The new broadband speech

The following is a speech that will be given by President Bush--just as soon as he hires me as his technology advisor/speechwriter.

Good morning, my fellow Americans. As many of you know, I recently announced my desire for all U.S. citizens to have cheap broadband access. I really wanted this after my advisors told me that we are now tenth in the world in broadband deployment and lagging the field worse than Ralph Nader when it comes to DSL deployment per access line.

Being behind Korea, Taiwan and Japan is OK. They always have cool stuff first, and can work out all the bugs before we get our hands on it. But France, Italy and Germany? They all may produce good food and are excellent travel destinations, but if we can't lord our technological superiority over those guys, something is seriously wrong. We're not talking Nordic countries here, either. At least it's cold there and they have nothing better to do but think up neat new wireless stuff.

It also has come to my attention that the largest provider of DSL equipment is French, even though they have a big facility in that all-American state of Texas.

However, after giving this a lot of thought, I have come to the conclusion that nothing I do is going to suddenly make us the broadband kings of the world. We Americans don't like our housing stacked like cordwood, and therefore don't have the kind of network architecture that lends itself to fast broadband rollout. We as Americans also want things cheap, what with all that credit card debt, triple mortgages and other bills we have. That doesn't jibe with what that French company (or the Chinese or German company) wants, and somebody's gotta pay for the stuff to get broadband to the home. And if you're waiting for Uncle Sam to kick in a few bucks, forget it.

I also have discovered that I could clear every regulatory hurdle that the Bell companies want and they'll roll out broadband lickety-split. Just like ISDN. So my advice to you is to is either crowd yourself into a big city high rise where you can get fast access, move to one of those other countries or sit a spell and wait. Either that, or ignore those silly surveys.

Thank you.

E-mail me at vvittore@primediabusiness.com.