Speak for yourself.

My city is rolling out fiber.

I'm sure that there are examples of actually wasted money, but just putting it out there that planning is fucking important. There have been several high profile projects, like Texas high speed rail, where planning was the hard part and the project got canceled as they were ready to break ground because "there was no progress". Cue* Republicans "the government does nothing" after they stopped anything from happening. Infrastructure cannot operate on election cycle timelines.

Digging in the ground and integrating with existing infrastructure isn't just a plug and play operation. Leases and liens need to be sorted out. Estimates of current and future demand needs to be sorted out so you don't install useless networks. Fiber isn't that heavy, but "can the existing conduits under bridges/roads/etc support it and/or do they have room to without a complete replacement" isn't a trivial question for backbone lines.

Winging it just causes more problems as you find things you didn't anticipate and cause delays while having to continue paying contracts so work can resume once the delay is cleared. If you don't, the contractor is on to their next job and unavailable for an effectively random amount of time. While everyone is mad at you that "no work is being done".

It could be done faster, but it would cost more. Because planning is really important to keep multi-million/billion dollar projects accountable and on track.

My grandparents lived in rural OK and had dial-up until 2018 when they finally were able to get a 2mbps DSL line. It really wasn’t much faster than the dial-up.

Years ago my neighborhood was wired for fiber, well all except for 24 of our houses because it wasn't profitable, copper still came on our side though... Now that's been turned off so the 24 of us have the option of cable or wireless.

Having to stare at a coil of fiber across the street on the end of the pole (not even buried fiber, its on the damn poles) while I enjoy overpaying for 48Mbps... so fast it must be high speed (seriously debated a wireless link to the house across the street but I'm a stickler for the rules).

Do you have any idea what you're talking about? No.

It doesn't matter what rural areas vote for. They're all gerrymandered to shit just like the cities are.

The political elite on both sides have a good chunk of us fighting each other instead of them. So, congrats on falling for the same bullshit.

Do you have any idea what you're talking about? No.

I’ve seen more than my share of “red” counties. They’re only gerrymandered when there’s an obvious threat to red state hegemony. Full of good people who fall for stupid lies every goddamn time despite the world of information available to them. The FoxNews miasma that hangs like suffocating humidity in every auto garage and bleak box store parking lot. The fist of Jesus in every lifted truck window.

Take your “both sides” bullshit to someone else.

"America First" is one of his biggest lies

So very glad I got to benefit from this 3 years ago, it is a true shame if it goes away. I get to be rural and work at a company in the city.

Most of this money was also "allocated" but not really spent. So at least to Bidens credit money wasn't thrown away, it just sat there not doing what it was supposed to do.

Republican (but lets be fair here, most) states basically just threw their hands up and left it up to the "experts" (or their friends in the cable/local phone monopoly) for planning BEAD funds. Really it's a failure of American politics and a case study on how baseline corrupt the average state is.

The only place that has actually gotten its shit together is, of all places, North Dakota, they have almost universal fiber access across the whole state, if you have power, you probably have fiber. All of contiguous America could have the same, only local politics stands in the way.

Utah has also built out locally owned open-access municipal fiber, despite the best attempts from the Comcast/CenturyLink lobby and state legislature to kill it; among other projects in WA, TN, IA.

What's an average Internet connection like in the USA? How many megs down?

I'm confused. The article is talking about "BEAD" which wasn't passed until 2021. You must be talking about a different program.

I'm in Wyoming and fiber started rolling out in multiple cities with multiple different providers in each city two years ago. They got to my house earlier this year so I now have a 2Gb/s connection.

There isn't a single county in this country that votes 100% in either direction. So saying that "All of whom voted for this." is objectively incorrect.

Why do you think the Democratic party, once well known as the party of the working class, no longer holds that distinction?

Who says it doesn't?

There's your answer.

Even in more urban areas …. My ex asked for help getting internet service in her new condo, and I found out the entire town has fiber, except her condo development. They have an exclusive contract with ComCast and she can’t do anything about it

Well, except for New York's Rockdale County which is the subject of a lawsuit recently in the news - fair enough.

I yield to the overwhelming logic that a vast oversimplification may not be 100% correct.

not as fast as some third world countries, but here we worship our soon to be hanging from a fuckin noose wealthy fucks, I will fight any billionaires one on one anytime

Heavily depends on where you live. I live near a big city on the east coast in a largely Blue state. I have 1 gig FiOS internet (up and down). In my area Comcast and Verizon compete for customers so our speeds here are alright. But there are plenty of areas in the US that have absolutely abysmal internet. Either because the area is rural so not much infrastructure has been built up or because the ISP in that area holds a monopoly on the market and doesn't have to increase speeds to keep their customers. I've heard horror stories of people being stuck with like sub 10mbps because there are just no other options.