Reed Hundt steals the show

REED HUNDT STEALS THE SHOW
[SOURCE: Paul Kapustka's Blog 4/4]
[Commentary] It's one thing to talk about network neutrality, but yet another to formulate a plan of action, with real numbers, costs and ways to compromise to get things done in the real world. With a speech at the F2C: Freedom to Connect event that embraced all of the latter, former FCC chairman Reed Hundt on Tuesday eclipsed most of the "net neutrality is good" offerings in recent memory, and moved the ball forward by putting a price tag -- $25 billion -- on the cost of bringing fiber to all U.S. homes. Hundt thinks that it's time for the government to step in and "create a public thoroughfare to the Internet -- and it ought to be fast, and every year faster. It should constantly improve, like roads." Unlike others who just call for such things, Hundt has the cost parsed out: Estimating a cost of $1,000 per household (the actual cost of laying fiber, minus the amount people have demonstrably been willing to pay for such services) to build a nationwide fiber network would cost between $20 and $25 billion, Hundt said -- "less than one-tenth of the money budgeted for a missile defense system that doesn't work." Far from excluding the telcos, Hundt said to let everyone and anyone bid on the contracts -- lowest bidder wins, and whoever builds the fiber can keep "half of it for their VPN," and let the other half be the public conduit. While acknowledging that calling for huge domestic expenditures might seem "crazy" in Washington today, Hundt noted that building national broadband systems "only happens to be the dominant paradigm in every developing country in the world."
http://paulsblog.pulver.com/archives/2006/04/f2c_reed_hundt.html