cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/994750
Archived version: https://archive.ph/WtjmL
Archived version: https://web.archive.org/web/20230803083943/https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/08/internet-providers-that-won-fcc-grants-try-to-escape-broadband-commitments/
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A group calling itself the “Coalition of RDOF Winners” has been meeting with FCC officials about their requests for more money or an amnesty window, according to several filings submitted to the commission.
A different group of ISPs urged the FCC to reject the request, saying that telcos that win grants by pledging to build networks at a low cost are “gaming” the system by seeking more money afterward.
There appear to be at least two members: Arkansas-based wireless broadband provider Aristotle Unified Communications and a Texas ISP called TekWav both joined the meetings at which the coalition asked the FCC for more money or an amnesty window.
In late 2020, the FCC tentatively awarded $9.2 billion over 10 years to 180 Internet providers that agreed to deploy broadband to over 5.2 million unserved homes and businesses.
But after seeing evidence that the program was mismanaged under former Chairman Ajit Pai, the current FCC re-evaluated the grants and authorized payments of $6 billion to a smaller group of ISPs.
I’m a bot and I’m open source!
So basically they are once again scamming the tax payers of money. Pull their funding and then sue them into bankruptcy.
I think the WTA (group representing other rural providers) has a point. Likely several of the ISPs represented by the RDOF did underbid, so now they are asking for the amount of money it would really take to finish the work they bid on. Except now with rising inflation it gives them better cover to ask for more money, they still should be held accountable or at least forced to give back all the money.
More of the same, they’ve been doing this literally for decades and have stolen many hundreds of billions of dollars from the public. By some estimates it is now over half a trillion.
I don’t understand. If I give somebody money in exchange for a service, and they don’t provide that service, isn’t that fraud? How are these companies not being held accountable by the government?
Previous head of the FCC mismanaged the whole thing.
They pay “second salary” to the politicians for protection.
They’re claiming that construction costs raised substantially and unpredictably and due to that can no longer fulfill their obligations.
I caught two important points on that argument though.
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The original funding was granted through auction, which incentivised ISPs to underbid what costs would have been even under the best circumstances.
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A separate coalition of ISPs who did not win claim that these market increases were not as unpredictable as claimed, and in fact were factored in by the more responsible participants in the auction:
The Coalition of RDOF Winners said these cost increases “could never have been anticipated by the Commission and RDOF winners prior to the auction.” But the WTA said that isn’t true and that its own telco members “and other responsible bidders factored these likely future cost increases into their Auction 904 bid strategies, and stopped bidding when the bid prices became so unreasonably low that projects were no longer financially feasible or sustainable.”
I’m inclined to believe the WTA. The auction occurred in October 2020, well into COVID when its volatile impact on supply chains and the like was apparent, which I was thinking might have been the crux of the winners’ argument.
No sympathy here for the winners, they made a deliberately reckless gamble and these are the consequences. But also it was a dumb way to grant this funding to begin with.
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This has happened before and it will keep happening unless these corporations are held accountable.
satellites are treading on their dreams. nobody wants to invest in rural grounded infrastructure which is already obsolete against reusable rockets with decks of flatpacked comm beacons. higher ground wins.
