Broadband Stimulus - Part 2

I don't often post on the same thing this quickly, but a combination of a busy day yesterday and updates to the topic forced this on me.

A NY Times article seems to point out some of the contradictions in the broadband stimulus part of the economic spending plan. I encourage you to read it.

There are three things it points out that I took to note:

1) "it will take at least until 2015 to spend all the money on infrastructure to deliver the service — vastly limiting the stimulating punch." - Where's the stimulus?

2) "$110 million in tax breaks in the Senate bill that could benefit large Internet service providers." - So we bail out the big guys again?

3) "The broadband effort also runs another risk inherent to government stimulus spending, by reducing private investment." - enough said

There is a discussion by a NC congressman about providing access to rural areas and bringing them onto an equal ground with more urban areas, especially in the areas of education, health care and apple pie (that last part is my add-in). I would ask the congressman, if he thinks it's such a good idea, why doesn't the state provide it? Why should this be a federal bail-out?

Broadband stimulus

One of the items in the current spending package (I've decided not to call it a stimulus package) is some funding to help provide more broadband Internet connectivity to rural areas. The idea is to wire areas to the Internet in much the way they were wired to electricity during the New Deal era.

But it also seems like before we start wiring up Ma & Pa Kettle's house, we ought to make sure they want to use broadband. A survey done by the Pew Internet & American Life Project says that 2/3 of Americans that don't have broadband today, don't want it. The problem isn't availability. The problem isn't price. They just don't see any reason for things to move faster than with their dial-up modems In fact, "19 percent of dial-up users, for example, say that 'nothing' would get them to upgrade, not even lower prices." (see here)

Now you may think this is crazy. You're reading my blog and probably have some sort of high speed connection. But you're not the one targeted by this. Who is? Why it's the big Internet companies who stand to make the most from it. So let's call this the Internet bail-out part of the current spending plan.

A better way to handle this is to let the Internet providers fight it out themselves for speed. Charter is hawking a super-fast 60Mbps downstream Internet services (I think I'm running at 3Mbps, maybe 5Mbps and it works fine for me). Verizon is upgrading it's FIOS and is drooling over the possibility of getting some bail-out money. (see here)

Another option for high-speed Internet is to use a "cellular" card or "air card" as it is sometimes called. These cards can be used almost anywhere. When I travel, I sometimes find that they are faster than the hotel's "high speed connection."

The broadband stimulus needs to be cut out of the economic spending plan