Want to solve America’s problems? Start with broadband

In October 1944, my grandfather William B. Benton delivered a clarion call in the pages of Fortune magazine. On behalf of the Committee for Economic Development (CED), a national coalition of business leaders, he offered a forward-looking agenda to deliver a more peaceful and prosperous future for all Americans—not just a few. At the time, that future was difficult to imagine. Fifteen years prior, the Great Depression had roiled the American economy, driving unemployment rates to almost 25% in 1933. Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal had re-started economic growth, but it took World War II to power a robust recovery. Now, with the end of the war in sight, it was time to chart a path for peacetime. “The good of all—the common good—is a means to the enduring happiness of every individual in society and is superior to the economic interest of any private group,” Benton wrote. One of CED’s first principles was fostering competition. It is in the public interest, my grandfather argued, that corporations be allowed to grow if they provided useful service to the community: "Provided that the power that comes with size is not permitted to stifle competition and is not permitted in other ways to be abused, big business can serve the common good." Benton also recognized the connection between economic opportunity and democracy. 

Nearly 75 years after he wrote "The Economics of a Free Society: A Declaration of American Business Policy” as vice-chairman of the CED's board of trustees, we at the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society continue to make the case for bringing the 21st century's essential communications medium to all people in the U.S. to deliver individual opportunity, strengthen communities, and ensure a thriving democracy. We believe too many people in the U.S. have been left behind—because broadband networks don’t reach them, the service is unaffordable, or people don’t yet have the skills to make use of this powerful tool. One reason for this? Broadband market concentration is stifling the benefits of competition for consumers. 

[Adrianne Benton Furniss is the executive director of the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society]