The future of America is not, and never will be, FTTH. The future of America is FTTF/FTTDP (fiber to the frontage/distribution point) to a street/basement cabinet that houses current generation micro-headends and micro-DSLAMs that are setup to handle the last 500-1000 feet, speaking G.fast and DOCIS 3.x as very small greenfield installations.
Current gen G.fast tops out at 1000/1000 in less than 300ft installations, slows to 100/100 at 1500ft (about a third of a mile) using existing installs of standard 80s and 90s era unshielded phone wire, the numbers go up with brand new copper, and next gen G.fast is aiming at increasing these speeds several fold (talk of 10gbit in under 300ft and 1gbit at much further distances).
Current gen DOCIS 3.1 tops out at 1.3gbit down, 245mbit up, and there are already existing gigabit-on-cable customers getting what they paid for on 90s era coax.
I see absolutely no reason to roll out actual FTTH ala FIOS, and I agree with Google Fiber's decision to drop actual FTTH, and they should be aiming for taking over unmaintained networks that can be rebuilt as modern DOCIS 3.x or G.Fast, or deploying micro-towers doing shorter range LTE-A fixed.
Current gen LTE-A maxes out at somewhere in the neighborhood of at least 10gbit per tower/frequency band, and fixed LTE-A "modems" with outside directional antennas can get gigabit connectivity; next gen LTE (LTE-A Pro, aka 4.9G) at least doubles this.
All of this is useless without Congress pushing for more fiber between towns, or inside large metro areas (which means burying more fiber along federal highways and major state roads).
There is literally no reason why, today, we don't have at least 50/10 to every goddamned home in America. Every goddamned home, no matter how far you are out in the sticks. This is a drain on our economy every second we aren't working towards this actually rather easy to achieve goal.
Fun fact: I don't even have reliable cell phone connectivity at my house. I'm maybe the only person on HN that bothers to maintain a POTS line and use it as my primary phone number.
Because the country is huge, and building adequate backhaul to sparsely populated areas is very expensive.
> This is a drain on our economy every second we aren't working towards this actually rather easy to achieve goal.
I find this sort of argument to beg the question. How much would it really increase overall GDP to get at least 25/3 (the current FCC standard) to the 10% of the country that lacks it? Especially considering that everyone can get satellite broadband, which covers the core things people need internet for: job applications, access to online educational resources, electronic payment processing, etc.
Remember, we rolled out copper wire to every home with a far smaller GDP, doing the same for fiber is relatively speaking a smaller investment.
Where I live in the Texas Hill Country, I get 300MB in the center of town. Outside the town there are a few companies providing wireless Internet connections, but this is limited by topology - the hills for which the region is named tend to get in the way.
I also have a cabin in upstate New York, in the foothills of the Catskills. I can't even get a cell signal there without hiking to the top of the mountain - and even then, a plain voice connection, non-data, is iffy. And I'm doing OK, I know of people up there who don't even have electricity.
How is that? It applies only to federally funded projects. Most homes and businesses are not on federally funded roads. This bill is not a FTTH driver.