Townhall-
Early on in his Oval Office tenure, President Joe Biden tasked Vice President Kamala Harris with overseeing a broadband internet program. Her job was to get broadband internet to every American across the country at a cost of $42 billion.
In September, Republican Senator John Thune exposed the program hadn’t connected a single household.
Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr explained more. more
Quite so. Verizon, which there is no Verizon here, put in hundreds of miles of fiber, no doubt paid by the taxpayer, in rural MO.
Verizon sent out mailings, “YOU can get a bag of dogshit for ONLY 160 dollars a MONTH!”
No one, and I mean NO ONE, signed up to get a bag of super special dogshit for 160 dollars a month.
Verizon sold it, and it all sits vacant of 0s and 1s.
everybody involved in this should be charge with embezzlement at the very least and that includes Jackass Joe! In a fair world that funeral could be on trial until the old bastard falls off his perch and hits the bottom of the birdcage!
Edit: In a fair world that fuker could be on trial until the old bastard falls off his perch and hits the bottom of the birdcage!
I don’t know who bought it. Not even White River has touched it.
White River has their own utility easements which don’t touch the wireline easements.
Well now hold on. There’s a perfectly logical reason for this. They ran this through the old GSA contract routine and selected the lowest bidder. In free and fair competition. Star Link won the contract. You know, our new conservative pal Elon. Back then he hadn’t gone full MAGA. But after the first assassination attempt he did. The feds illegally canceled the contract and resubmitted the solicitation and awarded to some outfit at twice the price. And they still haven’t delivered. What I’ve typed here is easily verifiable. Bidonomics 101.
Verizon wouldn’t, by far, be the lowest bidder.
The point was to infiltrate the market. Kickbacks for Verizon and a thirsty market. It didn’t happen. Just like BACCSI was an unmitigated failure, except for the receivers of the defunct gear, which happened to be Bell Atlantic… what became Verizon.
You buy a truck, gear, and a poorly trained technician for about 125,000 dollars. You go bankrupt, and sell your own shit back to yourself for 5000 dollars. You get paid for the loss of the capital gear, the truck, and the technician, and buy it all back on pennies on the dollar.
And it’s not just the truck, and the clown. It’s the entire business. Millions of dollars. Billions when you look at CLECs, failed “competitors”, and supposedly the engineering arm.
In rural MS we had heard for years that fiber optic internet was coming. At one point AT&T actually installed underground cabling along major routes but did no home connections. Then, about two years ago local power companies started promoting SPARC and within a few months the cables were strung and we had 300 mbps broadband and VOIP telephone service for $84 per month vs the $250 we had been paying for satellite internet and AT&T landline phone.
This wasn’t Biden’s doing, but where the program came from I don’t know. Originated in the MS public service commission.
My sister lives in a small rural town about 12 miles from me.
About 25 years ago the government gave grants to have Fiber Optic cable run for Internet to rural communities. The telephone company in her area took advantage of the grant and tore up a lot of property to lay Fiber Optics.
To this day those fiber optic lines lay unused.
Seven years ago they installed fiber at both ends of the one mile road where I live. I contacted AT&T and asked them when I could expect the cable to be extended along the road and was was told that there was a four year plan. I’m still waiting!
Frontier brought in a fiber line to the local grade school.
It stopped at the sidewalk because our schools already had fiber lines from different company. They dug trenches and buried the line for 3 miles which was never hooked up
I think the biggest problem is finding an HONEST company with the resources and knowledge to get it done. Where I live, OEC (Okla. electric cooperative) realized they owned the poles and already had the equipment to get the job done and took it upon themselves to do it. We are now getting excellent (up to gig speeds) broadband service in rural areas at reasonable prices.
OldCoot
“I think the biggest problem is finding an HONEST company”
Boy that’s for sure, Frontier and their ‘bundles’ is one of the biggest ripoffs since Bell invented the phone