Still no justification for this money to be funneled to felon musk.
mctoasterson@reddthat.com 1 day ago
To be fair, this federal program was a cluster eff since they started it in about 2010. It passed a bunch of grant money through to the states, which all did different “things” with it. Most held semi-public meetings and planning sessions for 5-10 years or wrote detailed planning documents but never delivered any physical infrastructure (actual results to the residents).
forrgott@lemmy.sdf.org 1 day ago
Buelldozer@lemmy.today 1 day ago
I’m confused. The article is talking about “BEAD” which wasn’t passed until 2021. You must be talking about a different program.
madcaesar@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
Yea he is, but it’s probably the same telecom handout bullshit like the other program.
Trump is a piece of shit, but every program he cuts is not necessarily wrong. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
turmacar@lemmy.world 1 day ago
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”. Queue 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. Fibre isn’t that heavy, but “can the existing conduits under bridges 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.
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.
Zorque@lemmy.world 1 day ago
*Cue
SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Speak for yourself.
My city is rolling out fiber.
Buelldozer@lemmy.today 1 day ago
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.
BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world 1 day ago
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.
Landless2029@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Some states / towns hired ISPs who just pocketed the money with no consequences. Some towns even got fed up with no progress and started their own ISPs only to get sued by said corrupt ISP. Looking at you Verizon FiOS.