Great article in The Washington Monthly, (Let There Be WiFi) that lays out the battle lines in the slowly building battle between telecommunications companies and those who think broadband is the next great struggle between progressive and conservative business models.
The article highlights some interesting facts:
- Japan and Korea are way ahead of the game in both advancing the technology and encouraging municipal broadband, potentially giving them the edge in the wave of software development sure to come.
- How community based broadband is helping firefighters and police departments do their jobs.
- An interesting comparison of this issue to the creation of the REA (Rural Electrification Administration) not long after electricity was marketed as "synonymous with wealth, power, and privilege."
This reminds me of the early days of cable TV which occurred when I moved from the DC suburbs to Chicago. When I left Virginia, cable was so cheap it came as a part of the rental package for my apartment. When I got to Chicago, it didn't exist. In fact, it didn't exist for quite awhile and the long accepted reason was that the politicians couldn't figure out how to divide up the city in a way that put the most money in the most folks back pockets. It was fascinating (and frustrating) that the suburbs that surrounded the city had cable but the city itself did not.
I'm not one for advocating free broadband everywhere, because there is nothing free and someones got to pay the freight. Government owned broadband also raises some interesting privacy issues. That said, the lobbying going on by the Telcos trying to prevent that trend is intense and I'd sure like to see that money going into future development and not politicians back pockets.
Let's face it, all of the hype about wireless media streaming is fantastic but the pipeline is going to need to get a lot bigger to make that reality really come true. Sadly, I'm betting the big money wins in the end at the expense of a truly progressive technological advance.
