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Comment by zlg_codes | Hacker News Reader

Friendly reminder that the Obama Administration invested billions in broadband companies, in an effort to encourage them to build out their fiber plants and improve access speeds.

Do you know what they did with that money? Blew it on useless upgrading projects like digitizing their old drafts.

May as well have flushed it down the toilet. I'm perfectly fine with government imminent domain-ing that shit and selling it back to people at fair prices. Business didn't build those networks, government hand-outs taken from citizens' tax revenue built the network in this country.

There will be a point where people strike back against ISPs by attacking the infrastructure itself. If they won't upgrade it, damage it and make them upgrade it.

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Should have used the billions to create competition instead

The government gave large incumbent ISPs money to do exactly what they did (anything but actually providing internet access). If, as you claim, the money was intended to somehow benefit their customers, it would have been taken back.

I think we've seen how the government handles its loans, especially if they're spelled like PPP.

Government money is regularly used to build access to new / remote places.

Should I provide examples or would that be considered cherry picked evidence?

You're missing the point. ISPs did not build out their plants to support more bandwidth with Obama money. Serving a handful of remote areas to have the appearance of it isn't enough. Why isn't the US covered in fiber? We spent the money to make it happen, and it didn't happen.

I think I disagree on this premise - government subsidies for telecommunications over the last 20 years have largely served to connect new and under served markets. If you have broadband (by the pitiful FCC definition) you have not been a target of investment.

What are "old drafts"?

Literally drafts of the cable plant, as it occurs on the street. I worked for a firm who contracted through various ISPs to digitize their equipment plant drafts via AutoCAD and SPATIALnet back in 2010. Our contract ended up falling through. I'm not fully sure why, but I was part of a hiring frenzy in the firm's area, that ended up laying off a bunch of people after the Comcast contract fell through. There was a class action and everything, they paid for training or unemployment for two years.

It wasn't that bad of a job. I worked four 10s and could grab coffee, blast some music, and knock out the cable plant. Accuracy and speed are all that really mattered. The worst part was how picky drafting standards were and how poor the Python scripts they cobbled into AutoCAD were at actually meeting their standards. Lots of manual offsetting. I wish I had known enough Python at the time, because I might've been able to get a foot into their infra staff or something by improving the drafting workflow.

they did that because they had the petro dollar system

this is the same system that allowed most americans to not pay taxes and also downsized the IRS

they thought they were going to be able to keep this system around indefinitely, but nope. I'm basing it all on guesswork, but I think that system ended this summer. the USA fed and gov is going to be at war by the next summer (debt ceiling expiry), or they're gonna get their cred destroyed even further.

Do you have any evidence of this at all?

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