
Obama: "It is unacceptable that the U.S. ranks 15th in the world in broadband adoption" - vaksel
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/us/politics/07radio.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
======
gojomo
I know, let's create some government-sponsored enterprises, like Fannie Mae
and Freddie Mac, but for promoting broadband rather than home ownership!

After our big access push, the _broad_ band intertubes will be a publicly-
owned resource, like the _broad_ cast airwaves. And we better not subsidize
indecency or insensitive content with _broad_ public resources! So content and
corporate ownership structures can require FCC review, like over-the-air TV,
rather than that messy anarchy that rules over books. (People can print
anything in books and we can't fine them!)

Don't worry, though -- the FCC is always balanced, with 3 commissioners from
the president's party, and 2 from the opposition party. All viewpoints are
represented!

Remember, net neutrality for packets is only truly acheived when we have
neutrality, equality, and justice for all people. Packets which contain hate
speech, pornography, content inaccessible to the handicapped, political
campaigning beyond the spending limits of the FEC, or an insufficient
proportion of underrepresented viewpoints are _not_ neutral. We won't allow
them on our public nets!

Australia, China, the UK, and Saudi Arabia are all innovating in making their
national networks serve national priorities -- the U.S. must not fall farther
behind!

~~~
whatusername
Aussie Aussie Aussie - Oi Oi Oi! We're leading the world in something for
once....

oh. wait.

------
robg
Here's what change is about: Knowing that infrastructure includes not just
roads and bridges, and mass transit, but laying fiber too.

~~~
jmtame
Amen!

------
sheats
"Mr. Bush and other Republicans have resisted such an approach in part out of
concern for the already soaring federal budget deficit, which could easily hit
$1 trillion this year. Borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars today to try
to fix the economy, they argue, will leave a huge bill for the next
generation."

Anyone besides me find that paragraph a little ironic?

------
gibsonf1
Hopefully lessons about the first Great Depression, such as how the policies
of the New Deal actually lengthened the depression, will be learned this time.

<http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/GreatDepression.html>

~~~
netcan
I've heard this so many times recently. The exact same argument used for
exactly conflicting points of view. And every time it's brought up it is
presented as an uncontroversial example of how X (or Y the exact opposite of
X) works:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_deal#Conflicting_interpreta...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_deal#Conflicting_interpretation_of_the_New_Deal_economic_policies)

The New Deal is a Hung Jury.

------
mdasen
While I'm all for improving the state of broadband and internet access in
general, I think 15th out of 190-odd countries is decent. It's certainly in
the top 10%. In fact, according to international studies, it's better than we
do in education.

I think the internet is wonderful, but the US will lag in broadband over
densely populated, urban nations. The US has a huge rural population and I
really do hope that wireless broadband improves our ability to serve them, but
sometimes there are limitations.

Plus, I don't actually think the statistics show the US as having a bad
adoption rate. (<http://www.internetworldstats.com/dsl.htm>) That's what I
found quickly searching. The US comes out on top of Germany and Japan (both
countries that are very urban and densely populated). I think one of the keys
is also that we are decently close to the leadership. It's not like the
leaders (1-12) have 70% adoption and then there's a steep drop off to us at
20% adoption.

I'd bet that this is more of a state by state issue. Densely populated states
like NJ, RI, and MA probably have broadband adoption rates that would be much
better than the country as a whole - and seeing as though many of the
countries doing better than the US are the geographic size of (or have a
populated center the geographic size of) one of our smaller states, that might
make for a better comparison. Out of the 18 countries beating the US, only
Canada, the UK and France are of any size. Comparing the US to a country like
Denmark isn't really fair. We're talking about comparing 31 people per km^2 to
127 people per km^2. And the countries that have lower population densities
often have the majority of their population in a few urban centers.

Lastly, there's a methodology problem. We're comparing broadband connections
to the number of people. That doesn't tell us what percentage of people have
broadband. I live with several other people and we have one broadband
connection for the house. We all have access, but it will look like we have a
25% adoption rate. As European families usually have fewer children, that
might create a bias in tabulating. With a US family averaging over 25% more
children than a Swedish family, there might be an uncorrected bias that skews
results against the US. Of course, if the US has more split families, that
could skew in the US' favor.

I just think this is one of those cases where a politician is grandstanding
without facts being behind them. OMG IT'S UNACCEPTABLE!!! No, it's pretty
acceptable. Yeah, we should improve, but you can't expect the US as a whole to
be able to match a country with a much denser population and a much smaller
geographic area to cover. We're doing really well that we're so close.

Stop making everything unacceptable! It just means that people don't listen to
you because you've shown an ineptitude at interpreting data.

