The objective of the government is not just to ensure that one or even two companies have infrastructure reaching most or all rural areas, but to ensure enough players in this field to establish a genuinely competitive market for pervasive rural internet access. The FCC has decided that without this subsidy there would not be enough companies offering enough access to enough areas to meet their mandate.

Given this goal, it’s simply unreasonable to deny funds to a company that has already set up that access, but only grant funds to new entrants. That clearly screws over the existing companies, which now can’t afford to compete on price with the new government funded entrants.

The only way to establish a level playing field and not penalise companies that already invested heavily is to give the grants regardless of past investment. Then you can genuinely allow the competitive market to establish fair and competitive prices for these customers. Free market principles should in theory ensure that this price competition should recoup a significant proportion of the subsidy costs for consumers and tax payers.