Thanks to Jamie for sending me the following article: WiMAX Blog US Telecom infrastructure “deficient”, too

It’s an interesting look at the need to invest in infrastructure. It starts with comparing broadband infrastructure to road repair – or really to the 35W Bridge collapse a few weeks ago.

I live a couple of miles from the 35W Bridge. I used to drive under it every day to get to and from work. I am fortunate in that I didn’t know anyone on the bridge when it went down.

Here’s the obvious statement of the day – bridges shouldn’t go down. We have the technology. The reports have indicated that the bridge was known to be “structurally deficient”. And yet, not enough was done to repair or rebuild it. (Now maybe time will tell that nothing more could have been done – but right now it doesn’t really look that way.)

It seems, as article above outlines, that broadband infrastructure is no more stable in most communities.

“Almost all cities and towns across the nation rely on one hub or Central Office (CO), meaning that if that hub were to be destroyed, that city would lose all land line telephone connectivity with the outside world.”

I worked for MRNet in the 1995, when a fire under the Washington Bridge (very near the 35W bridge) essentially took out the link from Minnesota to the rest of the world. It was a huge pain the rear – but I’d venture to say that an outage like that now would be much more costly and destructive.

This article touts WiMAX as an answer. And it may be. But more than anything I enjoyed the article as a wake up call to start looking into investment in infrastructure. Reports show that the US technology rank is slipping. We have the technology (several technologies) to leap frog us back into the game, we just need to recognize the need for investment.