Having repeated the oft-used phrase about how small expenditures add up to big ones, in this case I believe it's an expenditure that should be made.

The internet is an important element of what can make our economy more competitive. Installing the infrastructure to make such access available to more people and businesses is almost certainly more efficiently and quickly accomplished with one countrywide effort than relying on a hodge-podge of various levels of government and/or competing sources in the private sector to accomplish over an unspecified longer period of time. Almost certainly, large parts of the country would be by-passed by reliance on local public/private efforts because of an inadequate number of potential users or insufficient local funding to pay for it.

The proposed project will amount to .00686% of the federal budget. It seems to me that at that price it's a bargain.