Not wanting to make it political, but what are the chances those federal funds are flowing anymore?

Right now ISPs are very concerned about the future of money they've already been promised and pessimistic about the future of such programs. It's possible that this could result in an increased unwillingness to expand into less profitable areas or even to maintain services there.

That said, some ISPs have been known to collect hundreds of billions in taxpayer money on the promise of providing service only to just pocket that money without providing it anyway so for consumers, the real world impact of ISPs losing that money isn't so clear.

Considering that we gave AT&T nearly $400 billion in the 90s to connect everyone in the US to fiber, I certainly hope they're no longer flowing. It was a giant grift. It's taken local fiber ISPs and WISPs (who seem to have been gobbled up immediately) and Starlink to make anything happen.

1: http://irregulators.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/BookofBro...

2: A more recent example from 2024: https://www.washingtonpolicy.org/publications/detail/the-42-...

I’m sure Starlink will consume the oxygen. Good news is they can deliver quickly. Bad news is that strategically it’s a fragile and higher risk offering for critical infrastructure.

It’s really essential to fund or make it feasible for companies to fund broadband. Universal broadband should be a priority.

Rural programs are really successful, until the money runs out. Cities get screwed though — I served on a commission with my city on this topic and the only feasible competition at scale, Verizon, refused to engage unless the city allowed them to pick individual blocks to deploy, which means no servitude for underrepresented people.

My area has a similar density and a co-op did it for $80 a month 1 gig fiber to the home. We couldn't even get DSL, and the local telecomms even gathered funds locally earlier to build it, but then just kept the money. I am extremely skeptical of claims that rural areas can't get fiber, fiber is even cheaper to hang than copper is, and yet every rural area has telephone lines and power that were put up many decades ago with even less equipment available.

>local telecomms even gathered funds locally earlier to build it

Nationwide telecomms did that with funds for fiber to the premises as well. I have no idea why these telecomms can take the money and just refuse to provide the services.