BEAD funds are more or less administered by the state, and nothing is fundementally stopping them from doing the right thing and preferring local bids.
It’s entirely possible too, look at North Dakota, it has near 100% fiber coverage for the entire state, because the same model that brought electrification to them brought them fiber. In Utah and surrounding states there are municipal networks building out to member cities.
The real threat is the states capitulating to the incumbent providers like Comcast – but at least it’s a State level issue instead of being totally a given at the federal level.
drmoose@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Youre conflating 2 different issues here.
When it comes to technology of fiber vs low orbit satellites fiber will always win in every circumstance that isn’t a battle field or an ocean. It’s one of those technologies that we really nailed. Combined with cell towers we can tap ourselves on the back and say “yay we solved internet” very convincingly.
There’s literally nothing in current practical physics that can match this latency and bandwidth and cost ration. Just try to do napkin math of how many low orbit satellites we’d need to cover today’s bandwidth and latency requirements and we will literally never need less.
Now whether corruption has a role here sure - but you sure your trusting SpaceX more when its literally on the news right now for bait and switching the pause feature. There’s no basis of thinking that Starlink would somehow be less corrupt. In fact, it seems like hiding corruption here would be much easier for starlink with feature changes and priority lanes than literal “cable is here or cable is not here”.
brown567@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Isn’t fiber also winning on battlefields now because it’s resistant to jamming?