The Hard Questions in Broadband Policy

Andy Oram has written a nice article looking at broadband internet access and the governmental policies that need to be in place if fast, symmetric internet access is to be widely available and affordable in the U.S. The U.S. still doesn't have fiber to the home, and if the last couple of competing DSL providers go under, we may never get it. In the meantime, the U.S. government is approaching the problem by eliminating regulations on the Baby Bells, which is sort of like combating street crime by taking police officers off the street.

Comments

Re:Do we *really* need fiber to the home?

[nosilA]

While fiber to the home is not necessary now, and may never be due to advances in wireless technologies, it does afford future expansion. Upgrading the 100Mbps box in the CO and the 45Mb backbone is much cheaper and easier than upgrading everyone's fiber to their home.

My university has very high quality cabling which was originally installed for 4Mbps token ring... was it really necessary to use such high quality cabling for such low speeds? No... but we're still using the same cabling at 100Mbps now.

It's just much easier to do the infrastructure "right" once.

-Alison

Kushnik on the dot-gones

[yerricde]

From the article:
Kushnick thinks that, if the fiber had been laid, a wealth of new businesses would have sprung up to offer services and we wouldn't be experiencing the Internet downturn we have now.

What killed the dot-coms wasn't a lack of connectivity. It was more likely a lack of a solid business plan.