How government fails

Overpromise and underdeliver.

We moved to Delaware in 2019, trading a suburban-style location where we were renting for our American Dream: taking advantage of good interest rates and buying a house out in the country where the taxes are lower and we’re not on top of our neighbors. I’ve told you about our situation before, way back about when I started this here Substack:

One of those things I noted when I wrote that over a year ago:

I’m not going to say it’s the perfect place to live in terms of modern conveniences, particularly as we impatiently wait for the state-promised broadband internet to arrive, but the attitude of people out here more than makes up for that.

Well, we’re still waiting impatiently, and that’s the subject of this lengthy post.

We exist right now with an internet provider who uses cell phone signal to supply our needs, sort of like a phone-based hotspot on steroids. (Initially, when we moved out here, we used that hotspot a lot because the internet was REALLY slow. It’s gotten a little better since then, but not much.)

It’s interesting because I’ve casually followed the news from Delaware since 2015, when I took a job up here. Since then, my spouse has gained employment in Delaware while I (ironically) took my current job back in Maryland. Regardless, I paid attention when the current governor, John Carney, made this statement in July of 2018:

Over the next two years, working with partners in the private sector, we plan to eliminate broadband deserts and ensure that every Delaware citizen and business has access to high-speed broadband service.

(…)

Over the next two years, we will directly confront this issue, eliminate those deserts, and make high-speed internet a reality for all Delawareans. That will help all Delawareans connect and compete in a new economy, and help move our entire state forward. (Emphasis in original.)

I don’t know about you, but to me that means the task would have been completed in 2020. But today is August 23, 2023 and here I am with slow internet.

Let’s move the clock forward to 2019. The state put out its RFP, and selected a company called Bloosurf to partner with in providing fixed wireless broadband as a solution, stating:

This current phase of the project is focused on fixed wireless solutions provided by public–private partnership opportunities to capitalize on the strengths of the both sectors to address gaps in broadband availability throughout Delaware.

So when we moved here in 2019 I dutifully checked into whether Bloosurf could provide service, since they operate out of Salisbury and do business in both Maryland and Delaware. Unfortunately, I live about 6 miles from their closest tower and there were no plans to build additional towers in the surrounding towns, including the town in Maryland I live two miles away from.

Thus, that wasn’t an option so I signed up with the cell-based service I use now, figuring the situation would be resolved soon enough. Besides, I know people who live right by the Bloosurf tower who say their service sucks.

Then came the scamdemic, which we will come back to in due course. Undaunted, Delaware was still trying to work things out. A year after we moved in, I saw this release from the state:

In an effort to improve broadband services across the entire state, the Delaware Department of Technology and Information (DTI) is partnering with CTC Technology and Energy to conduct a statewide speed survey.

(…)

This information will be used to develop a statewide strategic plan to address rural and urban broadband challenges.

So are you telling me you signed this “public-private partnership” contract and it’s not working out? I thought you guys said this would be done by 2020. Well, time’s a-wastin’.

Apparently, two things happened in the interim: we had the scamdemic and the federal government decided to turn on the money spigots full force. So they decided to help us out - here’s the release from September, 2021. (Remember, we’re now 14 months past when the job was supposed to be finished. Well, maybe it was, but half-assed doesn’t count in my book.)

Oh, were they excited:

Governor John Carney, Lieutenant Governor Bethany Hall-Long, U.S. Senator Tom Carper, U.S. Representative Lisa Blunt Rochester, members of the General Assembly, and the Delaware Department of Technology and Information (DTI) on Thursday announced a $110 million investment to cover every “last mile” of Delaware with high-speed, wireline broadband internet service.  

The broadband infrastructure investment – funded by the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), which was signed into law on March 11 by President Joe Biden – aims to make Delaware the first state to provide wireline broadband access to every Delaware home and business.  

Isn’t that what they promised three years before? Okay, now it’s “wireline” so all of us would be on cable. It was $110 million handed over to the state, so that should do the trick, right?

So let’s move the timeline forward to March, 2022. More big news: the state is handing $56 million out to three current broadband providers to extend their service areas. Comcast, Mediacom, and Verizon have to collectively chip in $19 million themselves, but it’s a doable task, right?

