Tuesday, February 05, 2008
Setting goals not solutions
Bill St. Arnaud recently pointed to an Educause whitepaper: A Blueprint for Big Broadband in the US.The paper strikes me as alarmist right from the opening lines.
The United States is facing a crisis in broadband connectivity. The demand for bandwidth is accelerating well beyond the capacity of our current broadband networks, especially as video traffic and home‐based businesses become more prevalent. In the very near future, a single family will be watching HDTV video at the same that they engage in remote health monitoring, videoconferencing, gaming, distance education class lectures, and social networking.The authors seem to feel no compulsion to be factually accurate, completely ignoring Verizon's fibre to the home initiative and the cable industry's investments in advancing higher speed internet access services, such as those first announced by Videotron, but coming to all major cable systems:
While other nations are preparing for the future, the United States is not. Most developed nations are deploying “big broadband” networks (100 Mbps) that provide faster connections at cheaper prices than those available in the United States.Like New York Governor Spitzer, this January 2008 report points to Canada as a shining light:
The paper recommends the public‐private partnership approach followed in Canada, where one‐third of the funding would be provided by the federal government, one‐third by the states, and the remaining one-third by the private and / or public sector.Bill St. Arnaud correctly points out that public private partnerships are hardly a guarantee of success.
Several municipal and government funded broadband initiatives are in already in trouble such as Utopia, Philadelphia WiFi and South Dundas (which is paradoxically is cited as good example in this paper).Allow me to digress a moment.
I was at a meeting last week for a volunteer organization that was looking to get more involved in advocacy for social action causes. Among the issues that we plan to address is child poverty and the working poor in families led by single women. Almost immediately, there was a call for minimum wages to be raised. I objected to advocating such a subject. Raising the minimum wage isn't a goal; it is one of the means to achieve a goal. After a lively discussion, we looked at goals such as enabling immigrant professionals to achieve Canadian accreditation; ensuring all children have access to meals at school and a roof over their heads to sleep.
I have written before about defining requirements rather than solutions. This report advocates for Canadian style solutions, yet it shows that Canada is behind the US on many measures - such as broadband connections per 100 inhabitants, average advertised speed, average cost, etc.
Bill's comments on the study asks about increasing facilities based competition.
The challenge with broadband in North America is lack of facilities based competition. What we need to find out is why the big telcos and cablecos are not deploying infrastructure in their competitor's territory? They seem to have no problem deploying nation wide wireless networks, but nobody wants to make the make investment in nation wide broadband in direct competition with existing incumbents. What are the hurdles? Is broadband a natural monopoly?There is clearly no monopoly in broadband. There are two facilities based players and opportunities for others to build. Competition between cable and telcos has driven technology deployment that matches consumers' willingness to pay.
Government involvement in dark fibre will result in a monopoly on facilities that removes incentives for innovation. We have government bodies that have determined these markets to be competitive. Why would we want to establish a state-owned monopoly?
Let me suggest that the role of Government is to set goals, not intervene in solutions.
If necessary, perhaps Government could administer and provide needs-based subsidies or tax credits directly to consumers. As difficult as it may be to resist, there seems to be a temptation to distort the marketplace by building infrastructure.
Michael Geist suggests that Barack Obama has led other candidates in placing technology policy as a campaign issue. What broadband policies will emerge in this year's elections south of the border and posturing in Canada?
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Posted by Mark Goldberg @ 2/05/2008 07:42:00 AM 
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One way to determine even if Canada's political parties and their leaders have positons concerning technology and technology policy issues would be to ask the candidates in the four federal by-elections that are currently underway. One of these is very close to our homes in the riding of Willowdale. If they believe these items are important, you would think they'd be prepared to posture during these campaigns. Unfortunately, such has not been the case to date.
There has been a lot of media coverage in the U.S. recently about how little attention has been given to telecom and technology and the telecom and technology-related issues that are driving the global economy and exerting an impact on U.S. global competitiveness by the candidates in this year's presidential election. While this may be true, some candidates have at least staked out positions in formal policy documents.
