Re:How satellite ‘megaconstellations’ will photobomb astrono...
by readams on Thursday August 27, 2020 @06:22PM
(#24299365)
Large scale infrastructure is no longer possible in the US for all kinds of reasons. But you can't just compare infrastructure projects from the 1930s and pretend it will work. If you had to build the interstate highway system, or transcontinental railroad, or Hoover dam today, it would take decades and cost many times the price in real dollars.
Why not? It has been done before. Every developed country went through a period of rural electrification whereby schemes were developed to encourage and/or force electric companies to run wires out into the rural farmland. Internet is the modern analogue for electrification. Those same approaches would work equally well for fiber.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_electrification
The American approach: "The Rural Electrification Administration (REA) was created by executive order as an independent federal bureau in 1935, authorized by the United States Congress in the 1936 Rural Electrification Act, and later in 1939, reorganized as a division of the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture. It was charged with administering loan programs for electrification and telephone service in rural areas. Between 1935 and 1939 – or the first 4½ years after REA's establishment, the number of farms using electric services more than doubled"