Most developed nations are deploying “big broadband” networks (100 Mbps) that provide faster connections at cheaper prices than those available in the United States. The failure of the United States to keep pace is the direct result of our failure to adopt a national broadband policy.
John Windhausen Jr.
EDUCAUSE
The United States is facing a crisis in broadband connectivity. The demand for bandwidth is accelerating well beyond the capacity of our current broadband networks, especially as video traffic and home?based businesses become more prevalent. In the very near future, a single family will be watching HDTV video at the same that they engage in remote health monitoring, videoconferencing, gaming, distance education class lectures, and social networking. Moore’s Law, as well as several studies of future Internet growth, predicts that homes and businesses will need a minimum of 100 megabits per second (Mbps) of capacity within the next three to five years and will need even greater capacity going forward.
While other nations are preparing for the future, the United States is not. Most developed nations are deploying “big broadband” networks (100 Mbps) that provide faster connections at cheaper prices than those available in the United States. Japan has already announced a national commitment to build fiber networks to every home and business, and countries that have smaller economies and more rural territory than the United States (e.g., Finland, Sweden, and Canada) have better broadband services available.
Why is the United States so far behind? The failure of the United States to keep pace is the direct result of our failure to adopt a national broadband policy. The United States has taken a deregulatory approach under the assumption that the market will build enough capacity to meet the demand. While these steps may have had some positive influence, they are not sufficient. The profit/loss statements of individual firms fail to take into account the positive externalities from a widely deployed broadband network, including economic growth, lower?cost health care, and higher?quality education. In contrast, most other nations treat broadband services as necessary infrastructure; their governments adopted explicit broadband stimulus plans at the turn of the century, and their countries are now reaping the benefits.
The United States needs to take aggressive action to significantly expand our broadband connectivity. Now is not the time for incremental improvements; we are behind, and we must adopt a comprehensive strategy this year if we are to address the growing needs of our citizens and our economy. U.S. policy must be forward?looking—we must “skate where the puck is going to be.”
For these reasons, this paper proposes the creation of a new federal Universal Broadband Fund (UBF) that, together with matching funds from the states and the private and/or public sector, should be used to build open, big broadband networks of at least 100 Mbps (scalable upwards to 1 Gbps) to every home and business by 2012. U.S. state governors and foreign heads of state have found the resources to subsidize broadband deployment; the U.S. federal government should as well.
Building a local fiber connection past each home and business will cost approximately $100 billion. The paper recommends the public?private partnership approach followed in Canada, where one?third of the funding would be provided by the federal government, one?third by the states, and the remaining onethird by the private and/or public sector. It thus proposes a federal fund of $8 billion per year for four years, to be distributed to the states once they provide their matching amount of funding. Each state would then combine the federal and state funding and award grants to individual entities (public or private) that provide the remaining one?third of the funding to build open, big broadband capacity on a community?by?community basis.