Thursday, July 1, 2010

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of High-Speed Broadband

We are all familiar with the famous words of our founding fathers that all men "are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" (Declaration of Independence). Those are some broad sweeps describing a wide range of rights. Just what life and liberty entail can be debated, but most broad and most debatable would have to be the definition of what it means to pursue happiness.

In Finland, it would seem that this pursuit now includes the right to broadband. The Finnish government recently made broadband a basic legal right. Now, lest that seem an illogical leap for you, realize that previously the Finnish government had already ordained other communication mediums--telephony and postal services, for example--as unalienable rights for their citizens. So, the addition of broadband to that list is not too far a stretch.

As a patriotic and freedom-loving American, I have to wonder: would I welcome this sort of law in the U.S? As much criticism as has been blasted toward the FCC and their Broadband Plan, we must confess that at least the FCC (on the surface) is trying to spur private development of rural broadband, not mandate it. That is to say: it's more carrot and less stick that will drive our nation-wide and local providers to bring broadband to the rural masses.

Issues of national debt and troublesome new budgets to fund these projects aside, one does have to marvel that the greatest challenge facing our own initiative to bring broadband to everyone is the availability of spectrum. Stop and think about what that means. We're delivering so much data, so much tcom, so much news, communication, emergency broadcasts, and the like that we are running into a shortage of broadcast spectrum. It's quite a different paradigm than in other nations where broadband access is still emerging.

One thing is true: there will always be critics. But, ask yourself, how would the reaction of U.S. citizens be different if the FCC had mandated private companies to serve rural areas, as opposed to incentivizing them to do so?

Labels: Broadband Plan, FCC, Finland, Rural Broadband