Getting Out of the Broadband Box

[Commentary] Here's why I'm hopeful for GigU, a consortium of universities to facilitate next-generation community broadband opportunities.

It is especially difficulty to envision broadband scenarios different than the ones we're used to: commercial access providers like phone and cable companies giving us multi-megabit connections for fast web browsing and media streaming. That limits the scope of innovation, especially the innovations with the most social and business impact. It also feeds into the policy gridlock. We're still playing out a set of regulatory debates that started a decade ago, when Google was still private and Facebook didn't exist. In a sector this fast-moving, how can the landscape of 2001 possibly describe the world of 2021, let alone 2011?

So we need to get out of the box of current thinking. It's next to impossible to do that without examples of different models. The trouble is that alternative broadband approaches and creative applications that take advantage of ultra-fast connectivity have largely been stifled in the U.S. There are many reasons for this. Whichever one focuses on, we're going to have a hard time leading the next wave of broadband innovation without vibrant experimentation outside the mainstream service offerings. That's where Gig.U comes in.