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Broadband: Moving from short-term stimulus to long-term policy
Tech policy wonks and savvier media types are shifting their focus from the $7.5 billion set aside for broadband in the economic stimulus package and looking forward to how the Obama administration should move forward for future investments in broadband.
A report released today by the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) "The Need for Speed: The Importance of Next-Generation Broadband Networks," makes a case for higher-speed broadband everywhere with speeds of at least 20 Mbps downstream and 10 Mpbs or more upstream. Doing so would provide economic and social benefits, says ITIF.
Public policy needs to support more broadband and faster broadband everywhere, and the Universal Service Fund (USF) may get a makeover once nominated FCC Chairman and basketball buddy Julius Genachowski takes charge.
One suggestion anticipated to create heartburn is the idea that communities should "embrace" private sector competition, rather than build their own expensive "third pipes." Advocates argue that a straight-up duopoly between incumbent phone and cable companies hasn't done so well in less sizable markets for lowering prices or fostering more rapid high-speed broadband deployment.
Interestingly, one of the members of the board at ITIF is Obama transition co-chair and Genachowski buddy Blair Levin. Hmm and hmm, I say.
For more:
- Wall Street Journal blog.
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Final broadband stimulus figure: $7.2 billion - FierceTelecom
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Comments
Posted by Rick Junzhou | April 28, 2009 - 10:04am
I slogged through the BTOP RFI mega page. The vast majority of it was people saying Broadband is good. The actual RFI asked for specific ways to solve the problem and raise the level of Mbps for the rural community. The number of actual solutions offered was woefully small. One stood out from the crowd. A company Called Telepulse Technologies actually offered what looked to me like an action plan that would level the broadband playing field and raise the standards for EVERYONE. It was based on some wiz-bang they created called DTMD. I do not know if this DTMD works or where it works and where it doesn’t but it looked like radically more Mbps for radically less $$$. Rather than shovel out billions to the usual suspects and get the usual non-results why not take a look at new technologies like this one. Even if we are wrong on this we can stimulate some actual new ideas for the phone system. Stimulus…get it
Posted by Tom Scott | April 9, 2009 - 11:54am
To quote our former president, "I'm conflicted, Hillary." On the one hand, I want the incumbents to survive and thrive. They have the expertise to build out the broadband networks. Who can do it better? On the other hand, the incumbents have proven that they're not so much interested in blasting into the next orbit but rather in how much of the pie they can continue to control. I wonder, is there some way we can have taht pie and eat it too? Can competitive service providers and dark fiber motivate the incumbents to grow bandwidth and fulfill Tim Berners-Lee's vision of net neutrality whereby customers pay for QoS and bandwidth rather than services? Can't we figure out how we all, including investors in incumbent stock, can benefit? Otherwise we're doomed to stay on the same road we've been on, just like the diamond industry, where prices are pumped up because supply is damped down. There's got to be a new model that can be deveoloped for net neutrality and explosive growth of bandwidth and services. Those services don't all have to be network-centric IMS. They can just as well come from open networks with gigabit bandwidth that would be profitable for the incumbents to provide.... I know: Dream on, Macduff. The decades-old diamond model of telecommuncations scarcity is not about to die an easy death.
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