Some super-genius guy wrote a super-genius op-ed in today's Washington Times entitled, "Spare Us the Broadband Plan." In it, that super-genius guy (hint: that's me, and I'm joking. I'm just a regular genius) talks about the grand scheme released by Chairman Julius Genachowski of the Federal Communications Commission, known as the "National Broadband Plan."
I'll save you the excruciating task of reading all 376 pages of it and instead give you the Cliff's Notes here: Genachowski thinks the federal government needs to implement a wide range of regulations and tax infrastructure changes to subsidize the expansion of broadband internet services to people who can't get it currently.
"Hey, super-genius guy," I hear you saying, "wouldn't it be a good thing to spread high-speed internet access all across the country? Think of the benefits that would bring!" To which super-genius guy responds, "First of all, I already pointed out that I'm just a regular genius. And second, of course it would be good, but is it worth $56,000 per home to do it?" Here's part of the op-ed that discusses the true cost of extending broadband that last little bit...
"Even the hardest-to-serve Americans who live in remote areas can choose from several satellite providers that offer speeds of 1 megabit per second (18 times faster than dial-up) for $60 to $70 per month. That's not as fast as cable or telephone companies' broadband speeds, but it would seem to make more sense than spending $24 billion to build 4-megabit-per-second land lines out to those remote areas, as the FCC estimates it would cost.
Economist Jerry Ellig of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University points out just how costly it will be to do things the FCC's way: "That $24 billion 'funding gap' also deserves comment. That's the amount of subsidy the plan estimates will be required to make 4 Mbps broadband available to all Americans. If you read the plan carefully, you will also find that a whopping $14 billion of that is required to bring broadband to the highest-cost two-tenths of one percent of American housing units - 250,000 homes (see page 138 of the National Broadband Plan). That works out to $56,000 per housing unit!" Incredibly, $56,000 would be enough to buy satellite Internet service for each of those households over the next 66 years."
Silliness aside, there are real issues at stake with this broadband plan. In roughly a decade, we've gone from just 8 million people having broadband service to more than 200 million. The increase in internet speeds has been mind-boggling, even to those that follow the industry very closely. I can vividly remember logging on to the internet via a 9,600 bps modem not too long ago. When we finally upgraded to 56k, it seemed like a miracle, and we're already light-years past that.
Simply stated, broadband has expanded quite well without any centralized doctrine from Washington. While the goals of the National Broadband Plan are admirable, it's not at all unreasonable to think that the rapid advancement of technology would make its guidelines obsolete within just a few years. Combining the Plan with so-called "net neutrality" regulations would be a double-whammy for taxpayers to revolutionize an industry that's been revolutionizing itself without bureaucratic bungling.