Earlier this week, I was on a phone call with Jonathan Chambers. His frankness is always refreshing. Between vaccines and dentist appointments, I was trying to write up a summary of what he has said and find a way to bring it up here. He saved me the effort in his new post, How the FCC wasted $45 billion on rural “broadband” and what the current FCC/Congress/Administration should have learned.

Here are the highlights…

• Lesson Number 1: The digital divide was not a consequence of rural economics; it has been the policy of the federal government.
• Lesson Number 2: Restricting funding to incumbents is a good way to protect incumbents and a bad way to do anything else.
• Lesson Number 3: Proprietary tools and decisions by two or three people should not be the basis to determine how public funding will be spent across the nation. It’s time to open up the mapping, modeling and funding mechanism to the public.