Biden's $42 Billion Broadband Boondoggle

President Joe Biden has rolled out his Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) plan, which will be subsidized by $42 billion from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. That is an obscene amount of money to invest in technology that will be obsolete by the time it's built. A 2022 report by America's Communication Association (ACA), which lobbies for more than 500 small- and medium-sized internet service companies, found that nearly 88 percent of households already live where at least two competitors offer 25/3 Mbps service, and 85 percent lived where at least one operator offers 100/20 Mbps service and a competitor offers 25/3 Mbps service. On current trends, the ACA projects that 95 percent will have access to at least 100/20 Mbps service by 2025. Providing access to high-speed internet services to the vast majority of Americans was not achieved by spreading around government largesse. The US Telecom Association reports that private companies invested $86 billion in just 2021 (latest figures) to build out their broadband networks further. In other words, U.S. private broadband companies are already providing access to faster and increasingly cheaper internet services and, on current trends, will finish the job well before Biden's BEAD boondoggle gets off the ground.