In Louisiana, the effort to publicize a $30-a-month subsidy available to low-income households requires driving town to town.

Gee I guess they never heard of billboards,radio and TV. Folks in La. go to Church and taverns. Top down bureaucracy I guess. Lots of folks go to LSU football games.

LINK: https://www.wsj.com/articles/b...28?mod=hp_lead_pos10
HOMER, La.—A $14 billion federal program to increase access to high-speed internet faces an early hurdle: The people who need it most are the hardest to reach because they aren’t online.

That has turned Veneeth Iyengar, executive director of Louisiana’s broadband office, into a town crier as he drives to small towns in remote parishes to spread word of the $30-a-month subsidy now available to low-income households. Most of the local officials he has met with hadn’t heard of the program, he said.

“We needed to spend a significant amount of time on the road in Louisiana educating people,” Mr. Iyengar said.

The roughly $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law that President Biden signed last November includes $65 billion to build up the country’s broadband network—a need highlighted by the pandemic that sent many students and workers to their computers. But much of that money could take years to put to use, making the $30 subsidy one of the most immediately deliverable aspects of the law.



Most of the broadband money will be awarded to states and territories for infrastructure needs like fiber-optic cable projects. The law also created subsidies called the Affordable Connectivity Program to lower internet costs and improve connectivity.

More than 11 million Americans have signed up for the monthly subsidy, according to the Federal Communications Commission, which administers the subsidies. The aid is available to anyone whose income is 200% or less than federal poverty guidelines—for a family of four in Louisiana, that would be $26,500—or whose household qualifies for a government assistance program such as food assistance or Medicaid.

Congress set up a previous version, called the Emergency Broadband Benefit Program, which gave people $50 a month, in late 2020. That has been replaced by the $30 subsidy. The prior program, which was rolled into the current one, had about nine million households enrolled before it was closed, according to the FCC.

FCC officials acknowledged there has been limited outreach for both the temporary subsidy and the new one, citing “unique circumstances” of the Covid-19 pandemic. They say the agency is exploring new ways to market the program through community institutions such as school districts.

Mr. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris plan to speak Monday about the administration’s efforts to lower the cost of high-speed internet through programs set up by the bipartisan infrastructure law.

Municipalities in most cases don’t have direct access to another pool of government money for fiber infrastructure, created by the Covid-centric stimulus law from early 2021, because it requires private companies to apply for it. And local officials and private companies in most instances are still waiting for state lawmakers to decide how to disperse money from both laws.



The subsidies have “done more on the side of reducing the costs of broadband than it has on increasing broadband adoption,” said Danny Fuchs, co-founder of the Broadband Equity Partnership, a consulting group focused on closing the digital divide.

An FCC official said the commission doesn’t collect data that would show how many enrollees had broadband access for the first time.

Broadband officials and advocates said the subsidies, while hard to promote to the most disconnected Americans, are the most tangible and immediately deliverable part of the government’s drive to improve high-speed internet.

Building out the fiber optics “fuels the headlines and takes the oxygen, but we see affordability as just as important,” said Brian Mitchell, director of Nevada’s broadband office. “Without that, people are just as disconnected as they were without the infrastructure.”

Louisiana has the highest per-capita rate of enrollment in the program with about 5,641 per 100,000 residents enrolled, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of FCC data.

Yet even with its relatively high enrollment numbers, Louisiana shows the long, complicated road ahead for Homer and areas like it around the state and country.

Samuel Seals, an IT project manager who owns a home just outside the limits of this small, rural city, considers the internet service here so useless that he splits his time between another home of his in Dallas, more than three hours away.

I’ve had the pleasure of working remotely since the pandemic, but the [internet] service in Homer, at best, has been poor,” Mr. Seals said. He described it as slow and spotty.

Mr. Iyengar recently made a trip to Grambling, La., to meet with its mayor, Ed Jones, who was unfamiliar with the subsidies that could help an estimated thousands of people still without the internet in the parish where Grambling is the largest city. Mr. Jones said he would start promoting the program.



In Homer, Mr. Iyengar introduced Mayor Xanthe Seals, and a cousin of Samuel Seals, to the subsidies. She said she was skeptical that grant money for new fiber infrastructure would reach her city of about 3,000—or that any broadband help would happen swiftly.

“They always keep telling us, ‘it’s coming, it’s coming,’ ” she said of federal money for broadband.

In addition to spurring local officials to push the subsidy, Mr. Iyengar walks them through several buckets of connectivity money he is in charge of doling out, from the infrastructure law and other Biden-era programs. Like the subsidies, other internet aid has been slow to reach the places with the greatest need.


Samuel Seals says internet service in Homer, La., is so bad that he spends much of his time at another home of his in Dallas.
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For example, private companies can apply through the state for grants from a congressional aid package passed in early 2021 to connect areas without an internet service provider. To unlock the federal funds, the companies must provide at least 20% of the financing.

