I see this first hand. In my town, ATT owns the lines that supply our street that has fiber and our local ISP Sonic.net is prevented from using these lines to provide service. Its my worry that our local ISP's ability to do business in a market dominated by Comcast and ATT is going to be majorly impacted and its only going to get worse. Not saying it would be prevented if Dems where in office because they pretty much tow the corporate anti-competition line but are much more quiet about it.
I mean - generally speaking the US taxpayer did. If you're curious - you can see this funding here: https://fundingmap.fcc.gov/home
The most recent of which was BEAD (The Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment Program) which allocated 42.45 BILLION in broadband rollout funding.
If you think those companies are paying for the lines out of their pocket... you are very confused about the economics of broadband rollout.
The best case is that they are loans at sweetheart rates that translate into additional subscriber fees tacked onto the customers. Most times it's just literal grant cash, though.
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So to recap - you and I paid for those lines. Sure as fuck wasn't ATT.
You're wrong, and your wrongness is heavily colored by your Keynesian government-centric worldview.
For example, in my local (semi-rural) area, private companies are exclusively doing it, along with other things like wifi. If government dollars are available, they always have strings attached and take decades to roll out and are typically really only issued to large companies with substantial ability to roll out large programs (with the exception of a few co-ops that have made the news).
And this completely ignores Starlink, which was repeatedly denied government funding because the government hates the viewpoints of the guy who runs it, but nevertheless offers the best opportunity for high-speed Internet in rural areas. It's just like when Cornelius Vanderbilt completely beat the Post Office's own selected "winner" to connect the two coasts via steamships.
And the total boondoggle that is your best example -- BEAD -- has, by its own admission, connected ZERO people since it was enacted in 2021! It's another ridiculous example of picking winners and losers, but mostly losers.
Please feel free to read the sad story at the government's own websites (the .gov's below) as well as a DC thinktank:
It should not the government's job to fund things that have a definitive and obvious competitive advantage for private industry, because they're just terrible at it.
Look back at the almost literally trillions of dollars that the government wasted in the solar or wind industry for other examples of where taxpayers' dollars might just as well be shipped on pallets to China or flushed down the drain.
Private industry beats government investment every single time, because the government doesn't actually have enough skin in the game and is so easily corrupted and influenced by lobbyists. When government dollars get involved, it distorts the incentives and then we end up with terrible things like AT&T controlling a monopoly that they didn't even pay for (like Ma Bell in the land before time).
