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The Internet United States

Rural Areas To Get $759 Million in Grants for High-Speed Internet (apnews.com) 72

Posted by msmash from the moving-forward dept.
The Agriculture Department announced this week that it is making available $759 million in grants and loans to enable rural communities to access high-speed internet, part of the broader $65 billion push for high-speed connectivity from last year's infrastructure law. From a report: Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and White House senior adviser Mitch Landrieu unveiled the grants during a visit to North Carolina. There are 49 recipients in 24 states. One is North Carolina's AccessOn Networks, which will receive $17.5 million to provide broadband service to 100 businesses, 76 farms and 22 educational facilities in the state's Halifax and Warren counties. Both counties are rural and have predominantly Black populations.

"Rural America needs this," Vilsack said. "Rural America deserves this." He made the announcement in front of John Deere equipment, noting that rural areas tend to be where the electricity for cities is generated and where city dwellers and suburbanites go for vacations. The announcement and visit to North Carolina, a state with an open U.S. Senate seat, come as President Joe Biden and other top Democratic officials are trying to sell their achievements to voters before the Nov. 8 midterm elections. Landrieu, the infrastructure coordinator and former New Orleans mayor, told reporters on a Wednesday call that the Biden administration has already released $180 billion for various infrastructure projects.
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Rural Areas To Get $759 Million in Grants for High-Speed Internet More

Rural Areas To Get $759 Million in Grants for High-Speed Internet

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  • Wait, HOW much? (Score:3)

    by davide marney ( 231845 ) on Friday October 28, 2022 @01:11PM (#63006519) Journal

    "$17.5 million to provide broadband service to 100 businesses, 76 farms and 22 educational facilities"

    (Get's out calculator) that's $88,383 per organization!

    • Think how this will scale to the rest of the needy areas. It's mind boggling.

    • Yep, and that's how much your beloved cable company will charge to extend service a few miles out to each of those places.

      • History says it is how much the telcos will reduce their budget by in those areas. For example, the feds give a $1.5M grant, the companies reduce their contribution by $1.5M and the same net amount goes to an area's development. In theory it is an incentive to increase coverage, in practice it has been a corporate cost-saving measure well worth the lobbying cost.
    • Starlink is 600$ hardware + 110$/month.
      So that money would be enough for 66 YEARS of Starlink service per organization.

  • but but that's (Score:4, Funny)

    by layabout ( 1576461 ) on Friday October 28, 2022 @01:19PM (#63006539)
    socialism.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) *

      Granting franchise monopolies and pole swap rights on the public right-of-way is socialism.

      So to be accurate this is *more* socialism to fix problems caused by socialism.

      • Re:but but that's (Score:5, Insightful)

        by burtosis ( 1124179 ) on Friday October 28, 2022 @02:47PM (#63006813)

        Granting franchise monopolies and pole swap rights on the public right-of-way is socialism.

        So to be accurate this is *more* socialism to fix problems caused by socialism.

        Socialism is a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole. Never was the means of production nor the fruits of the labor the property of the workers and community, the opposite, an authoritarian capitalism puts one man, or sometimes a handful of them, in unilateral command of everything including any meager compensation for the paroles. Saying that’s not true capitalism is like saying no one has tried actual communism.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mjwx ( 966435 )

          Granting franchise monopolies and pole swap rights on the public right-of-way is socialism.

          So to be accurate this is *more* socialism to fix problems caused by socialism.

          Socialism is a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole. Never was the means of production nor the fruits of the labor the property of the workers and community, the opposite, an authoritarian capitalism puts one man, or sometimes a handful of them, in unilateral command of everything including any meager compensation for the paroles. Saying that’s not true capitalism is like saying no one has tried actual communism.

          Quite... Isn't granting a government enforced monopoly to a private corporation the opposite of socialism and communism. Under communism, the government owns the things it pays for (and most of the things it didn't). It does really seem the worst of both worlds.

          I can certainly see the need for government intervention for places where running services is unprofitable (I.E. rural communities, often doing a vital service like agriculture) but it seems foolhardy to just hand that money over to private indust

      • Granting franchise monopolies and pole swap rights on the public right-of-way is socialism.

