Upfront grant costs are "too steep for all but the best-funded ISPs," groups claim.

The biggest Internet service providers will dominate a $42.45 billion broadband grant program unless the Biden administration changes a rule requiring grant recipients to obtain a letter of credit from a bank, according to a joint statement from consumer advocacy groups, local government officials, and advocates for small ISPs.

The letter sent today to US government officials argues that “by establishing capital barriers too steep for all but the best-funded ISPs, the LOC [letter-of-credit requirement] shuts out the vast majority of entities the program claims to prioritize: small and community-centered ISPs, minority and women-owned ISPs, nonprofits, and municipalities.”

The rule is part of the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) program that’s being administered by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA).

  • DarthBueller@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    I’m not talking about Biden, I’m talking about progressives. I am not talking about people protesting racist corrupt murderous pigs. Literally every progressive I know is using race as the primary critical lens they use for seeing the world. Folks give lip-service to instersectionality, but for the life of me, the discourse is being defined by the right. The right acts racist and persecutes LGBTQI+ folks, so those issues end up taking up all of the air in the room to the expense of everything else. A couple of years ago, I was at a social justice exchange in a poor white area, and the subject was food deserts in the area. I got shut down because I was steadfast in asserting that the reason that there were food deserts in the area had next to nothing to do with race, and everything to do with economic inequality and rural underinvestment.