Normally fractious tech executives agree: The nation needs broadband – 100 million connections by 2010 – and not at a piddling 0.5 or 1.5 Mbs, such as provided by most current technologies, but at blistering speed of 100 Mbs, such as can be provided by advanced fiberoptics. Furthermore, and more surprising, the companies agree that the basic method for achieving this goal should be less regulation and more reliance on market processes. There is no call for a “national broadband authority” or a new “broadband science institute.”
For six months, stories have circulated that equipment and software companies are growing increasingly annoyed about the stalemate over broadband deployment among local telecoms, long distance telecoms, cable companies, Congress, and the FCC. While communications companies block each other and government dithers, tech applications stall, sales stagnate, and stock prices languish. Expanding broadband connections, the companies theorize, would enable a host of entertainment, e-learning, security, telecommuting, and health applications, juicing demand for everything.
Now, the industry is rolling. This morning, TechNet, which “comprises more than 300 chief executive officers and senior partners of companies in the fields of information technology, biotechnology, venture capital, investment banking and law” released its paper on “A National Imperative: Universal Availability of Broadband by 2010, along with a media blitz. Yesterday, the Information Technology Association of America wrote the President about broadband, sending along a recent white paper. Next week, the Computer Systems Policy Project will bundle up CEOs Michael Dell (Dell), Craig Barrett (Intel), Chris Galvin (Motorola), and Lars Nyberg (NCR) to hit all the Washington bases – Congress, the Executive, and the press.
The gist of their thinking, as contained in TechNet’s paper, is that the government should:
One can quibble with some of this. We would go further, endorsing Tauzin-Dingell, but that bill is not going anywhere and action is moving to the FCC. Another issue: a goal of 100 million 100-Mbs connections by 2010 sounds like a Soviet five-year plan. The industry is trying to solve the chicken-egg problem that applications do not develop without connections and connections do not blossom without applications, but this problem will not be solved by arbitrary goals. If the players see that valuable applications are possible, and that broadband connections can be built at reasonable costs and revenues collected, and that the government will not foul it up by playing favorites, protecting incumbents, establishing monopolies, confiscating property and engaging in other nefarious activities that usually characterize telecommunications policy, then deployment will occur. If these conditions are not met, then arbitrary goals will not help, as the lesson of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 shows – can it be broken up?
On the whole, it is a good program.
And it is wonderful to see an industry deciding to stop trying to capture the government to use to dish competitors and, instead, bet its future on simple rules, deregulation, property rights, and the market.
Subscribe to C:\Spin
