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> There is literally no reason why, today, we don't have at least 50/10 to every goddamned home in America. Every goddamned home, no matter how far you are out in the sticks.

Because the country is huge, and building adequate backhaul to sparsely populated areas is very expensive.

> This is a drain on our economy every second we aren't working towards this actually rather easy to achieve goal.

I find this sort of argument to beg the question. How much would it really increase overall GDP to get at least 25/3 (the current FCC standard) to the 10% of the country that lacks it? Especially considering that everyone can get satellite broadband, which covers the core things people need internet for: job applications, access to online educational resources, electronic payment processing, etc.



We are talking about less than 1/1,000th of our current GDP so no, it's not a question of having a larger GDP. GDP is simply not the problem, it's local monopolies that keep getting funded to fix a problem have no incentive to actually fix the problem.

Remember, we rolled out copper wire to every home with a far smaller GDP, doing the same for fiber is relatively speaking a smaller investment.


I'm asking about the economic benefits to GDP of rolling out broadband to the places that don't yet have it, considering that they can get satellite.


There are a lot of things you can't do on satellite internet right now. VOIP is the most obvious example.


SpaceX's planned satellite network could fix that eventually… if it's ever actually constructed.


OneWeb is in the lead, they actually have funding and launch contracts.


I agree that OneWeb is in the lead, but playing devils advocate: SpaceX has funding (Fidelity/Google) and rockets...


Hughesnet and Exede satellite internet both offer a voip service.


Every home is probably overkill. But every home that is also connected to a road, electricity, water and sewage should also have decent internet. Laying fiber for 50/10 everywhere is expensive, but so is building roads everywhere.


20% of American houses are not connected to a public sewer system while only 10% can't get at least 25/3 broadband.




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