Technology Neutral

I cringe every time I see the term “technology neutral”. Over the last few years, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has morphed the phrase into a euphemism to mean we should favor the cheapest technology over the best technology. And it clearly is a euphemism meant to disguise the true nature of the broadband policy discussion from those not involved in the topic every day. Governments have gotten so good at developing such phrases that the euphemisms replace the right language and become common usage. We routinely hear phrases like revenue enhancement instead of tax increase, or negative growth instead of losses without fully realizing what is not being said. It seems pretty clear that the term was tossed into the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act legislation as a bone for wireless internet service providers. They badly wanted to participate in the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program, and used the term technology-neutral to plant the idea that all technologies that could deliver speeds of 100/20 Megabits per second were all equivalent. Until Tarana came out with much faster radios, the fixed wireless technology at the time didn’t deserve to be considered for long-term grants—and sure enough, five years later, the older radios have already joined DSL and other older technologies in the obsolete technology trash bin.