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Submitted: December 4, 2008 - 9:26pm
Last updated: December 4, 2008 - 9:26pm
Last updated: December 4, 2008 - 9:26pm
Source:
MediaPost
Author:
Diane Mermigas
[Commentary] There will be nothing easy or certain about Obama administration policies to advance and monetize broadband as an essential infrastructure, even as Silicon Valley's most formidable players are curtailing innovation in what economists are calling The Great Recession. Unlike the other monumental challenges confronting president-elect Barack Obama, broadband interactivity can be an immediate, universal catalyst for commerce, communications and wide-ranging productivity. It can generate new jobs, revenue streams and profits in a better economy while requiring minimal investment. The Internet and all things interactive comprise the 21st-century's Wild West of unregulated prospects. Certainly, encouraging companies to develop compelling, advanced services for an Internet recast as a national utility at a time of pervasive technology must involve tax credits for innovation and initiatives. There must be subsidies to support advanced interactive applications for public services, health and environment, and overall commerce. Tech, Internet, content and services companies must be motivated to create new reasons for commercial interactivity. Innovation and continued digital transformation must lead the economic recovery. About half of all IT capital spending traditionally has come from financial services and industrial companies under siege. Perhaps the best overriding incentives could come in a far-flung New Deal-inspired plan for broadband, bringing together private and public players and funds to build out an advanced broadband infrastructure that would serve commercial and civic interests. It would be a new deal for a new age that is barely rising.
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Comments
I could not agree more that technology companies "must be motivated to create new reasons for commercial interactivity".
But the evidence seems to point that these same companies do not understand the need to create, develop and propose new model approaches to public policy makers. Case in point -
1) Technology providers advertise the grand accomplishment of providing 'virtual presence technologies" across the globe, yet we are laboring in most major metropolitan areas to get people to work.
2) The USDOT has declared a 'crisis in transportation congestion' allocating billions to find a solution yet no innovative, cohesive or substantive approach to using telecommunications infrastructure was present in any of the awarded cities.
3) While more of the US labor force is engaged in knowledge based work, technology companies have not acknowledged the current telework models have serious limitations and though the technologies exist to support more knowledge workers remotely, these companies have avoided examining alternative multi-location approaches.
I could go on but the point is that the major responsibility must fall upon both technology companies and policy makers to discuss in detail the ramifications and potential for telecommunications as infrastructure in rebuilding our local economies.
Infrastructure, by definition, requires understanding its unique characteristics AND identifying aggregate demand and opportunity.
Workforce deployment, distance learning and telemedicine combined in dedicated, formalized networks should be the 'triple play' we are developing.
I hope the Benton Foundation will review its current policy positions with regard to these comments and expand its thinking to consider more specific potential methodologies.
Thank you for writing this article and allowing me to comment.
Best regards,
Michael Shear