Buried in the $800 billion economic stimulus package that President-elect Obama is pushing is a serious incentive package for our US communications companies to improve bandwidth speeds. In an article written by Kenneth Corbin, the background is set…”The broadband stimulus proposals come amid growing concern that the United States is falling behind its foreign competitors in broadband deployment, with one recent study showing that the nation has fallen from fourth place in 2001 to 15th in connection speeds… Rep. Anna Eshoo, a California Democrat representing Silicon Valley, said that broadband provisions would be among the least controversial elements of the stimulus package. Eshoo called for tax credits that would allow Internet service providers to expense 100 percent of the costs of building out a next-generation network, which would entail speeds of 100 Mbps downstream and 20 Mbps upstream. She suggested a 50 percent expensing option for providers building “current-generation” networks in low-income and rural areas with speeds of 5 Mbps downstream and 1 Mbps upstream. She also suggested that the government authorize broadband providers to issue low-interest bonds to finance their network build-outs, essentially providing them with “cheaper access to credit.” She finds historical precedent in the 1862 Pacific Railway Act, which authorized the issuance of bonds to finance the transcontinental railroad. Without stimulus, she warned, many providers would likely cut back on their build-out plans.”
Please understand that I normally vote Republican, so am no fan of big government, or of even the the Democratic party, however, I am overjoyed that someone in our leadership understands the economic importance of the government being involved in providing fast bandwidth. I have long wondered how our leaders could not equate bandwidth to the power system, or highway system – both of which they were more than willing to partially fund. Not only do faster speed improve the overall productivity of the nation by saving millions of hours of wasted time, it also allows developers to build applications with new capabilities that simply cannot exist at slow speeds.
What a tragedy it would be if the U.S. were to continue to be the innovation leader on planet Earth, yet to lose the overall game because we did not even implement our own innovations as well as others! Yet this is the situation that is coming true. It is not a stretch to say that Japan, South Korea and soon China will take technology invented in the U.S. and will prosper with it better/faster than we will. For example, mobile technology. I read not long ago that the Japanese make purchases over their mobile devices at a rate 10 times higher than the U.S. This is not a trend we want to see continue, so I am happy to see Washington kill two birds with one stone in creating jobs and helping the economy by driving improved technology infrastructure.
President-elect Obama gets props from me today…
Scott Klososky
scott@klososky.com