Another Way To Get Incumbents To Provide Broadband to Rural Areas
There's been a lot of talk lately of how muni WiFi projects will offer competitive pressure to the incumbents to offer more accessible broadband solutions to more customers. And Techdirt strongly believes additional healthy, American, competition in the broadband segment is good a thing, as we're sure all our carrier friends agree... But up in the Highlands of the UK, the Scottish Executive (a govt branch) has agreed to fund the expansion of BT's private DSL network into 378 additional exchanges. These exchanges, so far, were deemed unprofitable for BT to upgrade. While there are very strong arguments both for and against this method of pushing DSL penetration, it us undeniable that the Executive is very serious about the universality of high-speed Internet for all the citizens of Scotland. "Ubiquitous broadband availability brings great opportunities for Scotland in education, public services and business life, and will place Scotland among the leaders of the G8 countries in terms of availability." Perhaps this is a good marriage of the profit motive, and the public interest motive. Disclosure: BT is a consulting client of my firm, but not on this issue.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
