Starlink Proves That Taxpayer Money Spent On Rural Internet Was A Waste

I can’t help but notice that ever since Elon Musk put Starlink on the market that my crappy landline-based internet service — one that previously had no competition — improved, seemingly overnight.

For the past few years, my service through this private carrier, the name of which, for various reasons, I will not disclose, was sluggish. 

Zoom calls, which I have more than a few of every week, routinely conked out on me. Downloading videos for work took forever. 

As of a few weeks ago, my Zoom calls no longer conk out. Downloading material for my day job no longer takes an eternity. 

All of these sudden improvements occurred at roughly the same time the local electronic stores started selling Starlink satellite dishes. 

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The timing of these improvements that my landline carrier made is indeed suspicious. 

I suddenly remembered how I spent most of the 2010s writing relentlessly about a concept known as Government Owned Internet (GON). 

The concept involves taxpayer money paying to provide internet in rural areas where companies like AT&T or Comcast wouldn’t set up service because to do so was unprofitable. Many politicians during the preceding decade said that the internet is infrastructure, no different than interstates and electricity, and not a commodity you’re supposed to purchase through a private company. 

GONs brought the internet to rural America to supposedly attract more business and other private investments and stimulate their economies.   

GONs, however, don’t just exist in rural areas.

You can also find taxpayer-subsidized internet in more metropolitan areas. Local politicians justify this by saying that their constituents are fed up with customer service from large corporations like AT&T and Comcast. And, for the longest time, those companies — thanks to the government — functioned as monopolies. As a consequence, their customer service sucks. 

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Taxpayer-funded internet, politicians said, was necessary to compete with private providers. 

These types of GONs are either subsidized directly by taxpayer dollars or they are, often through public utilities, backed by the full faith and credit of the taxpayers. Private companies, of course, don’t enjoy that luxury. 

I examined the audits of many counties that provided taxpayer-subsidized internet. Almost every one of those audits reported that taxpayers lost money…and vast amounts of it at that. 

Nevertheless, public utility directors, city council members, county commissioners, state legislators, etc. all told me that good intentions mattered most, and, if taxpayer money was lost, then so be it. Think about it. No private internet service provider has that luxury. 

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But my thinking about the new Starlink technology also prompted another memory.

In 2015 I had a conversation with a local businessman who made his living as an internet service provider (ISP). He did not work for any corporation. This ISP that he ran was really just a small mom and pop type operation that catered to people in his county.

He told me that the competition from GONs was killing his business. The man, again, in 2015, also told me that in 10 years’ time all rural areas that wanted the internet would have it thanks to satellite technology. He also told me that all of that government investment — hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars — would be all for naught. The private carriers would provide vastly better service than any government provider ever could. 

That same man passed away seven ago. As far as what would happen in 2025, he knew precisely what he was talking about. 

Competition makes everything better. Starlink will make life better for millions of people.

And the government has no right to take taxpayer money and use it to compete against a private business. 

Special thanks to Warhammer’s Wife for proofreading this story before publication to make certain there were no misspellings, grammatical errors or other embarrassing mistakes and/or typos. Follow Warhammer on X @Real_Warhammer. Read Warhammer’s stories on The Hayride by clicking here.