Doc NTIA lead nominee criticizes "woke" and "socialist" fiber broadband subsidy
51 comments
·February 28, 2025efnx
nitwit005
It's possible, but more likely it's the issue of wireless providers who have tried to make dubious claims about speeds and coverage to claim government funds: https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2023-02-16/fcc-invest...
esseph
I think you're just throwing a link out without understanding the topic in the title.
It's talking about opening up scoring system for BEAD to let the best technology for the market win based on features and costs.
Right now it is heavily weighted for fiber, and is done in a way that wouldn't require 25% matching funds for something like the middle of Wyoming, Montana, Alaska, etc.
But if you want to fiber up, say, Alaska - you're going to need a lot more money than $45Bn for just /that/ state alone. That's a lot of tax dollars better spent elsewhere when other sufficient technologies exist.
nitwit005
And a more "industry friendly" government is going to let the wireless companies provide crappy service, lie about it, and take the funds.
jamal-kumar
Honestly she could have done better putting it in those terms rather than attacking it the way she did but you nailed it. It's really expensive to cover large and disparate geographic areas with that kind of thing. There's definitely examples of smaller companies emerging and wiring up their entire rural towns with fibre optic, although the one I'm most aware of kind of foundered when the town ended up selling it to the big phone company after they couldn't pay something like 18 million in debt which gives an idea of scale and challenges for getting lasers to homes in just one town [1]. And on the other hand I've lived in much smaller third world countries where you can get FTTH pretty much everywhere even in small towns, mostly doable because the area to cover is just super small.
[1] https://www.thealbertan.com/olds-news/town-of-olds-selling-i...
walrus01
WISPA in particular has been strongly anti-fiber and lobbying that things like 50 x 10 Mbps on a contended-access wireless point to multipoint system is good enough.
beeflet
I would be more willing to accept that state of affairs if StarLink had better competition.
protocolture
I have been seeing lots of seppostani ISP people railing against BEAD.
But like, if I had to choose between a keynesianish narrow targeting of government funds to reward local ISP's, and the Australian style big government telco monopoly it would be no contest.
I think BEAD opponents need to think strategically. If they get rid of BEAD, and fail to meet broadband demand, what will the next democrat government do? Assuming there is one.
rhinoceraptor
I guess "equity", meaning running fiber to rural areas, even if they usually lean red, means "woke"?
Or is it that "woke" now just means any internet infrastructure that isn't Starlink?
rayiner
No, that’s not what it means: https://www.thefp.com/p/inside-biden-broadband-boondoggle-tr...
> In addition, states had to prove that they promoted participation from minority-owned businesses, women-owned businesses, and “other socially or economically disadvantaged individual-owned businesses.” They also had to create a Five-Year Action Plan that required collaborating with unions and “underrepresented communities,” including prisoners, LGBTQI+ individuals, women, and people of color.
If you support incorporating race and identity group preferences into government infrastructure projects, just own that instead of obfuscating.
dashundchen
Yes, if you are funding a program to get broadband to underserved areas, including rural and low income populations, it's reasonable to require a plan for outreach so that those groups know they can connect. Why have a program if people don't know about it?
They didn't come up with program out of nowhere, it's been well studied those groups had less connectivity and broadband availability.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10688393/
I'm not sure what your point is here besides that you dislike inclusion. The point of the program is to level the playing field by offering broadband where it might not normally have been profitable to expand.
Outreach shouldn't slow anyone down. The cost of doing some marketing and data analysis is probably miniscule compared to the actual infrastructure build out.
defen
> it's reasonable to require a plan for outreach so that those groups know they can connect. Why have a program if people don't know about it?
It's not about outreach to those groups so they can connect to low-cost internet, it's about who builds out the network itself.
hooverd
Very little proof that woke did this vs. Carr just saying so. it sounds like most holdup was at the state level.
rayiner
Building infrastructure in this country is already nearly impossible, without adding another whole dimension of things that can be used to bog down and litigate projects to death.
I’ve got 10-gig fiber to my house and drive an SUV, I don’t care. The people who should be most upset about this stuff are the folks who want government to facilitate building fiber, trains, etc.
l1bt4rds
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threeseed
Yes she specifically called out the fact that they were favouring fiber.
The act defines an "underserved area" as having less than 100/20 speeds.
Which Starlink doesn't meet: https://www.starlink.com/legal/documents/DOC-1400-28829-70
cozzyd
Any ISP leader too timid to do a salute is too woke
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duxup
"woke" has no meaning these days. It's just a placeholder for "I don't like it".
UltraSane
No, it is a tool for demagogues to demonize things they oppose.
imoverclocked
It's a dog whistle for followers of those same demagogues.
null
hooverd
people say woke with a hard-r nowadays
walrus01
"woke" and "socialist" is everything to the left of hunting the homeless for sport, these days.
OccamsMirror
I think you mean hunting them for biodiesel, ala the Butterfly Revolution?
rayiner
In practice, it means injecting race and identity group preferences and requirements into a program, which is what Biden did: https://www.thefp.com/p/inside-biden-broadband-boondoggle-tr...
RangerScience
Would that then mean that the historical practice of red-lining is a “woke” practice, since it injected race and identity preferences into a program?
rayiner
“Woke” is where you discriminate against people in the present who did nothing wrong as payback for the actions of people in the past who are dead.
yesbut
Sounds like these people are only interested in awaking the spectre haunting thr US.
achierius
Critical support to Comrade Musk in his mission to destroy the West
mindslight
"King" Krasnov and Honored Court Jester Muskow.
kmeisthax
Fiber is woke now
pasttense01
Generally it's economic to install broadband in urban areas, but not in many rural areas--so the rural areas need to be subsidized--and rural areas are the least likely to be woke and/or socialist.
protocolture
IIRC Fish Lake Township in the US with 900 residents was wired up before BEAD.
And WISPs can be good too, its just a matter of cowboy lottery.
scarab92
Why should rural areas be subsidised?
No one is making you chose to live there, plus you get cost of living savings from being there rather than in expensive urban real estate.
Also, Starlink isn’t all that much more expensive than fibre.
henglihong-js
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tbrownaw
> … all kinds of left-wing priorities on the program that just divert resources away from the overall goal of closing broadband gaps. This is going to make the program less cost effective, and it's going to undermine its goals.”
So it's complaints about the details rather than the general idea.
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Also, that title doesn't match the article title.
Kinda sounds like they want to be able to give more money to the muskrat through subsidies for starlink instead of focusing on fibre (fibre would be a better investment), while also being able to charge whatever they want, while also “owning the libs”.