As part of her plan to “Restore the Promise of Rural America,” Sen. Hillary Clinton is proposing a new fund and strategy for rural broadband deployment. While we admire the Senator from New York’s savvy for noticing how improved Internet infrastructures can help economies, we can’t help but wonder if last week’s announcement is designed more to grab Iowa voter attention than to realistically spur federally supported carriage of bits.
On the surface, Clinton’s Rural Broadband Initiatives Act is not a bad idea — given that the big service providers are doing all they can to escape build-out clauses for their future networks, rural America needs all the broadband help it can get.
But the political reality is that such broadband subsidies are more likely to be part of a planned reform of the Universal Service Fund, a huge bear of a political tangle whose knots are just now starting to get pulled apart.
Such legislation is likely to first emerge in the Commerce committees of both the House and the Senate, but D.C. insiders see little chance for serious action on telelcom matters anytime soon, due in part to the unsure power balance and more-pressing legislative issues like the war in Iraq.
So — good for Hillary to make broadband a part of the stump speech. But her plan will probably do a better job of cheering Iowa voters than putting any fiber in the ground.
1 trackback so far
10:11 AM PT
[...] another broadband blogger, posted his comments on the announcement and seems to think that this is great for Iowa voters, but mostly a bill without teeth. The [...]
8 comments so far
11:02 AM PT
Hmm. It’s too bad she doesn’t have action to back that one up. NYS is a wealth of opportunities to help out rural folk with broadband. My parents and a friend in Northern New York have no options; they watch TV on satellite and don’t have cable passing by their house.
11:33 AM PT
Do you think she knows what she’s talking about? Here’s a profile of one of the leaders in rural telecom: Citizen Communication, and here’s an interview with their CEO, Maggie Wilderotter. At least, Hillary and Maggie should have a woman to woman chat!
11:51 AM PT
Since when should this be the role of proper government?
12:44 PM PT
Tim, the US gubmint has a long history of providing funds for “universal service” — which historically has meant that every town, no matter how rural, should have basic phone service. There is a push from several sectors now (esp rural senators) to make basic broadband the new “universal service,” and to keep or even expand the tax now paid on most communications services to do so.
4:08 PM PT
The people who question government’s role in getting services out to the people need to study their history. Not only was government action needed to get telephony out to everyone, it was even needed for electricity. There were plenty of rural areas with no electricity well into the 1930s!
10:06 AM PT
If it’s as successful as her universal health care then rural folks should get used to 56k dial-up access. This is best left to the state and local level, where they can have more control over what gets built out and who gets to participate. The big telco’s will no douby line the pockets of the politico’s and suck up all those federal dollars while the boonie folk get empty promises. If Vermont pulls off their e-state initiative, then all the other states should follow their lead.
12:09 PM PT
I think it is really important that access to HIGH SPEED, affordable broadband is an issue in this election. It says in her press statement that her plan has the support of the Communications Workers of America. The CWA has a website (link) which lays out a whole range of proposals for increasing access. This is absolutely something the government should be involved in as the lack of access will mean exclusion from so much information and so many services. It looks like on this one Hillary is getting advice from people who really know the industry.
9:01 PM PT
GLC, you don’t think big telco/cableco know how to work state and local government as well as federal? I guess you’re forgetting how back in 2005 a bunch of states were falling all over themselves trying to pass anti-municipal broadband legislation that would make it almost impossible for anyone other than big cable/telco to provide broadband in their state. Historically, this kind of project is better handled at the federal level.
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