Should The Government Encourage Broadband Rollouts?

from the many-paradoxes-of-broadband dept

The always interesting Andrew Odlyzko has written up a nice long piece for First Monday looking at the "many paradoxes of broadband". While broadband supporters have been pushing for the government to mandate a more aggressive rollout of broadband services (mainly so that they can then try to sell something on top of it), Odlyzko points out that the issue is not about rollout. Broadband is accessible in much of the country already - the real issue is adoption. People aren't adopting it as quickly as some companies would like - though, they are adopting it much faster than plenty of other technologies. Basically, he's suggesting that those pushing for government backing of broadband should be patient. It will come, just not as quickly as they'd like. I won't summarize the entire article, as it's quite long and makes many good points, but it is worth reading. He goes on to compare the idea of government support of broadband with past situations like government support of railroads, canals, and the nineteenth century post office. Amusingly, he makes fun of the "official" definition of broadband - pointing out that the US Postal service is technically offering broadband, since you can ship someone a box full of CD-ROMs. He also makes a good point concerning the difference between "pent up demand" for broadband and "insatiable demand" for broadband and suggests people need to realize the former is not the same as the latter. However, over time, demand does grow - it's just not instantaneous. Overall, the argument is that we shouldn't fear for broadband, and we don't need public money spent to support broadband. There are some actions that can be done to help push it forward (including the suggestion that telecom companies buy up record labels and give away music for free on the internet), but we shouldn't worry too much about broadband adoption in the long run.