But by the state’s March deadline, no companies sought to expand service in Claiborne Parish, where Homer is the seat. Mr. Iyengar said companies might not have known what areas have the greatest needs, and he asked Homer’s mayor to nudge providers to apply during another round of funding expected this summer.

He offered to provide city leaders granular neighborhood-level data from the census to show them which parts of the parish that includes Homer most need service. That way, he said, they can lobby service providers to chase the funds.

“We can set up a Zoom call—assuming y’all have internet,” he said. “We’ll figure out a way.”

quote:

Like the subsidies, other internet aid has been slow to reach the places with the greatest need.

And who determines "greatest need"? What are the criteria? People with the "greatest need" don't have Teslas either. What should we do about that?

Remember Rural Electrification? These days the internet is a basic need. It is embarassing when third world countries have a more reliable and faster internet.

This is not forgiving Student loans or Stimulus checks. It might actually be a viable use of tax dollars. Remember what cross country travel was like before Interstate highways?

quote:

Remember what cross country travel was like before Interstate highways?

Actually, no. I'm not quite that old...

Well it sucked. Not all governmental programs are a waste of money. I think Shongaloo,LA. and Smackover, AR. deserve a decent internet connection.

Since the 1990s, pretty much every broadband initiative for rural areas has been a billion dollar handout to phone companies that did pretty much nothing. Some cities build their own broadband service and those typically end up working well, but those are typically only done after long legal fights with the phone and cable companies that enjoy their monopoly or duopoly.

Yeah man, it is vitally important that everyone have high speed Internet so that we can bury them in propaganda, better spy on them, etc.

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They will do the same if we let them keep their radios.

quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:
It might actually be a viable use of tax dollars.

No, it's not. If they need internet access, perhaps they can buy a few less bottles of malt liquor or a few less packs of cigarettes every month. Or, perhaps, they can go to the library and use the one there.

Giving people free shit never has a good outcome.

If they can afford to go to a tavern or an LSU football game they can afford internet access.

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Hahaha. It is a subsidy not a give away. Not all people in Louisiana are drunks, particularly in Shongaloo.

quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:
It is a subsidy not a give away.

Somebody is making up the difference that they are not paying, and that somebody is the taxpayer.

Call it a subsidy or call it a give away. Tomato tomahto.

Not one more dime.

What comes after the subsidized internet access?

Subsidized computers, to use the internet connection?

Instead of more free stuff, maybe incentivize small business internet providers in these rural areas, put folks, to work, build a small business, create opportunities for financial independence.

Shit my bad we’re talking about helping poor Americans, shame on me let me get the correct Democrat party thought, “they’re not China or illegal; FUCK THEM!!!!”

quote:

Subsidized computers, to use the internet connection?

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It is a massive 30 bucks per month. It would improve conditions in Smackover.

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:
What comes after the subsidized internet access?

Subsidized computers, to use the internet connection?

"What are we supposed to do w/ this internet majigy? We ain't got no com-puters."

Thankfully I now benefit from it.
For over 15 years My sister's house and mine had no land phone line or cable and 0-1 bar signal strength of 3G cell. We finally put Hughsnet in for internet but it was SO SLOW, forget trying to watch a YouTube video, and it didn't work with my cell phone for wireless calling so I still had to drive about a mile to get a cell signal strong enough to stay connected.

Then about once a year I'd get in the mail a survey from Prodigi (a local internet and TV provider) asking if I had internet, if so how well it worked. If not, or if it was very slow, how was it affecting me. I'd mention the lack of telephone, inability to do my banking on-line, etc. and send it in. They would then submit all the return info to whatever government dept (State of Federal) with their application for financial rural internet assistance to help them with the cost of running the cable. Plus I'd drop by their office and plead every so often. After about the forth year they finally came and ran fiber to our homes so I now have internet, and strong cell signal at least around the house.

I think it's a very beneficial program for people living in rural areas, I'm sure grateful for it.

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I am glad you have the program. Nice to hear something positive.

Sorry, but I think a lot of the high speed internet access dialog and programs are both stupid and way out of date. There are lots of areas of this country that it makes zero logistical and financial sense to build the infrastructure to support high speed internet. We need to move the conversation to discussing the future, something more like Musk's Starlink internet. As that product and others like it expand into the market, the overall price will come down offering almost everyone, regardless of location, access to the web. Then government can debate handouts for that service.

Starlink is a joke. It would work better if they weren't 15+ months behind on sending the stuff out.

When a municipality offers an ISP $2.200,000 to run fiber to 517 homes, the ISP says it is not worth their time. They were happier buying CNN (but not T-Mobile).