Three years ago, with great fanfare, President Biden unveiled a $42.5 billion rural internet program under the Broadband, Equity, Access, and Deployment Program pledging that every household in the country would have access by 2030 using cables made in America.
Almost no progress has been made in the last three years and it is estimated to take more than a year before the first home or business receives any benefit.
Biden declared the program an “absolute necessity” during his announcement three years ago. Yet according to FCC Commissioner, Brendan Carr, the Biden administration's signature high-speed Internet program from 2021 is stuck in the bureaucracy.
Carr said on X, "In 2021, the Biden Administration got $42.45 billion from Congress to deploy high-speed Internet to millions of Americans." "Years later, it has not connected even 1 person with those funds," Carr added.
Not unlike Biden’s $7.5 billion plan to put 500,000 EV chargers across the country, but three years later only 8 were completed, and not a single home is connected after 3 years in this $42.5 billion rural internet program. Why is that? What’s holding the process up?
The delay is said to be unrelated to Internet technology but is due to ridiculous administrative and ideological requirements for states to receive funding.
Carr said the holdup is due to a "partisan political agenda" that includes "climate change mandates, tech biases, DEI requirements, favoring government-run networks + more."
"There's no question that the 2021 law put some process in place, but the Biden administration decided to layer on top of that a Byzantine additional set of hoops that states have to go through before the administration will approve them to get these funds and start completing the builds," Carr told FOX Business.
Mr. Carr describes the requirements as “a liberal wish list that has nothing to do with connecting Americans,” he writes on X. “Climate change mandates, tech biases, DEI requirements, favoring government-run networks + more,” he adds. Union laborer provisions and requirements to prioritize the employment of “justice impacted” employees with criminal history round out the requirements delaying implementation.
“The Biden Admin’s failure to turn even a single shovel’s worth of dirt with this $42.45B is not just predictable, it was predicted,” Mr. Carr said.
Many question why Biden is going in on physical cables when technology such as Elon Musk’s Starlink is available. Starlink provides affordable Internet access all over the world.
Carr accuses the administration of “layering a partisan political agenda” on the program.
Elon Musk said on X, “This government program is an outrageous waste of taxpayer money and is utterly failing to serve people in need.”
Carr called the Biden administration out over the Democratic FCC members using their majority to revoke the $800 million awarded to Musk's Starlink under the Trump administration, which he says would have brought high-speed Internet service to 642,000 rural locations.
“For $42 billion they could have bought Starlink dishes for 140 million people (US population is 333 million),” said WholeMarsBlog on X.
Nineteen states received more than $1 billion. The 10 states receiving the most funding are Alabama, California, Georgia, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina, Texas, Virginia and Washington.
Funding ranges between $100.7 million for Washington, D.C., and $3.3 billion for Texas. New York received $664,618,251.49.
The House budget committee revealed that the project would likely not start until 2025 or 2026.