https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210125/06513646111/broadband-monopolies-keep-getting-money-networks-never-fully-deployed.shtml

As we've noted a few times, there's an underlying belief in American tech policy that if we just keep throwing money at entrenched broadband monopolies we can lift US broadband out of the depths of mediocrity. But as we've noted more than a few times, heavily subsidizing a bunch of regional monopolies, while not doing anything about the conditions that created and insulate those monopolies, doesn't result in much changing. It's especially ineffective when you don't really punish ISPs for decades of taking taxpayer money in exchange for network upgrades that almost always, like clockwork, wind up unfinished.

The latest case in point: in 2015, regional monopolies CenturyLink and Frontier Communications took nearly $800 million in taxpayer funds to expand broadband to underserved areas they deemed too expensive to wire themselves. And guess what happened: