The federal government passed a bill with $42 billion in spending to bring high-speed internet service to almost everyone in the country who needs it but doesn’t have it. The money was allocated to states, and Michigan was approved for $1.5 billion in funding under the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment program, or BEAD, in 2021.

Yet as of last June, not a single person was hooked up and receiving service as a result of BEAD.

Why? Because the state government is inefficient. It aims to spend a lot of money yet is so beset by micromanagent that the money isn’t getting spent quickly or properly. Michigan’s draft of how to spend its allotment, urged on by federal rules, tries favor labor unions, establish price controls and send the money to public and nonprofit entities in areas already served with high-speed internet.

Michigan’s own broadband program, separate from the federal BEAD program, is stalled as well. ROBIN, as it is known, is set to spend $456 million, mostly in taxpayer money, but it has connected a mere 10,000 homes. These 10,000 connections cost $3,000 each just in state taxpayer spending. When funding from municipalities is figured in, every connection costs taxpayers $6,000 to $8,000.

Both BEAD and ROBIN favor one technology, which hampers internet deployment. These programs insist on using fiber internet technology to connect homes. Fiber wireline is the fastest internet we currently have, but it’s also (by far) the most expensive and the most time- consuming technology to install. The two government programs could have relied on satellites to provide unserved homes with pretty fast internet service now for a relatively low cost. Instead, officials insisted on fiber service connections that will not be available for years. The satellite internet provider Starlink, by contrast, has given more than 5 million people high-speed internet service since Congress appropriated BEAD funding.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said in a press release that high-speed internet is “a necessity to pay the bills, do homework, access telehealth services and so much more.” Yet, when state officials were pressed about why the state doesn’t make funds available for technologies other than fiber, they derided satellite as inferior.

Other states, recognizing that having very good internet service is better than not having any, are using satellite internet providers. Maine is buying Starlink equipment to service the 9,000 hardest-to-reach households. New Mexico is pursuing a similar deal to connect 95,000 households.

People all over the world are using Starlink to pay bills, do homework and access health care, but government officials are making the perfect the enemy of the good. And with the launch of Amazon’s Project Kuiper, satellite internet is likely only to get better. Michigan residents, however, are set to wait even longer as state and federal bureaucracies throw sand in the gears of technological advance.

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