The US is not even among the top 10 nations when it comes to broadband speed. The reasons, greed and fear. Greed because it is more profitable for the big telecoms to spend less money on infrastructure. They can refrain from improving the network and stick the savings in their pockets. Fear because the telecoms don’t want you to download your movies instead of paying for premium channels on cable. The politicians are afraid because if they make a move to regulate the telecoms they may not get any of the that big telecom money for their campaigns. Consumers are afraid of their shrink funds and afraid they can’t to find away to shave a dollar from their expenses. Conservatives are afraid of the US becoming socialist. Liberals are afraid of sounding like liberals.
I’ve been thinking about this for a while and I’ve listened to experts and pundits. The proposal I think is best is “Let’s build it”. The cities, townships, villages, counties and states should put in fiber to every home. Sounds commy right? Here’s where the capitalism comes in. The people installing the fiber are private contractors. The governments are not the Internet Service Providers. All ISPs can connect to the fiber. By all I mean all! AT&T, Insight, AOL, Juno, Comcast, Time Warner, Earthlink and anyone else that wants to join the party. Think of the competition! What can be more capitalist? Just like the highway system, we pay taxes and we get roads. Everyone pays a tax on their low Internet bill to maintain and improve the system. This alone could create millions of new jobs. Any town that did this would become an instant target for companies wanting to relocate. This would spur construction so new jobs there. All of these people will need goods and services. We the consumer would get fast reliable Internet at a reasonable price.
I know budgets are strapped but this is an investment in the future that can help us now.
