If I Was the Broadband Czar …
Somebody asked me the other day what I would do if I was the “czar” of the broadband stimulus. They figured with my focus on the federal government, maybe I had some special insight into making the stimulus a success.
Personally, I don’t think it takes special insight so much as recognition of some basic, common-sense principles to make the more than $7 billion investment provide some worthwhile payoff. Cynics may ask when the last time was the government relied on common-sense principles, but in my czardom, we would have them.
For instance, Principle Number One is clear rules. Any service provider or other company that wants to participate should know what it needs to do and by when. As the stock market has always shown, business hates uncertainty, so clarity would be the first priority.
Defining “broadband” is a must. That word means a lot of things to a lot of different people, but my starting point would be a wireless 3G service level (even if the network doesn’t happen to be wireless), or something in the 3 megabits per second range. Even though the feds just last week defined broadband as 768 kilobits per second, that wouldn’t cut it under my czarship.
Mobility is essential, too. That doesn’t mean that the solution in each case has to be wireless, but it can’t involve proprietary equipment that will only work in Hooterville, and then if somebody moves down the road to the county seat, Pixley, they’re stuck with gear that won’t work on any broadband system there. As a general principle, then, everything should be standards-based.
Speaking of wireless, I don’t see how most rural broadband development – unless there are serious geographic and terrain issues that prohibit it – won’t have a wireless component. When you look at countries around the world that are starting from scratch with their networks, they typically go with wireless. Even though most rural areas in the U.S. have some kind of installed base of copper, it isn’t so large a legacy investment that it can’t be bypassed for a better solution. The lesser environmental impact of wireless doesn’t hurt, either, and while we’re at it, the integration of wireline and wireless elements of the network can only help complete these build-outs more quickly and effectively.
A couple of other guiding principles that I as Brodband Czar would insist on is that this whole initiative should be open to many players. Not just the big-name carriers. But contracts should go only to companies and organizations that we honestly believe will be around next year, not to any fly-by-night contractors who will probably disappear when the last connector is plugged in.
Also, given the choice of doing it right or doing it fast, we would choose to have it done right – following these general principles and making sure that networks are designed properly and work correctly. But still, we would want it done right … as quickly as possible. People out there are hungering for broadband, and if this whole package is going to have any stimulus effect, we need to get it moving.
So there you are. Not that I’d want the czar’s job, but if I had it, this is at least the way we’d start.
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