THANK YOU BROTHER, RICIN
Nebraska’s Winnebago Tribe has long been stuck with sluggish internet service. The federal government plans to fix that by crisscrossing the reservation with fiber-optic cable—at an average cost of $53,000 for each household and workplace connected.
That amount exceeds the assessed value of some of the homes getting hookups, property records show. While most connections will cost far less, the expense to reach some remote communities has triggered concerns over the ultimate price tag for ensuring every rural home, business, school and workplace in America has the same internet that city dwellers enjoy.
“The problem is, money is not infinite,” said Blair Levin, a senior communications policy official in the Clinton and Obama administrations who is now an equity research analyst. “If you’re spending $50,000 to connect a very remote location, you have to ask yourself, would we be better off spending that same amount of money to connect [more] families?”
The U.S. has committed more than $60 billion for what the Biden administration calls the “Internet for All” program, the latest in a series of sometimes troubled efforts to bring high-speed internet to rural areas.
Providing fiber-optic cable is the industry standard, but alternative options such as satellite service are cheaper, if less reliable.
Congress has left it up to state and federal officials implementing the program to decide how much is too much in hard-to-reach areas.
In Montana, laying fiber-optic cable to some remote locations could cost more than $300,000 per connection, said Misty Ann Giles, director of Montana’s Department of Administration. Building to those places would empty the state’s coffers, she said: “That’s when we might not reach everyone.”
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