June 26 (Reuters) - U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday plans to lay out how a $42 billion investment in expanding internet access will be divvied up among the nation’s 50 states, in an effort to give all Americans access to high-speed broadband by 2030.
The move will kick off the second leg of Biden’s tour highlighting how legislation passed by Congress during the first half of his term will affect average Americans, as his reelection bid gears up.
"We have an historic opportunity here to make a real difference in people’s lives and making sure that we deliver on that potential is what we’re about every day and to make sure that people feel that at their kitchen table, in their communities, in their backyards,” White House chief of staff Jeff Zients said.
Zients compared the broadband effort to President Franklin Roosevelt’s efforts in 1936 to bring electricity to rural America. The administration estimates there are some 8.5 million locations in the U.S. that lack access to broadband connections.
Meaningless, unless we nationalize it.
The last time we invested in high speed Internet, ISPs just pocketed it
My thoughts exactly. If sufficient protections aren’t in place for this, it’s a bad spend just like those early 90’s telecommunications bills. Good reading on the subject.
I work for a small ISP and regularly talk to other small ISPs. We fight hard for this grant money, and what we do get goes into expanding fiber coverage. The gov’t is getting wiser to the big boys pocketing the money and while it still happens, there is less of it going on now.
But all that said, we would overall be better served if internet service was nationalized.
