[glzone1]

The billions spent on rural broadband excluded Starlink as not technically feasible.

Many other billions have the same issues - I think no one knows how to actually hoover this the way the big co's do?

We've had much faster broadband happening because of commercial competition from scrappy startups and WISPS and fiber folks (think sonic)

I think something like 94% of RDOF/BEAD locations in california were defaulted (ie, awarded but customer actually never got service)?

It's crazy given the 100+ billion or so spent on USF / RDOF / BEAD / etc that they couldn't do $5b - $10b for something like starlink which at least in rural areas is able to serve folks pretty quickly and push hard on that for a bit. The unsubsidized commercial starklink services is already outcompeting the insanely subsidized buildouts (that cost insane amounts per person). Starlink was awarded the funds but then they were revoked.

[tzs]

Starlink didn't get RDOF funding because RDOF required a minimum of 100/20 Mbps, and Starlink failed to meet that in too many rural locations.