While Hilary Clinton hasn't made tech issues a central part of her campaign, but she has championed an “innovation agenda”. That agenda includes several policies that many large tech companies have embraced: tax incentives to encourage broadband providers to deploy services in underserved areas; federal support of state and local broadband programs, including municipal broadband projects; and a permanent research-and-development tax credit. She has also said she would support net neutrality regulations for U.S. broadband providers.
As you point out, Barack Obama has led other candidates in placing technology policy as a campaign issue with the release of an extensive technology policy paper that has earned him praise from several tech groups. In his tech agenda Obama has called for net neutrality regulations for broadband carriers. It also focuses on several other key Internet issues including strengthening privacy protections, as well as increasing enforcement actions against spammers, spyware creators and phishing websites, and access concerns. It promises to update universal access to telephone service and electricity by providing for universal access to high-speed broadband networks. The plan also commits to having government serve as a model for Internet use and by appointing a chief technology officer for the U.S. federal government. Digital copyright concerns have also become part of his campaign.
The fact that Obama has seen fit to even address these issues represents a dramatic change in the prioritization of technology issues within a major political campaign. Viewed from a Canadian perspective, few, if any, Canadian leaders or political parties have even established positions on these issues.
I think the Obama campaign provides evidence that issues like net neutrality, broadband access and digital copyright should move beyond mere business concerns into front-line political issues that cannot be easily ignored. At least he and, to a somewhat lesser extent, Hilary Clinton have seen the light.
The question now is when will Harper, Dion, Layton, et. al. and their candidates come to the same realization. Perhaps the major tech organizations and senior executives from Canadian telecom and technology companies should be pressing the candidates in the by-elections for their parties' positions on these issues.
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There has been a lot of media coverage in the U.S. recently about how little attention has been given to telecom and technology and the telecom and technology-related issues that are driving the global economy and exerting an impact on U.S. global competitiveness by the candidates in this year's presidential election. While this may be true, some candidates have at least staked out positions in formal policy documents.
While Hilary Clinton hasn't made tech issues a central part of her campaign, but she has championed an “innovation agenda”. That agenda includes several policies that many large tech companies have embraced: tax incentives to encourage broadband providers to deploy services in underserved areas; federal support of state and local broadband programs, including municipal broadband projects; and a permanent research-and-development tax credit. She has also said she would support net neutrality regulations for U.S. broadband providers.
As you point out, Barack Obama has led other candidates in placing technology policy as a campaign issue with the release of an extensive technology policy paper that has earned him praise from several tech groups. In his tech agenda Obama has called for net neutrality regulations for broadband carriers. It also focuses on several other key Internet issues including strengthening privacy protections, as well as increasing enforcement actions against spammers, spyware creators and phishing websites, and access concerns. It promises to update universal access to telephone service and electricity by providing for universal access to high-speed broadband networks. The plan also commits to having government serve as a model for Internet use and by appointing a chief technology officer for the U.S. federal government. Digital copyright concerns have also become part of his campaign.
The fact that Obama has seen fit to even address these issues represents a dramatic change in the prioritization of technology issues within a major political campaign. Viewed from a Canadian perspective, few, if any, Canadian leaders or political parties have even established positions on these issues.
I think the Obama campaign provides evidence that issues like net neutrality, broadband access and digital copyright should move beyond mere business concerns into front-line political issues that cannot be easily ignored. At least he and, to a somewhat lesser extent, Hilary Clinton have seen the light.
The question now is when will Harper, Dion, Layton, et. al. and their candidates come to the same realization. Perhaps the major tech organizations and senior executives from Canadian telecom and technology companies should be pressing the candidates in the by-elections for their parties' positions on these issues.
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: 12:21 PM, February 05, 2008
: 12:21 PM, February 05, 2008 << Home
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