The problems with U.S. broadband networks have been obvious for years. Service costs more than in many other rich nations, it still doesn’t reach tens of millions of Americans and the companies that provide it don’t face much competition.

Now the Biden administration is promising to do something about all of those issues as part of its proposed $2.3 trillion infrastructure package. The plan, which would devote $100 billion to get all Americans connected, is more idea than policy and lacks a lot of important detail.

But it sketches out a striking new vision of activist government measures intended to improve high-speed internet service, following decades in which the government has largely left the job to private companies.

It would spend $100 billion to “future-proof” broadband as part of an eight-year infrastructure plan, calling high-speed connections “the new electricity” that’s now a necessity for all Americans. (For history buffs, that’s a reference to the Rural Electrification Act — Depression-era legislation that sped the extension of power lines to farms and rural communities.)

It could signal a major policy shift toward lowering the high cost of internet service, rather than just handing money to broadband providers for building out networks. “Americans pay too much for internet,” the plan bluntly states.

America’s rural-internet policy has been an ongoing mistake, said Gigi Sohn, an official in the Obama-era FCC. “A lot of what we have is very slow,” she said. The White House now says it wants “future-proof” networks “in unserved and underserved areas,” so they don’t have to be rebuilt again years later because they’re out-of-date.

More at Associated Press.