Thanks to the Baller List, I ran across a great article on the political state of broadband in the US. – particularly rural US (Carlini’s Comments, MidwestBusiness.com’s)
His first paragraph says it all, “Where are the hot discussions about broadband deployment and regional economic sustainability in the presidential debates?”
Most of the candidates do have tech policies or statement and they are ably tracked by the folks at the WCA but none of the policies are particularly meaty. Well, maybe it’s more fair to say that none of them are very specific.
Carlini suggested adopting California’s “One Gigabit or Bust” [by 2010] goal, which sounds pretty good. He also suggests firing most of the FCC because they have lost touch with what’s required in the global economy to keep up with the rest of the world.
He suggests that the money that incumbent carriers give to the elections and lobbyists would be better spent upgrading their infrastructure, which I think is very true – but generally the case in any industry that spends so much money on politics.
Carlini also adds that, “There needs to be some serious investigation on why we have slipped so far into the digital desert where all levels of economic strata have been affected and not just those in the digital divide.” This I think is also very true for in some ways broadband might be the canary in the coalmine. If we’re slipping here, you know we’re slipping in other areas. This is also one area where I think we could regain some lost ground quickly if, as Carlini points out, people started paying attention and candidates starting pushing forward on the issue.
The final point that Carlini makes that I think it so astute is that we need to build broadband for tomorrow and not for today. “You don’t put enough in the ground for growth for only two years. You put into the ground enough so you do not have to retrench for 20 years.” That too is a truism across sectors. Too often I see that we’re building broadband or bridges for today. We seem unwilling to invest in required maintenance – we’d rather build a new road. Cynically I think it’s because no one is ever going to rename a road after the person who maintained it – but there is a chance with a new road. Broadband is even worse – we don’t name the infrastructure. The backbone is the backbone – it’s not AT&T’s OC12 or President Bush’s fiber ring. Maybe that’s the idea we need — we could auction off the naming rights for the Internet to get the funds required to build it up. It seems to work for stadiums.