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EDITORIAL: Broadband 'vision'Mar 21, 2010 (Boston Herald - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- A 360-page proposal required by Congress from an agency can stagger every journalist in range and generate happy anticipation of future fees among lobbyists. The National Broadband Plan released by the Federal Communications Commission lives up to every expectation. It's too bad the legislation didn't get more attention. It charged the FCC with boosting broadband use to advance "consumer welfare, civic participation, public safety, homeland security, community development, health care delivery, energy independence and efficiency, education, employee training, private sector investment, entrepreneurial activity, job creation and economic growth, and other national purposes." What about a cure for cancer and fresh flowers on every breakfast table? The plan calls for ensuring that 100 million households in 2020 have access to broadband connections with speeds of 100 million bits (about 2 million words) per second, which is 20 times as fast as today's typical high-speed Internet lines, plus what looks like the wish lists of advocacy groups via subsidies right and left. All this is supposed to be revenue-neutral thanks to use of proceeds from auctioning off parts of the electromagnetic spectrum now used by over-the-air broadcasters. They are supposed to manage through doubling up on channels and other tricks. Among the proposals is the creation of a National Digital Literacy Corps to train teachers. What, the FCC wants to go into education? Ambition is not moderated by gigantic future deficits, it seems. Sweeping visions like this rarely work out as intended. High-speed Internet and wireless coverage has expanded from 8 million people in 2000 to 200 million last year and will continue to do so, even in rural areas, if telecommunications companies can earn profits by providing it. To see more of the Boston Herald or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.bostonherald.com. Copyright (c) 2010, Boston Herald Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. |