        I'm guessing they didn't teach political systems where you went to school. Try googling what socialism is.

      • ... is socialism.

        Monopolies are not socialism, they are necessary evil due to the 'lumpiness' of resources and of their customers. Many times, they are a government invention so that capitalists are guaranteed a profit, removing the unpredictable costs imposed by market forces.

        ... *more* socialism ...

        Socialism is the government competing against privately-owned services: Which is forbidden in the USA so the government pays much money and hopes capitalists actually deliver the promise of capitalism, efficient supply. The USA is designed so the go

      • Granting franchise monopolies for cable companies has been illegal since 1992.

    • It's okay, they're elected representatives all voted against it. While campaigning for it.

  • Squeeze us, baby! (Score:3)

    by kackle ( 910159 ) on Friday October 28, 2022 @01:23PM (#63006543)
    If the local economies don't support the people there, maybe these localities shouldn't exist? We have ghost towns in the US for a reason, an economic one.

    • A country with a handful of large cities and a basket full of medium cities with a largely desolate interior that would cease to exist as a nation and state within 45 minutes of WWIII.

    • Re:Squeeze us, baby! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by bugs2squash ( 1132591 ) on Friday October 28, 2022 @01:28PM (#63006563)
      Yes, but we still want to eat food

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
        Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Rural broadband isn't a necessity, and even if it becomes one, we can target subsidies better than "Anyone who lives in the middle of nowhere gets their stuff paid for."

          It's as much of a necessity as rural electricity and rural telephone. But you probably would have said those weren't necessities either at the time when the government was subsidizing the infrastructure. The plan isn't to "pay for the farmers' stuff". It's to pay for the infrastructure so the farmers (and other rural dwellers) have an oppor

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by kackle ( 910159 )
            Satellite Internet service is an existing option.

            • Yes, but not a good one. Geosync satellites (ViaSat, HughesNet) have latency so bad they're unusable for interactive sessions. Their altitude is about 36000 km. That's 120ms. It takes two hops (up and down) to get a packet to the ground station. It takes another two hops to get a response back. That's nearly half a second latency on a ping response, and we haven't even gotten to the Internet yet! Absolutely nothing can be done to reduce that latency either, short of discovering an entire new branch of su

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by kackle ( 910159 )
        They can charge more for their food to pay for their non-satellite Internet, can't they?

    • I think the problem is that there are industries, like farming, that are low density by nature. A few farmers and their support structure (fuel, clothes, power, work related supplies) doesn't approach city-level density.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by kackle ( 910159 )
        Sure, but why can't they charge more for their food to pay for their own non-satellite Internet service? And the satellite service isn't that expensive. Subsidies can always be abused, whereas supply and demand seems to work here.

        • Subsidies can definitely be abused. I seem to recall that there were subsidies in the past that didn't really change the situation. The money tends to just evaporate.

          It's a tough situation. I'm not an economist, but I suspect that the price of food is somewhat limited by competition. Moreover, access to the internet tends to be an area monopoly (although more alternates are becoming available) and the price of laying cable is prohibitive. I don't know what the answer is.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by kackle ( 910159 )

            I'm not an economist, but I suspect that the price of food is somewhat limited by competition

            So be it.

            Moreover, access to the internet tends to be an area monopoly (although more alternates are becoming available) and the price of laying cable is prohibitive.

            Today's satellite Internet service seems to be a reasonable option.

            • I'm not an economist, but I suspect that the price of food is somewhat limited by competition

              So be it.

              Moreover, access to the internet tends to be an area monopoly (although more alternates are becoming available) and the price of laying cable is prohibitive.

              I'll need to look into that. My previous understanding was that satellite internet was downlink only, with the uplink provided by dialup. I'm sure it's gotten better since then, but I am unfamiliar with current solutions. As a photographer, uplink speed, to get my content to websites, is very important.

              My long term goal is to live in the areas where I take photos. The problem has traditionally been that the internet sucks.
              Today's satellite Internet service seems to be a reasonable option.

    • Think about where your food comes from...acres and acres of fields dotted by small homesteads and small towns.

      Now think about where your food will come from if those poor people in "flyover country" did not work on those farms.

      Perhaps your response might be..."They can commute to their work in the fields."

