The Biden administration's initiative to improve high-speed internet access across the US is needed to lower bills and reduce inequality, a tech expert says.
The bipartisan bill would allocate $42 billion for improved connectivity in areas currently without fast fibreoptic connections.
Technologist Chris Garaffa told Sputnik that the infrastructure project was "so late, but it is welcome nonetheless."
The tech pundit stressed how the money would be divided between the 50 US states and its other territories.
"Texas, for example, will get $3 billion of this money. It's a significant amount of money going to Texas, which says a lot about how the Texas government has not taken care of, making sure that its residents have the right to Internet access," Garaffa said.
"Where a lot of these projects actually need to be built is in especially in rural areas, getting the cable connection, the physical wires, in most cases out to people's homes," he explained "And that's where the US has really fallen down."
He said most of the grants would go to local telecoms firms, including phone and cable providers — which could break the big monopolies.
"A vast majority of the country can only access the Internet through one company, which means that company, whether it's Comcast, AT&T, gets to decide the pricing of the Internet service," Garaffa said. "With no competition and very little to no regulation from the government, they get to decide how much you pay for Internet access."
Garaffa argued the roll-out would help reduce social inequality, which he said was highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown when schools were closed and children had to learn remotely.
"We saw during the most intense parts of the COVID 19 pandemic, the effects of the digital divide, where in poor neighborhoods students were just missing school entirely because they didn't have an Internet connection at home to sign onto Zoom or they didn't even have a computer." he said. "They were just using their phone or their parents phone or a tablet, so they couldn't complete their homework."
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