars on government broadband to “connect the unconnected” – located almost entirely in America’s hinterlands.
Connecting the Unconnected in Rural America
But WAY back in March 2015, President Barack Obama – two whole presidents ago – proudly proclaimed:
98% of Americans Have Access to High-Speed Wireless Internet
I would imagine that nearly a decade of our rapid, omni-directional, technological advances – has gone a long way to reducing even that minuscule 2% figure. Today, for all practical purposes, just about every American is wirelessly connected to the Web.
Our Fourth Generation (4G) wireless networks allow us to seamlessly stream high-definition (HD) movies – far-and-away the most bandwidth-intensive thing most Americans do.
And being implemented even as I type – is 5G.
How Much Faster is 5G Than 4G, Really?:
“It’s faster. A LOT faster. How much faster? Let’s talk about how fast fully-functioning 5G is expected to be….
“Right now, most of the connected world is used to 4G. And 4G is great. Our download speeds are faster than they’ve ever been before. Latency is largely acceptable and more than tolerable for most tasks and applications.
“The advent of 4G was itself a game changer in many ways. But when put up against the expected average speeds of 5G, 4G wains in comparison.
“Take the nation’s fastest network, Verizon. It currently averages 4G speeds of 53.3 Mbps. But Verizon’s average 5G speeds will be between 713 Mbps and 1.07 Gbps! That’s well over 10 times faster! AT&T and T-Mobile are expected to have a similar jump.”
And then there’s satellite Internet.
How Satellites Expand High Speed Internet to Rural Areas
Satellite Internet also works extraordinarily well. As we’ve seen demonstrated in Ukraine – via Elon Musk’s charity work.
Ukrainian Soldier Says Elon Musk’s Starlink ‘Changed the War’ with Russia
So nigh every American has wireless access to the Internet. And it is already blindingly fast – and getting orders-of-magnitude faster.
So government should absolutely STOP pretending to be an ISP. Let the wireless and satellite companies handle it.
And if government insists on paying for people to connect to the Internet? Just pay for their wireless connections. You know, since everyone already has wireless access.
It would be WAY less expensive than the hundreds of billions of government dollars we’ve already wasted.
Except government isn’t doing that. Because government remains steadfastly stupid.
Wired broadband is many-times-more-expensive than wireless. Because you have to dig trenches in the ground – and then bury cable or fiber in them. And run those buried lines – to each and every individual place you want to have a wired Internet connection.
In case you haven’t noticed – the United States is a VERY large place. 3.8 million square miles. If your objective is to connect the very few, random, unconnected rural Americans – wired is the absolute dumbest way to do it.
Except here’s a recent email-headline quote from the government-friendly Internet-sector website Broadband Breakfast:
“The way you close the digital divide is you build fiber to every single rural home.”
No. That is the DUMBEST way to connect every single rural home.
So of course that’s exactly what government is doing.
NTIA Opens Floodgates for $45 Billion in Broadband Funding:
“The U.S. Department of Commerce (DoC) opened applications for $45 billion in broadband funding, kicking off a campaign from President Joe Biden to deliver ‘Internet for All.’
“Fiber was front and center in funding guidelines released by the DoC’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), with the agency noting priority will be given to projects which use end-to-end fiber architecture.”
So the government is yet again wasting tens of billions of dollars. In the slowest, stupidest way possible.
To dumbly, redundantly do – what the private sector already did at least eight years ago.
Because if government didn’t waste our time and money – it wouldn’t be government.