Will it? Will it really?
this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2026
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No it won’t.
It’s Elon, of course it’s a scam.
What's the TLDW? The clickbait headline prevents me from being able to watch it.
BEAD is short for Broadband Equity Access and Deployment and it allocated over $42 billion to build high speed internet in every state.The vast majority of American households were going to be connected with the fastest, best, most future proof technology.That's fiber broadband.And that would last at least for a generation.
Well, the Trump administration said every technology could be considered a priority broadband technology.They called this "technology neutral," but it was actually just a polite way of saying whatever is cheapest.
If you talk to some of the state broadband officers, and I've talked to a lot of them, the technology neutrality radically changed the money that went to satellite as opposed to went to fiber.Starlink was the biggest winner.They got 476,000 locations, or about $770 million of wins. So it was this huge change where Starlink now was a really core player, the biggest actually player in all of the providers.
Basically rural communities screwed out of getting fiber internet due to political corruption
It's elons earlier model. A black hole for taxpayer funds to set public good back indefinitely. His audition was high speed rail.
This country needs universal 10 gigabit. It'd be cheaper that way and more reliable, future proofed, etc.
JFC. And it's the rural folk who have no other choice than to support this bullshit. Just one more reason why an ISP connection should be a utility and not private enterprise.
I've been skeptical about and abstaining from upvoting More Perfect Union for a long time because it's difficult for such an organization to pop up at large scale without somebody pulling strings, but they seem pretty cool I guess. Founded by a Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign team manager, funded without any corporate or union donors.
No union donors sounds sketch
It sort of makes sense, though. For example, a media company which gets funded by logger or cattlemen unions might have biased opinions on deforestation.
Guess what happens to the logging profession if there are no forests....
Everyone is biased, but unions not being involved here is a huge red flag.
Eh, I think the point is, you don’t want to be beholden to any one large donor or industry. That way you can cover what small donors prefer aka the populace.
Union members can still donate individually, and I think that makes the most sense. The union should serve its members, but they shouldn’t donate to causes with money in my opinion. Encourage and recruit folks to show up for events and the like, yes, but keep union dues for union activities protecting labor, not lobbying news organizations to cover this or that story with financial incentive.
I'm shocked! Shocked!
Well, not that shocked...
Did anyone ever follow up on all those white house accounts they switched to starlink and then followed by all those password leaks linked to Russian ip addresses.
Is anyone actually shocked by any of this? Anyone with a functional brain and eyes could see this coming miles away... Give me a break. 🙄
Community fibre is the only solution to this.
I would earnestly like to hear how this is a solution.
As i see it from the most realistic standpoint, given that somebody has to install and maintain it there simply isn't enough real-world interest in going beyond the current mega corp investment structure we have now. Tell me which local elected council will earmark tens of thousands for locals to dig into the ground and install infrastructure like that and which locals are actually likely to do it, and do it well.
While I agree in principle, I just don't see it actually happening.
Both of the cities where I live have done it. Seperately too. It's two cities that grew together but both operate independently, and have seperate systems.
We just got fiber installed and I made the switch. Faster and cheaper, and it's on my water/electric bill.
First, the incumbent cell/broadband companies were given huge grants to have done this decades ago.
It is completely fair to criticize Musk's breakeven strategy on political manipulation funding.