Many folks talk about broadband build out as if it were rural electrification. I do agree with this in one sense — it is a critical part of our infrastructure and links to our tradition of ensuring that we remain one country with access to vital services for all. In this respect, broadband is similar to telephone/voice, electric power, sewage, roads, and other other public utility/natural monopoly type investments. But it is fundamentally different from all of these in a fundamental way. Other public utilities have high initial construction cost, but then have very predictable maintenance and upgrade costs. This makes it possible to solve some problems with a huge one-time grant or, for the private sector to make a serious cap ex investment, but then budget for regular upgrades based on projected need and maintenance based on standard depreciation.
Not so broadband. As our technological capacity increases, we increase both the potential capacity for the network and our capacity to use the network in unpredictable ways. But we have neither public policy nor private sector models that acknowledge this — with the possible exception of Verizon, which solved the problem from their perspective by aggressively pulling fiber/overbuilding capacity as to current demand where profitable and aggressively selling off high cost rural regions. And, while that works for Verizon and its shareholders, it rather sucks from a public policy perspective.
I call this the Zeno’s Broadband Buildout Problem. No matter how much Achilles invests in build out, he will never catch up to the limit of possible upgrades. As I explain below, my tentative conclusion is that the right public policy result is a recognition that we don’t get to do a one time investment and go away, but need to continue to experiment to find sustainable models that factor in growth rather than simply look at build out followed by steady state. I’m not sure beyond that, other than my conviction that anyone who shrugs and says “that’s why the government shouldn’t do this at all” is definitely wrong.
OTOH, it also means I find the speed upgrade in the stimulus package — 45/15 for wireline and 3/1 for wireless — pretty good despite the fact that many of us want to reach the 100 mbps or even 1 gigabit/second capacity for future network needs. Broadband Achillies may not be able to catch up to Bandwidth Demand Tortois, but that doesn’t mean he gets to slack off either. A good swift stimulus in the patootie is actually a pretty good idea, given the open ended nature of the problem.
More below . . . .