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How is it inefficient? This is the whole point of government: how much economic activity is happening over 56k? Virtually none. You could make the same argument
by bastawhiz 1mo ago
How is it inefficient? This is the whole point of government: how much economic activity is happening over 56k? Virtually none. You could make the same argument for paving the street and repairing the sidewalk in front of your house. Chances are the property taxes from the average single family home don't cover just the basic street repairs, let alone all the other services your local government provides. Yet we do it, because it turns out that having a happy, well-served population by way of redistributing wealth through services is a generally good thing.
- Always42 1mo agoIf we assume $20k to run the fiber, you could do starlink for a long time. There are internet options other than fiber. Unless there is no other options in France than fiber. What if France got a contract with starlink? Brought the cost down of that.
- rescbr 1mo agoWhy do you assume $20k as the cost to run the fiber? The cost is the contractor's hours to get up a ladder on each electricity pole from the closest PON splitter to the customer's home, plus the fiber itself which is peanuts at volume. Everything else (permits, pole rent, etc) is accounting money that can be negotiated. If there's a strategic national program to fiber up the whole country, this could be exempted on a pen's stroke, or depreciated in many decades.
- well_ackshually 1mo agoYeah, I'd absolutely _love_ that my tax money goes to funding a US company. What could go wrong with depending on a hostile country for someone as basic as Internet ? If I found out my government blew 20k to slobber on Musk's balls instead of using that money to create work for our own people, I'd personally go blow up that antenna.
- bastawhiz 1mo agoWhy should Starlink get that business? Why shouldn't France run its own fiber that it controls that isn't dependent on a US-based corporation? And you said it yourself: Starlink already exists. They don't need a subsidy. You bring the cost of Starlink down by forcing them to compete on the merits of their own service, not by throwing money at them.
- edhelas 1mo agoStarlink goes out of business and ... you don't have Internet anymore. The local fiber guy goes out of business... you still have the fiber line there. Its investment, not subscription.