> But during the Obama administration, the FCC determined repeatedly that broadband isn't reaching Americans fast enough, pointing in particular to lagging deployment in rural areas.
No skin off my back. I already have internet service significantly better than the FCC broadband definition, and my core concern in this space is net neutrality. Rural areas are the ones that will be negatively affected by this kind of policy change in the coming years. You get what you vote for in this case.
How many customers have trouble accessing your website or service? How many potential customers, vendors, partners, employees etc have limited education and income because they lack basic resources?
Rural areas went strongly for Trump and the Republicans, and now Republican appointees are making policy decisions that will have negative effects on those areas. The conclusion I draw from this is that those voters either don't care about their internet speeds, or they do but value other things more and vote with those in mind (or maybe they think the market will take care of it). Regardless, they're getting what they voted for, and it doesn't affect me.
Side note - the US population is heavily urban/suburban, so even if I was running some kind of internet-based business, the loss from ignoring/losing rural areas is something like ~25% of the population; imo it doesn't really matter that much.
An alternative might be that they are slowing independent media penetration in rural areas. If internet speeds are ~ 1-2 mbps then streaming HD isn't smooth, but all the digital over the air broadcast FOX / NBC / ABC are available in HD for free.
No skin off my back. I already have internet service significantly better than the FCC broadband definition, and my core concern in this space is net neutrality. Rural areas are the ones that will be negatively affected by this kind of policy change in the coming years. You get what you vote for in this case.