(Review & Outlook, Oct. 5) is real. Few American households live in areas without access to broadband in the first place. In its 2021 Broadband Deployment Report, the Federal Communications Commission found that 99.4% of the U.S. population in 2019 lived in areas that met the FCCs broadband definition for either fixed or mobile services. The remaining 0.6%, roughly 770,000 households, who lacked access to broadband were mostly in the rural West or Alaska.
The 2021 infrastructure law allocated $42.5 billion to areas unserved by broadband. That is more than $55,000 for each unserved household in 2019. Many would have chosen a check for $50,000 rather than a new government service.
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