The Trump administration is telling states they will be shut out of a $42 billion broadband deployment fund if they set the rates that Internet service providers receiving subsidies are allowed to charge people with low incomes.

The latest version of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) FAQ on the grant program, released today, is a challenge to states considering laws that would force Internet providers to offer cheap plans to people who meet income eligibility guidelines. One state already has such a law: New York requires ISPs with over 20,000 customers in the state to offer $15 broadband plans with download speeds of at least 25Mbps, or $20-per-month service with 200Mbps speeds.

  • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    The “forgotten man”.

    What happened to that and the way all these red-pilled choads appropriated that? Oh right, it is bullshit just like all the other bullshit from Taco and his fellow criminals.

    • blitzen@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Well, states are still free to do as they wish if they are okay not receiving money from this fund.

      Lots of stupid going on with this, but I wouldn’t consider it a violation of the tenth amendment.

      • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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        1 year ago

        That’s not the argument Republicans make. They say using federal funding to influence state decisions is violating the rights of the state to make decisions for itself. This isn’t a legal argument, but an ethical one. They aren’t claiming actual constitutional violations, rather a violation of the spirit of state independence.

        I agree with a lot of this opinion, if they were making it in good faith. However, they obviously are not, as usual. They want states to be free to make decisions about not providing education to children, but they should be forced to not allow people to choose to have abortions, for example. If they were consistent it wouldn’t create so many issues, but they just want to enforce their views on others.

      • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Don’t pretend for even a second that this could be applied to anything Republicans like. They’d scream “state’s rights!” and block it.

  • TrackinDaKraken@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Small consolation, but I expect Trump voters will be disproportionally affected.

    The states and ISPs need to make noise about this, so MAGA knows what they’re missing.

    • A_norny_mousse@feddit.org
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      1 year ago

      The (…) ISPs need to make noise about this

      Will they though? The way I see it, isn’t it much nicer for them to bag the subsidies and maximize profit.

      • Jay@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        He= Christian Nationalists. Project 2025 didn’t come from his delusional mind, he’s just the one with the keys.

      • JohnnyFlapHoleSeed@lemmy.worldBanned
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        1 year ago

        Yeah, he’s not just grifting this time, he’s actively working against the American people and their interests, as well as our nations. It’s the literal definition of treason

        • Blooper@lemmynsfw.com
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          1 year ago

          There is nothing you’ve said that can’t be applied to virtually every decision he’s made since getting back into office. Plenty of it is grift. Most of it is fulfilling the wishes of giant corporations and the GOP. It just so happens that the interests of those two groups almost never align with those of the American citizens or even his most ardent supporters.

  • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    Lmfao or what

    Also, this is transparently an effort to push people towards Starlink. They are trying to holistically control the flow of information to as great a proportion of the population that they can.

  • Australis13@fedia.io
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    1 year ago

    They’re probably trying to stop low-income people from having some means of learning about the world (at least until the Trump Administration manages to control their part of the Internet like China does) and reducing their ability to organise en masse.

  • aramis87@fedia.io
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    1 year ago

    We’ve already paid for nationwide broadband, and the corpos took the money, did a fraction of the work, and called it done. I don’t see what this latest infusion of cash-to-corpos is going to do for the average Joe.

    • Bytemeister@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      We didn’t just pay for it, we also gave up the public TV spectrum in order to make it happen. That’s why your old-school TV antennas won’t work anymore.

      • JcbAzPx@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Technically the antennas work, it’s the old tuners that don’t. Plug rabbit ears into a smart TV you’ll get whatever stations are left now.

    • floofloof@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      The USA isn’t run by or for the average Joe. Average Joes are human resources to be mined, plundered, exploited and discarded as their rulers see fit.

  • mazzilius_marsti@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    man the prices below are disgusting and this is just the home internet. I used to pay $40 - $50 / month with BrightHouse. If we want higher speed, my roomates would chip in and the total price is at max $90/month. After they turn to greedy Spectrum, the price jumped to $80/ month for slow speed. It was so expensive so we didnt go with higher speed…

    I thought that was expensive so I decided to ditch broadband and only use my phone. This was when carriers still had truly unlimited data. Well, things worked for a while until they decided to kill that too with BS feature, i.e. you’re still unlimited but we’ll slow you down if you hit the limit. I paid no minds to this at first, but then the 2G was so slow that you couldnt do anything.

  • mazzilius_marsti@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Pay higher so we can be tracked like in FL, where you have to show ID to watch porn?

    What a fucking joke

    BTW, whats the typical price for internet access these days in the US? Havent been there since 2024.

    • doughless@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I pay $140/mo for ~300 down / 100 up. I found another provider with similar bandwidth for $50/mo, but I self-host a couple things, and they wouldn’t assign me an IPv6 prefix or allow port forwarding. Also, my son complained because his games had 70 ms ping on the less expensive provider.

      Edit: I’m in a big city, I think it’s even worse in rural areas.

      • DannyMac@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        $90/mo for 1Gbps up and down for me in a 30k town for me. I also have two fiber providers, one cable, and wireless as options. I realize I’m more of the exception than the rule. When I first moved here, 50Mbps cable was my only option.

      • bruce965@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        If post-forwarding is an issue, you can always use a free VPN to reach your self-hosted services. Or if you want to keep them public, you can set up yourself a relay on AWS LightSail for less than 5$/month. Or if you want to save as much as possible you can use TailScale or CloudFlare’s Zero Trust network to self-host for free using their server as a relay.

        • Spice Hoarder@lemmy.zip
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          1 year ago

          I’ve been port forwarding for decades at this point. I just recently found out about tunneling your traffic through relays like that. Pretty neat stuff. Glad I can finally ditch my isp and switch to another without worrying about their port forwarding policies

      • Kirp123@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Wow. I live in Denmark and I pay 150 dollars every 4 months for 1Gb up and down.

        You guys are getting scammed in the US.

        • doughless@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I already have my own router, but they do NAT from the modem with no way to switch to bridge mode.

          • Bytemeister@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Ah, fucking assholes.

            I had to call my ISP because I specifically requested a modem only, no router, and they gave me one of their stupid locked-down combo units.

            If you bitch enough, they will relent.

            • doughless@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              This was T-Mobile 5G internet, and they only had one modem available. I never bothered looking for my own 5G modem (assuming T-Mobile would even allow BYOD), because my son was already complaining about his ping. And even then, they would still only assign a single IPv6 instead of the full /64 prefix I get with my current provider.