Internet service has long been slow for the Winnebago tribe in the state of Nebraska, reports to Wall Street Journal. Now the US government “plans to fix this by crossing the reservation with fiber optic cable – at an average cost of $53,000 for each connected household and workplace.”
While that amount exceeds the assessed value of some of the 658 homes being connected — at a cost of $35.2 million — “the tribe is also creating an Internet company to operate the network, create jobs and compete with an existing provider , known for slow customer service.”
While most connections will cost much less, the cost of reaching some remote communities has raised concerns about the ultimate cost of ensuring that every rural home, business, school and workplace in America has the same internet enjoyed by city dwellers … The U.S. has earmarked more than $60 billion for what the Biden administration calls the “Internet for All” program, the latest in a series of sometimes troubled efforts to bring high-speed Internet to rural areas… Providing fiber optic cable is industry standard, but alternative options such as satellite service are cheaper, though less reliable. Congress left it up to state and federal officials running the program to decide how much was too much in hard-to-reach areas…
Advocates of broadband programs say that simple location costs do not reflect their benefits. Once built, rural fiber lines can be used to upgrade cellular service or add more connections to nearby towns…
Some of the differences can be explained by the individual geographic areas to which the programs are targeted. While the FCC program included some suburbs and excluded remote locations such as Alaska, the programs run by Commerce and USDA specifically targeted remote regions with difficult construction conditions. “These are some of the most challenging places to reach in America,” said Andy Burke, administrator of USDA’s Office of Rural Utilities. He cites one project in Alaska that includes 793 miles of underwater fiber optic cable to reach remote villages.
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