Make America Great—with Great Broadband

The primary objective of broadband policy ought to be to stimulate faster, better, cheaper broadband. There are many paths up the mountain. Let me offer a couple of thoughts based on my experiences with other communities.
First, get everyone on. Adoption is a vexing problem, combining elements of affordability, literacy and relevance. But it is also viral; the more members of a community who are own, the greater the incentives for others to get on. And once universality is achieved, it opens the door to all kinds of community improvements not available to those communities half on and half off. The FCC’s reform of its Lifeline program and many successful community adoption programs create new opportunities and models for achieving this goal.
Second, use the platform to better deliver public goods and services. All large enterprises are moving off the old analog platform and moving strictly to the digital platform. If you want to sell something, if you want a job, if you want information, you have to be on line. They don’t do this because they are nerds. They do this because it improves their ability to constantly improve how they deliver goods and services. Government, because it has to serve everyone, cannot migrate as easily, another reason it is important to get everyone on. But government should also aspire to constantly improve how it delivers goods and services. That means ending the era of lines and paper and making all government services web-based, providing greater transparency, always on, and above all, using more reliable data to improve performance.
Third, help every enterprise to become a networked, empowered enterprise. Amazingly many small businesses are still not online. This not only undercuts their ability to sell, it makes it more difficult to improve efficiency in buying, operating, and accounting made possible by cloud-based services. Not every company needs to be a web-based company. But every company can benefit from the services now available on the web.
Fourth, be a laboratory for all the communities that resemble Wilson (NC) more than they resemble Silicon Valley. In Silicon Valley, VC’s advise start-ups to “build things people need.” But what we have seen in the last few years is a focus on building things that people who live in Silicon Valley need. As will be discussed in the next several panels, you bring to the table an understanding of needs that Silicon Valley will have trouble understanding. Make that work to your advantage.
Fifth, partner with the incredible resources of the Research Triangle Park area. You are lucky. You are the only community fiber network I know of so close to a large-scale fiber build where soon, residents will have the most competitive gigabit market in the country. Moreover, you have access to the incredible resources of three world-class universities and a world-class tech hub.
And sixth, make sure your network accommodates the next technology shifts. The next two great networks to be built are the 5G next generation mobile network and the Civic Internet of Things, bringing intelligence to the infrastructure underlying our communities, improving water, sewer, electricity, and transportation grids. Both these new platforms will share a need for, and operate over, the fiber network you already have. Now is the time to start adopting the network to those emerging needs.