Life, liberty and connectivity for all

[Commentary] An optimal free broadband system would include both wireless (for mobility and cost efficiency) and wireline (for capacity and reliability) components. And, as it turns out, two proposals are currently pending that could make free broadband connectivity for life a reality. The first is an innovative public interest obligation on licensed spectrum. But financial support and spectrum licensure reforms are not enough on their own. A multi-faceted solution is needed. Fuel-efficiency and car-safety standards have helped shape today's national transportation grid, but the US had to make a major public investment in the infrastructure itself. Broadband poses a similar opportunity. Building the 21st-Century Information Superhighway is a proposal synthesized by the New America Foundation in consultation with numerous interested parties that would create a national information superhighway, providing fibre capacity to cities, towns and rural areas throughout the US. At its core, the idea is very simple: each time we rip up, repave or build a road, we should also lay fibre infrastructure along that route that anyone can use. Over the next half-decade, this initiative would create a web of connectivity - a critical new infrastructure for the digital age. Across the country, communities, Internet service providers and municipalities are engaging in demand-side aggregation, but lack entree to affordable Internet access, a bottleneck that this proposal solves.