Community Broadband Networks links to an article by Yuki Noguchi, Bringing Broadband To Rural America (Washington Post TechNews, 7/10/2003).

Hilda Gay Legg, administrator of the Rural Utilities Service, emphasized the economic importance of high-speed access to rural communities in her keynote speach ("Rural Broadband Update: View From the Top") at the Wireless Communications Association International's conference in DC.

In another presentation, Ronald Resnik said "Players in the wireless industry believe that new wireless technology could solve the cost problem, since its capital costs are just a fraction of those of fiber-optic options." Resnick is general manager of Intel Corp. and a board member of the Wireless Communications Association.

Broadband for Podunk, USA is a follow-up article by Karl Bode at BroadbandReports.com that provides some important background information, including:

"...the Rural Broadband Coalition was recently founded to help ISPs take advantage of the money available via the broadband program of the Rural Utility Service (RUS), a service of the US Department of Agriculture. Hidden within the Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002 is $20 million in federal funds allocated to finance broadband service in rural communities."

While they make a very convincing argument for wireless based on costs, is this just a stop-gap measure? Today's broadband may be tomorrow's bottleneck, as discussed in a previous post.

3:52:42 PM    
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Broadband will transform the Internet for both individual and business users, says Corning Optical Communications president Wendell Weeks. The Future of Fiber, a Mckinsely Quarterly article (free but registration is required) is a question-and-answer interview with Weeks. "We’re visual people, and we need the visual richness that can only come through broadband."

For business users, he sees peer-to-peer applications which provide the "ability to collaborate in some way other than through the hierarchy of today’s networks" as the killer app enabled by broadband. "Why don’t we use more videoconferencing? Because the quality of the connection is so poor. We value connection to the point where you’ll get on a plane and use a day for a two-hour meeting that you could have done in a videoconference but didn’t because videoconferencing isn’t good enough."

12:45:56 PM    
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Former FCC chair Reed Hundt suggests a plan for fiber to every U.S. home.

Reed Hundt, former Federal Communications Commission chairman spoke before the SuperNova technology conference. As reported by Dan Gilmore, he proposed a tax initiative to lay fiber optic broadband to every home in the U.S.

"...broadband should be subsidized by federal taxpayers to the tune of $20 a month per household for as long as it takes to build the system. This subsidy is enough incentive, [Hundt] says, to create a business model for laying the fiber-optic data pipes we'll need for this kind of speed. He's arguing against the current model, which urges both the cable-TV and phone companies to deploy fast pipes."

[Hundt is] "doing a service: raising the profile of something that continues to make sense. A broadband connection to every home is the 21st century version of the interstate highways, and it requires us to pool our resources."

David Weinbergerx reports that Hundt estimated the cost at "$50B over 3 years."

For more info on Reed Hundt, see...

• Reed Hundt's bio, at least through August 2000
• You Say You Want a Revolution: A Story of Information Age Politics by Reed E. Hundt (online book)

12:38:06 PM    
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