On a “nearly deserted Alaska island, it costs more than $340,000 per year to provide hundreds of buildings — all but a few of them empty — with internet access no one says they use. The money being wasted is yours,” notes Charles Ornstein of Pro Publica.
The Anchorage Daily News explains:
On an island in the Bering Sea 1,200 miles from Anchorage, Alaska, sits an abandoned house on an abandoned Navy base. There is no furniture, and the wind blows through broken windows. The last people to live here moved away long ago. Yet a bright orange pipe with a black fiber-optic cable inside runs from the outer wall down into the surrounding soil.
The cable was installed to connect the home to the internet after the base closed. It costs more than $340,000 per year to provide this building and hundreds of others — all but a few of them empty — with internet access no one says they use.
The money being wasted is yours.
It comes from a fee added to nearly every American’s phone bill as part of a Federal Communications Commission subsidy program intended to bring fast, affordable internet to remote towns….the multibillion-dollar Universal Service Fund pays for what often amounts to slow internet access for customers who actually no longer use it.
This exorbitantly expensive cable-based internet access is unnecessary. Even remote Alaskan islands and Eskimo villages can access the internet via satellite these day, making long cables unnecessary. Internet access is now feasible even in the more remote places on Earth, via satellite.
So this government program is largely obsolete, in addition to being terribly wasteful.
