Last year the Federal Government gave millions of dollars to telecommunications companies to improve the high speed Internet connection to rural zip codes. The money was first set aside after the mortgage collapse of 2008. It was part of the stimulation package. The idea is to give the telecos money so that they can build out Internet connections to areas under served with Internet. Then they can charge their new customers lots of money and pay their executives even more money.
Most of the major players in telecom are getting a pretty big slice of the pie. Some of the top recipients of Connect America Funding are:
Telephone, Internet and video provider AT&T, who gets about $427 million annually so that AT&T can provide broadband to 2.2 million locations in 18 states. Oh, and it will probably help them buy Time Warner.
CenturyLink accepted $500 million from Connect America, helping CenturyLink provide high-speed Internet to locations in 33 states. That makes over a million households and businesses all told, and over half of them have speeds of 20 Mbps or more.
Frontier provides phone, Internet and other services, mostly in Texas, California and Florida. They are getting almost $300 million a year from Connect America. They reported that they now provide 331,000 small businesses broadband as a result of the program. They have also improved speeds to 875,000 homes and businesses.
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