      And perhaps your food magically appears on the grocery store shelf?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by kackle ( 910159 )
        Farm land is on all sides of me. Our town was a natural resource hub for a nearby large city (which otherwise would not exist) starting in the 1800s. Satellite Internet service already exists for rural areas. History teaches us that such subsidies will be stolen/wasted. Supply and demand works in this situation.

  • Need to fix that headline! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Peter in Rain City ( 3425417 ) on Friday October 28, 2022 @01:27PM (#63006561)
    "Private Oligopoly ISPs To Get $759 Million in Grants for Pretending to Provide High-Speed Internet to Rural Areas"
  • During the start of the pandemic, some people were criticizing the lack of Internet infrastructure in rural America. Now some people are criticizing connecting rural America to the Net. Danged if you do, danged if you don't. Either way, as a rural American myself with pretty good net access, I've noticed wealthier people moved from the suburbs to rural America because they can work from home on some acreage. Only to find out quickly that satellite Internet is terrible and there is no alternative. Only
    • I get 20Mbit download/1 Mbit upload off of a bonded ADSL pair running over copper phone line. What more do you want? The bigger problem is the electricity keeps going out, and it take the network 20 minutes to come back up after the power is restored. So I need a generator AND satellite internet!
    • But those hicks in the sticks in general vote Repub. If they want Broadband they should pay what the invisible hand of the market determines what is the correct rate for it.

  • I guess the red states weren't getting enough porn (Score:3)

    by Locke2005 ( 849178 ) on Friday October 28, 2022 @01:42PM (#63006603)
    That'll keep 'em busy!

  • easy to hit the 25/3 fcc level with old copper

  • My local electric coop is using 6.5 million in grants to build out gigabit fiber to something like 5500 homes and businesses. Mine got hooked up last week and they're maybe a third done with the whole project. Wonder why this one is so much more expensive.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by splutty ( 43475 )

      Your coop wants people connected. US ISPs only want the easiest and cheapest (to connect) people connected.

      There's your main difference.

  • woo (Score:3, Interesting)

    by nomadic ( 141991 ) <nomadicworld@ g m a i l . com> on Friday October 28, 2022 @01:55PM (#63006633) Homepage

    Great, now aggrieved rural whites will be able to freebase right-wing Q nonsense!

  • I'm against giving it to corporations, if that's what's happening. The article wasn't clear and I didn't go digging. It should only be used for municipal ISPs.

  • Let me point out, this isn't to help rural communities who have poverty problems. this is the information highway enablement for remote workers to come to your rural community and buy up the land and gentrify it, pricing out the locals from their own communities and locking up their natural resources behind gates.

    exploitation never ends.

  • Like EVERY OTHER TIME there have ever been payouts like this, the service promised never materializes.

    And some exec pulls a big fat bonus check.

  • The US government has given plenty of money to ISPs over the years supposedly for building internet infrastructure. But there has basically never been strings attached to that money to ensure it is actually used to build the infrastructure its meant to be used for. Will this money actually have the strings attached to make sure its used for its intended purpose?

    • AT&T was paid to run fiber down my rural road 15 years ago. They were not paid to hook up any homes, most of which sit 500 ft off the road. No DSL service either, satellite only, $89 a month for 50 GB.

  • Today at the WaPo (won't bother with a link: if you have an account, you can find it, if not, you can't read it), Paul Waldman puts in an opinion column about how "We've been told a lie about rural America". Which, basically, is that Democrats hate it and sneer at it, only Republicans have their backs.

    But it's Democrats, over and over, that try to spend as much as possible on infrastructure and opportunities in the counties that never vote for them. And Republicans that oppose it, but take credit for the

  • If it goes to cutting the cost of 'broadband' from current monopolies, this is $ being wasted. Why? Because they will simply jack their prices higher and higher.
    What is needed is to put in fiber into the small towns, with them owning it. Then the home owner pays say $20-40/month, business pays $100/month to be connected to the LOCAL COMMUNITY. Then have others provide various service on the fiber. Ideally, there will be 2 or more that provide Internet for each of these set-ups.
    For individuals farms, or

  • What could go wrong?

  • How many times...?

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