Advocates Call for Greater Broadband Adoption, Eye Obama Presidency

Advocates for greater broadband adoption reportedly gathered in the nation’s capital this week for a policy symposium hosted by the Internet Innovation Alliance.

 

Two months before President-elect Barack Obama is sworn in as the United States’ 44^th executive chief, people from government agencies, academia and advocacy groups are calling for wide broadband deployment.

 

According to Kenneth Corbin of InternetNews.com, Larry Irving, the IIA’s co-chairman, said, “There’s no investment America can make that is likely to pay a better dividend than investment in broadband infrastructure.”

 

As TMCnet has reported, Obama has put a major emphasis on broadband deployment through wireless technologies, and has spoken of Internet access in schools and healthcare facilities.

 

He’ll also take office as the unemployment rate rises to levels not seen in a quarter-century.

 

One off-shoot of Obama’s commitment to broadband could be creation of new jobs, as TMCnet discussed in an interview with a telecom expert, attorney Andrew D. Lipman of Bingham McCutchen LLP.

 

According to Lipman, Obama directly sees infrastructure initiatives as directly and indirectly creating jobs – good, clean, value-added jobs.

 

“He (Obama) looks at infrastructure much like a century ago: Policymakers looked at railroads as instrumentalities to further commerce, driving down prices and increasing efficiency,” Lipman said. “In particular, he believes that broadband infrastructure will have a multiplier effect on the economy. Namely, that every dollar spent will create multiples of that investment in related jobs and investment. So, in Obama’s mind, the two factors are inter-related.”

 

According to Corbin, though the general idea that more broadband is a good thing for the nation is well-accepted, the issue can get muddied when specifics are called for.

 

Rey Ramsey, CEO of One Economy, a nonprofit group that works to deliver broadband to low-income communities and train people how to use the technology, reportedly said that if a nation has limited government resources, it shouldn’t put out policies that are designed to be so grandiose, but should be micro-targeted to where society has a compelling public interest to make a difference.

 

To people like Ramsey, Corbin reports, the problem is more one of demand than supply.

 

“The demand-side view claims that service is available to the majority of Americans who don’t have a broadband connection, but they choose not to subscribe for a variety of reasons,” Corbin says. “For some people, cost is the barrier. Others either don’t own a computer or don’t see the benefit in connecting to the Internet. For millions of others, dial-up service still meets their needs.”

 

Yet some groups are calling for the government to help bridge the digital divide because the nation is being outpaced financially and technologically by some others.