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Democrats May Promise Broadband for All

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the it's-all-flowers-and-sausages dept.

andyring writes "According to CNS News Service, the Democrat Party will have an agenda that guarantees every American will have affordable access to broadband within five years as part of their 2006 election year agenda, according to Nancy Pelosi, House minority leader. Absent, of course, are any details as to how they will accomplish it when they are the party out of power in Congress."

1 of 836 comments (clear)

  1. In India... by rathehun · · Score: 5, Informative

    ...one of the promises of the present government was that it would make broadband affordable.

    What happened was pretty decent, for a government programme. 256 kbps broadband was rolled out in all the larger cities, at Rs. 500 (USD 10) per month - however, there was a rider - a 1 GiB transfer limit.

    This scheme, however, was sufficient to start a major price war, and broadband prices have been steadily falling, upto the point where it's now being pushed way more heavily than dial-up.

    The problems:

    • Lack of heavy-usage plans
    • Nightmarish problems with free-usage hours, and subsequent billing
    • Billing
    • Last mile hasn't been unbundled, so each company has to lay their own cables, resulting in private companies being unable to offer their lower prices/higher usage plans to customers who want it

    However,

    • Since the government monopoly has to, by law service rural areas, the problem of a lack of access, that one hears about so much on /. is really not a problem
    • Cheap!
    • Excellent (personal experience) service, downtime of about a week in the last year of my having it
    • Technical support, while incredibly hard to actually *find*, is remarkably well informed - came home, and was happily using the command line on my linux server, to which the line was connected
    • Typing from it right now ;-)

    Whether it was the best idea, whether it helped starving people...those are all debatable points. But surely, it is hardly an incredibly expensive project, which will kill off the American economy?

    Even if the government doesn't offer fiber-connections to the rest of America, 256k broadband is perfectly capable of accessing Wikipedia, joining and taking part in mailing groups...there will be a section of the society whom it will help.

    Cheers,
    Rahul.