Basically every time America gives huge telecom conglomerates money to expand rural services they literally just steal it and face no consequence whatsoever. It’s such a scam, politicians look good because they vote to spend 400 million dollars to expand rural access, comcast and Verizon take with the promise that in 5-10 years things will be better, then they do nothing hoping people will forget. Even when an expose article is written on the issue American cynicism kicks in and the politicians get away with letting them steal literally hundreds of millions of dollars.

It’s basically money laundering. It’s also a reason rural areas (which already tend to skew republican) have more support for musk, because for a lot of them starlink is the only real option for passable internet, but that’s expensive for internet that is pretty shitty compared to a basic broadband connection. And thus ~20% of rural Americans and almost 30% of Americans on tribal lands have no access to broadband in 2026