By Jason Cohen
President Joe Biden’s administration is struggling to deliver on its goals for providing rural Americans with high-speed internet access, The Texas Tribune reported on Wednesday. That’s true even though the government is paying tens of thousands of dollars per user to connect some rural people to the internet, which ought to be sufficient to provide internet access to everyone.
A coalition comprising broadband internet service providers and nonprofits alleged that certain beneficiaries of grant initiatives to construct broadband infrastructure did not utilize their allotted funds for this intended purpose in a letter to be sent to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), obtained by the Tribune. The FCC has suggested imposing fines on 95 or more applicants to the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) program for defaulting, according to a commission filing. (RELATED: The Biden Admin Is Pursuing Total Domination Of Americans’ Digital Lives)
The FCC has adopted final rules to prevent digital discrimination of access to broadband services based on income level, race, ethnicity, color, religion, or national origin.
— The FCC (@FCC) November 15, 2023
The FCC has faced vast condemnation for inadequate vetting of internet service providers, according to the Tribune. The coalition asserts the FCC should permit recipients to surrender awards without facing penalties in order to enable these regions to qualify for BEAD funds, which are from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA).
Texas Rural Funders, a nonprofit focused on rural philanthropy, arranged the letter, according to the Tribune.
Biden signed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act in 2021, which allocated over $42 billion for the BEAD program, according to the NTIA. The funds are designed to connect over 8.5 million homes and businesses to broadband internet throughout the United States, according to a White House fact sheet.
The FCC’s Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) has doled out $9.2 billion and $2.8 billion of that total went to entities that defaulted so far, according to the Tribune.
“Today, we adopt the second RDOF default Notice of Apparent Liability in a year, bringing the total number of RDOF applicants that we have proposed to fine for defaulting on their bids to 95,” FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks wrote in the commission filing. “When we originally adopted the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund in 2020, I wrote that we must ‘create real accountability for companies that receive subsidies’ and that there were ‘warning signs that we should not ignore.’ When applicants fail to live up to their obligations in a broadband deployment program, it is a setback for all of us. Defaulting applicants pay a fine, but rural communities that have already waited too long for broadband pay a larger toll.”
More providers who have been granted funds still have not followed through on their commitments to provide broadband access in the RDOF program, Texas Rural Funders executive director Kelty Garbee told the Tribune.
The FCC in December affirmed its rejection of a $885 million award to billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX’s Starlink to provide fast broadband internet service to over 640,000 homes and businesses in rural areas in 35 states under the RDOF. The FCC asserted its denial was due to Starlink’s failure to show its capability to meet the RDOF requirements, even though Starlink has much greater financial and technical resources than recipients that have received taxpayer subsidies.
“Starlink is arguably the only viable option to immediately connect many of the Americans who live and work in the rural and remote areas of the country where high-speed, low-latency internet has been unreliable, unaffordable, or completely unavailable, the very people RDOF was supposed to connect,” SpaceX Vice President of Legal Christopher Cardaci wrote in a letter to the FCC after the rejection.
The FCC and the White House did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
