This Convicted Felon Gets $1 Million a Year to Sell Obsolete Internet Service. You Pay for It.

In Alaska, where many communities can only be reached by plane or boat, the Federal Communications Commission has given telecommunications companies $4.6 billion in Universal Service Fund subsidies since 2016. That’s more than $600 per Alaskan per year. More per resident than in any other state. Yet after all that spending, Alaska still ranks near the bottom for access to the very land-based, high-speed internet service the money was meant to deliver. Some communities have yet to be wired at all. In others, fiber-optic cables or microwave towers offer internet with speeds that were recently clocked, statewide, as the slowest in the country. Even with the subsidies, the service comes at a steep price to customers: often hundreds of dollars a month for internet one-tenth what the FCC considers broadband quality.