$42.5 Billion Broadband Grant Program Being Rewritten To Benefit Elon Musk
Source: TechDirt
$42.5 Billion Broadband Grant Program Being Rewritten To Benefit Elon Musk
Broadband
from the and-by-"fix"-it-I-mean-smashing-it-to-bits dept
Wed, Mar 12th 2025 05:35am - Karl Bode
We’ve often noted how there are $42.5 billion in broadband grants headed to the states courtesy of the 2021 infrastructure bill. The GOP voted against the bill, but have repeatedly turned around and taken credit for its looming benefits among our broadly misinformed electorate. And, as we predicted, they’re now redrafting key components of the program to the direct benefit of Elon Musk.
To ensure that the $42.5 billion taxpayer money was spent wisely, the bill included numerous provisions, including a recommendation that states try to prioritize the funding of fiber. Because higher capacity fiber is generally future proof, whereas satellite services like Starlink are congested, expensive, harm the environment, and are seeing slowdowns as the network’s customer base grows.
The NTIA also included some bare bones requirements that ISPs taking taxpayer money try to ensure that any resulting service is made affordable to poor people. Big ISPs like Comcast and AT&T were quick to complain last year, and the GOP held fake government “investigations” into the outrageous scandal that is trying to help poor people get online.
These fairly sensible restrictions (which I suspect would have never been enforced in any serious way anyway) are being declared “woke” by the Trump administration, which is changing key parts of the grant program to the direct benefit of Elon Musk:
“Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick criticized the Biden administration’s handling of the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program in a statement yesterday. Lutnick said that “because of the prior Administration’s woke mandates, favoritism towards certain technologies, and burdensome regulations, the program has not connected a single person to the Internet and is in dire need of a readjustment.”
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Read more: https://www.techdirt.com/2025/03/12/42-5-billion-broadband-grant-program-being-rewritten-to-benefit-elon-musk/
Karl Bode @karlbode.com
https://bsky.app/profile/karlbode.com
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