Hey, Finally something Joe Biden & I agree on, It’s been awhile. Today Joe tweeted from his @POTUS account talking abut how he is going to bring affordable High-Speed internet to every American home. That’s part of their Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Sound great right?
The problem is we’ve already paid telecoms to get fiber optic connection to every home. I know you’re thinking but why am I stuck with slow expensive internet then? I’ll make you even madder knowing that as of the time of the story in 2006 we paid about $2000 a household for everyone to have 45 Mbps down and up. That the system would be open for a person to come along and offer a good deal & good service. Well we know the telecoms can’t have that. Especially the good service part. They wouldn’t have a customer left.
The fiber was supposed to go live in 2006. But instead the telecoms said they wouldn’t give anyone fiber if the FCC made them let others offer service on it. Yes they took hundreds of Billions of our tax dollars and instead of following through they broke their promises yet again. They must have been fined or punished in some way right? Well yeah we’ve given them hundreds of Billions more. That will show them. I currently sit in a south Texas town where the best internet I can get is ATT Uverse 12 Mbps down and less than 1 up. It costs me $50 a month. That’s $600 a year for subpar service that for my needs is well not enough.
Millions of Americans are in the same situation as me even though we’ve paid thousands for better service to be brought to us. You would think it would be a bigger deal but well our Government is owned by Billionaire donors like those from the telecoms. They have given lots of money to Biden, Pelosi, RNC, DNC, pretty much everyone. So even though they are about to be given Billions more I fully expect them to find a way of oh no we’re not able to do what we promised so we will need billions more.
I agree that we need Infrastructure in this country badly. But how about we get what we paid for first when it comes to the telecoms? When it comes to everything actually. Make people do the work they were paid for or give the money back so we can pay someone to do it or nationalize the system. But that will never happen as long as we allow the Billionaire oligarchs to own our politicians. So yet build back bigger and better than ever. Use our wealth to make this country something to be proud of. Invest in the country and it’s people and great things will happen. But until you show that you’re people first instead of corporations nothing will change.
Source : https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20060131/2021240.shtml
Oh and that $200 Billion we started with in 2006 would be $278,916,666,666.67 in todays money.