Bill St. Arnaud recently pointed to an Educause whitepaper: A Blueprint for Big Broadband in the US.
The paper strikes me as alarmist right from the opening lines.
The United States is facing a crisis in broadband connectivity. The demand for bandwidth is accelerating well beyond the capacity of our current broadband networks, especially as video traffic and homeābased businesses become more prevalent. In the very near future, a single family will be watching HDTV video at the same that they engage in remote health monitoring, videoconferencing, gaming, distance education class lectures, and social networking.
The authors seem to feel no compulsion to be factually accurate, completely ignoring Verizon’s fibre to the home initiative and the cable industry’s investments in advancing higher speed internet access services, such as those first announced by Videotron, but coming to all major cable systems:
While other nations are preparing for the future, the United States is not. Most developed nations are deploying ābig broadbandā networks (100 Mbps) that provide faster connections at cheaper prices than those available in the United States.
Like New York Governor Spitzer, this January 2008 report points to Canada as a shining light:
The paper recommends the publicāprivate partnership approach followed in Canada, where oneāthird of the funding would be provided by the federal government, oneāthird by the states, and the remaining one-third by the private and / or public sector.
Bill St. Arnaud correctly points out that public private partnerships are hardly a guarantee of success.
Several municipal and government funded broadband initiatives are in already in trouble such as Utopia, Philadelphia WiFi and South Dundas (which is paradoxically is cited as good example in this paper).
Allow me to digress a moment.
I was at a meeting last week for a volunteer organization that was looking to get more involved in advocacy for social action causes. Among the issues that we plan to address is child poverty and the working poor in families led by single women. Almost immediately, there was a call for minimum wages to be raised. I objected to advocating such a subject. Raising the minimum wage isn’t a goal; it is one of the means to achieve a goal. After a lively discussion, we looked at goals such as enabling immigrant professionals to achieve Canadian accreditation; ensuring all children have access to meals at school and a roof over their heads to sleep.
I have written before about defining requirements rather than solutions. This report advocates for Canadian style solutions, yet it shows that Canada is behind the US on many measures – such as broadband connections per 100 inhabitants, average advertised speed, average cost, etc.
Bill’s comments on the study asks about increasing facilities based competition.
The challenge with broadband in North America is lack of facilities based competition. What we need to find out is why the big telcos and cablecos are not deploying infrastructure in their competitor’s territory? They seem to have no problem deploying nation wide wireless networks, but nobody wants to make the make investment in nation wide broadband in direct competition with existing incumbents. What are the hurdles? Is broadband a natural monopoly?
There is clearly no monopoly in broadband. There are two facilities based players and opportunities for others to build. Competition between cable and telcos has driven technology deployment that matches consumers’ willingness to pay.
Government involvement in dark fibre will result in a monopoly on facilities that removes incentives for innovation. We have government bodies that have determined these markets to be competitive. Why would we want to establish a state-owned monopoly?
Let me suggest that the role of Government is to set goals, not intervene in solutions.
If necessary, perhaps Government could administer and provide needs-based subsidies or tax credits directly to consumers. As difficult as it may be to resist, there seems to be a temptation to distort the marketplace by building infrastructure.
Michael Geist suggests that Barack Obama has led other candidates in placing technology policy as a campaign issue. What broadband policies will emerge in this year’s elections south of the border and posturing in Canada?