~~~
robg
I live only 100 miles north of Boston, in a fairly "wealthy" state (New
Hampshire) and my only option is satellite. That's just a sad state of the
infrastructure.

Furthermore, broadband speeds vary from country to country:

[http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/Images/commentarynews/bro...](http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/Images/commentarynews/broadbandspeedchart.jpg)

It's not just penetration that we lag behind. It's speed too.

As for density, Canada's a fairly big place, and they have a bigger, faster
broadband (see my link and yours) even as their GDP is 10% of ours:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_>(nominal)

~~~
breck
"That's just a sad state of the infrastructure."

Why is this sad? It seems pretty logical to me. I don't think it would make
sense to build expensive (roads/sewers/cable/etc) to every far out node.

~~~
olefoo
That's why government intervention is being discussed. It may not be
economically feasible for everyone to be connected to the internet at
affordable prices. But there is a big public benefit to be gained if everyone
is connected and online.

Now die-hard "anarcho-capitalists" will say that government has no role in the
economy whatsoever, but the history of most of the technological systems that
make our society what it is say otherwise. Postal Service, Railroads, mapping,
electricity and telephones were all limited in functionality and restricted in
geographical reach until government intervention supported near-universal
adoption.

~~~
breck
"But there is a big public benefit to be gained if everyone is connected and
online."

Is there?

Seems to me 90+ odd percent would be good enough.

~~~
olefoo
eh, there's something to be said for near universal participation; I mean
think of the problems we would have if only 90% of doctors went to medical
school; or if only 90% of drivers licensed their motor vehicles.

In this case the difference between being able to assume with near certainty
that someone you need to do business has at least potential access, versus a 9
in 10 chance that the person whose attention you need for your business to
survive is online.

Of course if your business doesn't depend on people who use the internet,
you're fine with less than full participation, and it being a second class
mode of business for another decade or three...

~~~
anamax
> In this case the difference between being able to assume with near certainty
> that someone you need to do business has at least potential access, versus a
> 9 in 10 chance that the person whose attention you need for your business to
> survive is online.

You're assuming that lack of internet access is randomly distributed, that 90%
internet access means that Donald Trump is 90% likely to have internet access.
It isn't. 10% internet access is more than enough for some biz. 90% is more
than enough for most biz.

To put it another way/use your own example, the fact that less than 100% of
people go to medical school doesn't imply that there aren't enough doctors.

Note that "access" isn't enough - they have to be willing to use it AND
willing to let you get to them via the internet. I have access yet often
refuse to tell biz how to reach me.

~~~
olefoo
The way I see it we're talking about two different things; you're talking
about the quantitative difference between say 90-92% of people have access if
they want it. Whereas I'm talking about the qualitative difference between
even a large percentage of the population having some degree of access and
100% of competent adults having at least a minimal level of access.

