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Comment by LorenDB | Hacker News Reader

I think the FCC ought to mandate symmetrical gigabit as true broadband. With today's fiber tech, there's no reason ISPs can't deploy a symmetrical connection to anyone, and gigabit is a perfectly reasonable speed. After all, the hardware for it has been around for years now.

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If the FCC had the power to mandate this and they exercised the power its power would likely be curtailed or Internet access would disappear completely, at least temporarily, in certain parts of the US. Infrastructure costs money that companies expect to recoup on a certain schedule (ROI) despite the technology being around for years.

Having said this I wouldn't mind at all having a big fat pipe Internet for next to nothing just like everyone else. I was excited to hear about Google's plans to lay fiber "everywhere." More than a decade later, I'm still waiting in my excited state.

It’s not that easy. The federal government is in fact spending over $100 billion in the next decade laying fiber (and that’s only partial subsidies, so the total investment will be even higher) and it still won’t be enough to get fiber everywhere.

Not sure why the taxpayers are footing the bill.

Because it’s not profitable to build fiber out to many places.

Based on what happened last time:

- the telcos pocketed the money and did very very little actual deployment, and the FCC did nothing

- lobbied the FCC to deny Starlink funds when Starlink actually delivered a usable rural service and got them to declare it "not broadband"

At least the FCC hasn't been completely useless in mobile broadband. I'm sure if 5G starts approaching usable competition with Cable/Telcos, the FCC will kill it for them.

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