Governor John Carney and State Chief Information Officer Jason Clarke of the Department of Technology and Information (DTI) on Thursday announced $56 million in Broadband Infrastructure Grants to begin making high-speed wired broadband connections available to every Delaware home. The award recipients, Comcast, Verizon and Mediacom, are current State of Delaware service providers with existing broadband infrastructure that responded to a grant application released in October 2021. The three companies will extend their existing coverage areas to serve more than 11,600 Delaware homes and businesses which do not have access to high-speed, wired broadband service. Construction is expected to begin in the next few weeks.

(…)

Over the next 36 months, Comcast, Verizon and Mediacom will build out and extend current infrastructure to deliver fixed, wireline internet access with transmission speeds that, at a minimum, provide 100 megabits per second (100 Mbps) download and 20 megabits per second (20 Mbps) upload.

Well, better late than never, right? Given that we are literally right across the road from what’s listed as a Comcast service area and live in a cluster of about 15 houses along our side of the road and half a mile down the road from a sizeable subdivision, I figured we should be among the first in line - even if not, 2025 isn’t that far away.

And then we had this, as the state made an announcement this June about another $107 million of our great-great-great grandkids’ money being thrown at us.

Governor John Carney and Lt. Governor Bethany Hall-Long on Monday announced $107 million in federal funding to reach our goal of connecting every Delaware home and business to high-speed internet.

Funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) is a federal grant program that aims to get all Americans online by supporting partnerships between states or territories, communities, and stakeholders to build infrastructure where needed and increase adoption of high-speed internet. BEAD prioritizes reaching unserved locations that have no internet access or have internet speeds under 25/3 Mbps, with the next priority being underserved locations that have internet speeds under 100/20 Mbps.

(…)

Delaware is currently in the process connecting more than 6,000 homes and businesses over 18 months – with 3,100 already complete – using prior federal funding from President Biden’s American Rescue Plan Act.

“Once we reach the 6,000 addresses currently under way, there will still be nearly 15,000 Delaware homes and businesses – mostly in the rural areas of our state – that either have no access to internet or access below useable levels. Those 15,000 homes and businesses are the ones that will be helped by this $107 million BEAD investment.

So let’s see now. We started out with 11,600 homes, but now we’re closer to 21,000. And that $56 million of federal dough they already fronted has done less than half of the initial job. (Which leaves the question of what happened to the other $54 million?) Now we’re going to spend $107 million more?

And there’s more bad news. Those recipients of BEAD funding - which indeed covers an area down the road from me as well as across the road in what I thought was Comcast-served territory? According to the state, their funding implementation will be between 2025 and 2028! Last I checked, 2028 is eight years after the promised date of 2020.

Luckily, I’m not in the BEAD sector. But leave it to the state to not tell us what’s going on.

Back in December of 2020 there was an auction sponsored by the federal government for what they called the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF), which determined eligible areas. I’m on the fringe of one of those, so my house, the cluster of houses previously described, and the subdivision I told you about are in one of those “eligible areas.” All along, however, I was assuming that I was part of the state broadband program and it wasn’t until a broadband meeting I attended back this past March that I learned I was in a federally-funded RDOF area.

In the release describing the auction, there’s a little confusion. On the one hand, they say, “A total of 180 bidders won auction support, to be distributed over the next 10 years.” Ten years?!? That’s the end of 2030!!!

However, a few paragraphs later it states, “Providers must meet periodic buildout requirements that will require them to reach all assigned locations by the end of the sixth year. They are incentivized to build out to all locations as fast as possible.” This pushes the timeline up to 2027, but still: we were promised this for 2020.

And Lord knows how much federal money will be involved when this is all said and done. The “official” amount is already over $200 million, but it sounds like a large portion is this is subsidies for buying votes from those who supposedly can’t afford internet. (If you can’t find $90 a month, you’re probably doing it wrong. That’s a part-time day’s pay at a $15 an hour minimum wage.)

Since I live in the area served by Delaware Electric Cooperative, I’m sure it was the federal government that supported this part of the world getting electricity in the 1930s. (I’m guessing at the time it was pretty much random farmhouses up and down the gravel or dirt roads of the day.) Maybe it took awhile, but I suspect the co-ops worked with a little more alacrity because there were fewer palms to grease and votes to buy with the graft. (And note: their related electric co-op in Maryland just across the border got a state law passed to allow them to add to their existing infrastructure as a means of providing high-speed internet. Why didn’t Delaware use this approach?)

For something the state said was so important and a priority, it sure doesn’t seem like they’re moving too swiftly getting the rural areas what was promised. But I’ll bet those subsidies to the city slickers came in a hurry.

Overpromise and underdeliver: that’s the story of government work.