Obama is not the only politician pushing for universal access, if local
governments could act with confidence that moving basic tasks like title
transactions, judicial proceedings, public records, etc. to a completely
electronic format would not create a vast set of support issues coming from
the 8% or so of people who have no access; they could streamline operations
and save taxpayer money. The point I'm trying to get at is that Universal
Broadband may be one of those rare government initiatives that does pay for
itself. And as an infrastructure investment, it makes for a better environment
for any company reliant on the internet.

~~~
anamax
> The way I see it we're talking about two different things; you're talking
> about the quantitative difference between say 90-92% of people have access
> if they want it.

No, I'm not. There are many biz that work if only 10% of the population has
broadband, as long as it's the right 10%.

> Whereas I'm talking about the qualitative difference between even a large
> percentage of the population having some degree of access and 100% of
> competent adults having at least a minimal level of access.

You're assuming that the 10% who don't have broadband access would be a
significant difference to an interesting fraction of biz. That's unlikely.
Heck - it's unlikely that the 30% who have access but choose not to particpate
would make a difference. (If someone is unwilling to spend $30/month on
broadband, how much money do you think that they'll spend if they had
broadband for less?)

> Obama is not the only politician pushing for universal access

That's not exactly an argument that suggests confidence. After all, these are
the same folks who thought that 0 down mortgages were a good idea.

> if local governments could act with confidence that moving basic tasks like
> title transactions, judicial proceedings, public records, etc. to a
> completely electronic format would not create a vast set of support issues
> coming from the 8% or so of people who have no access; they could streamline
> operations and save taxpayer money.

You're significantly overstating the number of transactions.

I use such services about once/year but that's only because I'm somewhat of a
nut about verifying that my property tax was properly credited - the vast
majority of people don't bother. Not many people have "judicial" proceedings
to observe and most of them are served by lawyers. As far as the rest, how
often do you check that your house/car title is correct? (I've never checked
either one.)

Yearly car registration payment is about the only common transaction that can
be done online but it only costs about $1-3 to do by USPS. (Shipping stickers
costs about the same but the reasons for having such stickers are not affected
by on-line payment.) Even if payment costs were free online, that "savings"
doesn't buy much infrastructure. It can be done by dial-up and a significant
number of people already do it online, so the generous assumption is that at
most 30% of the population could be moved to use on-line registration and they
don't have that many cars.

And then there's the "I didn't get the e-mail telling me to renew my license"
problem....

------
ivankirigin
The US is not a small country. The economics of broadband penetration are
different.

It is not the job of the federal government to pick a winner in methods of
distributing TCP/IP packets.

~~~
pivo
The government ensures that everyone gets postal and land-line telephone
service if they want it. Considering how TCP/IP packets are used, are they
really much different from those other services?

In this case it's not about picking a winner, it's about making sure people
have access to resources. Once there's choice the monopoly can be disposed of,
like we did with Ma Bell and the postal service.

~~~
ivankirigin
Fiber could cost billions, and in the end, wireless might be a much better
option. This is clearly a make-work project, and that is simply a waste of my
money.

~~~
astine
It may be a poor investment, but it is not make-work.

------
axod
I think the bigger issue is the lack of choice/competition.

~~~
vaksel
there is competition, the problem is that since the whole broadband thing is
just starting out, they companies are focusing their efforts on the big
cities.

I mean think about it..why would the companies put all that effort and
resources into laying fiber to and around a town of 10,000 people, if for only
a little bit more they can lay down the fiber in a city of 10 million

~~~
jmtame
I think you're mistaking the word "competition" for "oligopoly." Let me
introduce you to 99% of the broadband market, their names are Verizon,
Comcast, and AT&T.

By the way, they don't let municipalities build their own infrastructures.
It's "anti-competitive." Any company that is profitable enough is acquired,
otherwise they will charge you an arm and leg just to use their cables.

The focus on "wealthy" neighborhoods is called redlining. These three guys I
just introduced you to don't care about poor people. They only want to charge
as high a price as possible for the people who can afford it. They're not too
worried about actually building a good network (ie fiber optics, instead of
their 100-year old coaxial cables designed for telephones).

Just thought I'd chime in and clarify that.

------
Goronmon
I think it would be good for the government to take the initiative in
improving connectivity across the country. At the moment, media companies seem
more concerned with limiting the download capacities of users rather than
improving the infrastructure.

~~~
qqq
Sometimes getting Government involved in areas makes thing worse.

