The US might have been caught napping when it comes to broadband infrastructure when compared to Asia and Europe, but an article in MacWorld shows that - at least a state level - they’re beginning to wake up.
A report commissioned by a state program in North Carolina is calling for the US to establish a national goal of making at least 100 Mbps available to all Americans at affordable rates by 2012 and for this to be expanded to at least 1 Gbps by 2015.
I’ve just downloaded the Executive Summary, and its makes for compelling reading. In it the authors, from the Washington DC-based Baller Herbst Law Group, suggest that the laying of fibre networks in this century will have the same explosive effect on the nation’s wellbeing as the widespread deployment of electricity had on the last:
“Yet despite the vast benefits that electricity promised, it took more than 50 years for electrification to reach many parts of the United States. It would have taken even longer if thousands of municipalities and cooperatives had not stepped forward to establish their own electric utilities, believing that their economic survival and quality of life were at stake.
Now, the history of electrification is repeating itself in the broadband area. Like the power companies of a century ago, the major communications providers are focusing first on their most lucrative markets and are leaving less profitable communities behind. In the areas that are least attractive to these companies – rural and low-income urban areas – they are either not providing broadband at all or are limiting their offerings to low-capacity technologies such as Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) and Cable Modem Service (CMS).
Unlike a century ago, the United States does not have the luxury of time and isolation from the rest of the world to allow infrastructure of such strategic national significance to evolve at its own pace. The world is now a much more fiercely competitive and globally interconnected place than it used to be.”
The report's authors argue that American jobs are being lost to China, India, Brazil and Mexico – countries whose workers are often as well educated, but who are willing to accept lower wages. So if the US wants to preserve its high standard of living and quality of life it has to move its workforce up the value chain to knowledge-based jobs. The key to this is the education system and an advanced communications infrastructure.
Sound familiar?