Tue, Jan 26th 2021 6:19am
Karl Bode
As we ve noted a few times, there s an underlying belief in American tech policy that if we just keep
throwing money at entrenched broadband monopolies we can lift US broadband out of the depths of mediocrity. But as we ve noted more than a few times, heavily subsidizing a bunch of regional monopolies, while not doing anything about the conditions that created and insulate those monopolies, doesn t result in much changing. It s especially ineffective when you don t really punish ISPs for decades of taking taxpayer money in exchange for network upgrades that almost always, like clockwork, wind up unfinished.
CenturyLink, Frontier Failed to Meet FCC Deadline for Rural Broadband Rollout
Photo: Karen Bleier/AFP (Getty Images)
As part of the Connect America Fund Phase II grants in 2015, the FCC awarded CenturyLink and Frontier a combined total of $789.1 million in federal funds to expand broadband services to rural Americans. Dec. 31 was the deadline for CenturyLink to roll out 10Mbps/1Mbps broadband to 1.17 million homes and businesses in 33 states, while Frontier needed to expand its broadband services to 659,587 homes and business in 28 states. Both companies have failed, again, to meet their broadband deployment deadlines.
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As reported by Ars Technica, CenturyLink and Frontier still have one year to finish their respective rollouts, according to the FCC’s grant stipulations. If the ISPs fail again, the Universal Service Administrative Co. (USAC), which is governed by the FCC, takes the money back plus interest. Basically, if CenturyLink or Frontier don’t complete the
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Thu, Dec 17th 2020 6:40am
Karl Bode
In West Virginia, incumbent telco Frontier has repeatedly been busted in a series of scandals involving substandard service and the misuse of taxpayer money. State leaders have buried reports detailing the depth of the grift and dysfunction, and, until a few years back, a Frontier executive did double duty as a state representative without anybody in the state thinking that was a conflict of interest. The result has been about what you d expect: West Virginia routinely shows up as one of the least connected states in the nation.
Frontier has spent years taking taxpayer money then failing to adequately upgrade its network. So when the FCC recently threw another $9 billion in subsidies at the broken U.S. telecom sector, lawmakers like Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, were kind of annoyed to find Frontier again slated to get $371 million to expand broadband across eight states. $250 million was doled out to Frontier in West Virginia despit