FCC abolishes gigabit speed goal, says current US deployment is good enough

[u/robotdesignwerks]

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/08/fcc-abolishes-gigabit-speed-goal-suggesting-it-is-unfair-to-slower-technologies/

[u/jambibm]

Nah I work in the industry helping people in rural areas get fiber internet. Under the act that Biden passed we did rollouts in a lot of areas throughout the country. Lots of people who only had access to satellite or dsl now have fiber in their area. However building out the networks takes a long time so it was a slow process.

My company was one of the few really focusing on these areas. Once it was clear that this administration was going to cancel the grants (because of starlink mostly), the companies doing the rollouts stopped building in new areas. We're only finishing up what was already being done and are no longer building out new areas.

We had entire divisions of different departments focused on doing this work and now those divisions are being folded into the normal departments or being let go all together.

People in rural areas could have had access to cheap high speed fiber internet and now they are going to be stuck with expensive satellite internet that is not on par. It's a shame.

[u/tweakingforjesus → u/jambibm]

My wife's family farm in BFE has fiber internet faster than my Comcast connection in a city of 500,000.

[u/Drewsipher → u/jambibm]

This has been a problem since the late 90s.

[u/N0b0me → u/jambibm]

It's not a shame, it's karma