Everyone has some plan to spend money for broadband now that the BTOP is out there.  Much of the broadband problem revolves around lack of fiber. There's no conduit and no fiber, so what do you do?

This one blog post explains the conduit and fiber access dilemma and how if it is not addresses will create problems down the road. 

Then you have a couple of Congresspeople pushing a bill to build conduit into any highway expenditures. Except the Highway Trust Fund is broke.

Maybe we need to stop looking at the federal government for broadband deployment and start looking at the business plan for after you sink all those assets in the ground. Need we forget that there is plenty of fiber in the ground from companies that have long been forgotten that lies unused (because no one knows where it is, where it goes or who owns it). 

At the end of the day, there needs to be a business plan that allows for sustainable broadband. Paying for the network usage and maintanence.

The USF contribution is now 12.9%!! WTH?  That is too much. And that doesn't include the companies that will take loans or grants under BTOP and go under (never to pay it back or deliver service). What will USF look like in 2 years?

Meanwhile, you have the NTCA saying that Google and content providers should pay into USF. Excuse me? They do pay into USF on transport billing. 

What do they think people want the broadband for? Email? Bell-heads need to figure out what happens when the system they love crashes. What happens when the Universal Service Fund collapses upon itself? Most ILEC's, including VZ and ATT, get millions from the fund.  Millions of my fee dollars go back to prop up an unsustainable system.