~~~
pchristensen
And sometimes it makes it better.

~~~
qqq
Government in general is really inefficient. Way less efficient than, say,
Comcast, Microsoft, or Fedex. So unless there is some good reason it must be
Government solving a problem, why not have someone (anyone) else do it?

Having Government do our broadband is very dangerous. Besides "fiber optic
cables to nowhere", and outages and delays in major cities, there is the
possibility of "packet shaping", blocking access to certain websites (e.g. The
Pirate Bay), listening to our conversations (in case we're terrorists),
requiring the installation of DRM software to go with internet access, and not
allowing the use of cryptographic protocols granting anonymity or privacy. Why
should we trust the Government to do those things less than companies that at
least need paying customers and have less power?

~~~
noonespecial
As inefficient as is might be, there are still some things that only
government can build. There are plenty of places even today that the US mail
goes to that FedEx does not. (I lived in one of them).

Sometimes you've just got to suck it up and swing that sledge hammer at that
gnat, because there's just no private incentive to make a fly swatter.

~~~
qqq
Yeah, sure, but why is broadband one of those things?

Is it broadband _to rural areas_ that only the Government would do, because
there is no profit in it? If so, I'm not convinced that's the best use of
taxpayer money.

------
Xichekolas
_"They estimated that each billion dollars spent would create up to 40,000
jobs."_

Not sure who is doing the math here, but if you divide a billion by 40k, you
get $25k per person... and nothing left over to spend on materials. So the
workers will either get significantly less than $25k a year for these jobs, or
the concrete and bulldozers will be free.

Far more likely, I'd guess, is that the 40k jobs figure was pulled out of
somebody's backside.

~~~
jcl
Not that I necessarily agree with their logic, but presumably they are
estimating that the net economic benefit of the things created with the
billion dollars exceeds a billion dollars.

~~~
Xichekolas
Ah good point. For some reason I was reading as "a billion dollars will fund
40k people".

------
Mistone
"Borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars today to try to fix the economy,
they argue, will leave a huge bill for the next generation."

Iraq, Bailout..borrowing billions is the Bush strategy except the give it to
private banks and large corps in the form of tax payers with absolutely no
return back to Americans.

------
petercooper
Someone above already said 15 out of 195-ish countries is pretty good, but
more specifically, it's actually kinda on par for the US.

While its easy to assume the US is #1 on many metrics due simply to having the
largest economy, it's not in the top 10 in areas such as quality of life,
quality of education, press freedom, crime, and so on. The US's biggest asset
is its _diversity_ and I doubt the US will ever be #1 in most of these areas
while it retains the power of its diversity.

------
TweedHeads
I blame it on corporate greed, and stupidity.

------
cpr
"It is unacceptable that the United States ranks 15th in the world in
broadband adoption," Mr. Obama said. "Here, in the country that invented the
Internet, every child should have the chance to get online."

Why did I read that as "... every child should have the chance to download
porn at a high rate"? Sigh, does anyone really believe that internet access is
going to make a serious difference in the lives of those children who are
struggling educationally or whose families are on the economic margins? All it
will do is drag them down further in a wasteland of social networking sites
(Facebook, Myspace) and (usually) much worse.

~~~
palish
Just because 99% of children are "in a wasteland of social networking sites"
doesn't mean _everyone_ is, or will be. The internet is a vast, valuable
resource. It is the only reason I am as competent a programmer as I am today.
I'm entirely self-taught, thanks to the internet. As I was growing up, I
usually skipped school activities (and sometimes school) in favor of learning
programming on the internet.

So please don't deny people like me the opportunity just because most people
around us misuse it.

~~~
cpr
So we should embark on a huge government-funded program to widen broadband
availability so 1% of children can benefit from it.

~~~
palish
I don't know. You certainly bring up a good counterpoint, that it would be
very costly and would benefit a disproportionally small amount of the
population.

There probably is no right answer. I would personally like to ensure future
children the same opportunities that were afforded to me.

