Some might say $7 million per home seems a bit pricey, but to those cynics we say money is no object when it comes to bringing high speed porn to rural areas of this fine nation.
Forbes.com has the disturbing details:
Eisenach and Caves looked at three areas that received stimulus funds, in the form of loans and direct grants, to expand broadband access in Southwestern Montana, Northwestern Kansas, and Northeastern Minnesota. The median household income in these areas is between $40,100 and $50,900. The median home prices are between $94,400 and $189,000.
$94,000 for a house? Hell, that may be the real story in this story. $94K isn’t even a down payment here in California.
So how much did it cost per unserved household to get them broadband access? A whopping $349,234, or many multiples of household income, and significantly more than the cost of a home itself.
Sadly, it’s actually worse than that. Take the Montana project. The area is not in any meaningful sense unserved or even underserved. As many as seven broadband providers, including wireless, operate in the area. Only 1.5% of all households in the region had no wireline access. And if you include 3G wireless, there were only seven households in the Montana region that could be considered without access. So the cost of extending access in the Montana case comes to about $7 million for each additional household served.
Of course, the Obama administration was terribly disappointed by the $7 million figure. They were confident the number would come in much, much higher.
Source: Forbes.com
