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Partisan and legislative difficulties aside, proper continental broadband at reasonable prices seems like it would be a significant public good.

I wonder what impacts other readers think it might have, or non-obvious opportunities it could open up that are impractical at present. I'd rather not get sidetracked into discussion of past policy sins or whether the current FCC commissioner is doing a good job etc. etc.

The chances of this actually changing anything are slim to none.
You posted the exact same line on the Susan Fowler story
We've been through this before and it really didn't pan out. [1] The idea of connecting rural communities with broadband sounds logical and a no-brainer, but it's a lot harder than it sounds because it's very local, and cost overruns and price inflation really hampered it.[2] To truly bring broadband to rural and poor areas, in my humble opinion, we need to free up local municipalities and states to start their own broadband companies where none currently exist - and we need an absolute hard minimum on speed to at least 5 MBPS.

1. www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/07/01/obama.broadband.connection/index.html 2. https://www.forbes.com/sites/nickschulz/2011/07/05/how-effec...

who cares about rural broadband? let's get decent internet in populated areas first
Presumably people in rural areas care about rural broadband.
How nice of trump to throw his base a bone that after taking away their health insurance the rurals can still consult webMD