Forget universal broadband

Somewhere along the way, I lost the logic in the universal broadband argument.

For years, I would have said, “Sure, for our national economic interests, broadband should be ubiquitous, like the postal service, or Starbucks.” But after years of private and public broadband deployment and the telco/cable wars, the case for spending tens of billions in federal taxpayer money to finish the job amid roaring deficits began to slip away from me.

Leave aside for a moment the notion that federal economic stimulus efforts aimed at rural broadband could undo local and regional economic stimulus efforts, as cities that proactively built out broadband to lure jobs might lose them to the wide open spaces.

Proponents of universal broadband argue that the U.S. is losing its competitive edge on the global stage because its broadband penetration numbers are lower than those in, say, Japan or Singapore. But are companies really shunning the U.S. market because there's not enough broadband here? After all, the gap between our penetration numbers and Japan's is in rural America. Is that really the segment of the market that stands between us and the forefront of global technology innovation?

Data from the Pew Internet & American Life Project challenge the case for spending billions on universal broadband: Of the roughly 12% of American homes without broadband today, a third say they wouldn't buy broadband if they could. And of the 25% of Americans who don't use the Internet at all, at any speed, only 12% say it's due to lack of access. (Like the book says, sometimes he's just not that into you.)

Still, perhaps even those holdouts would use broadband — and help feed the national economy — if they knew what to do with it. But if weak demand is the problem, maybe we should be pushing broadband's benefits to rural Americans harder than we push the actual networks — maybe then rural America would do more of the pulling itself. We need to get them hooked on applications.

In a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi in February, the Rural Telecommunications Alliance, a collection of rural-interest advocates, called for federal help in bringing broadband to “unserved areas,” asserting that “broadband Internet service is as critical to farm and ranch families as well as rural communities and businesses in the 21st century as rail service was in the 19th and 20th centuries.”

Despite the historic importance of trains, however, there was never a call to bring railroad tracks to every American's doorstep. Railways were built in accordance with commercial demand, creating more demand along the way. If you didn't live near the tracks, it was up to you to bring yourself the rest of the way.

U.S. BROADBAND ACCESS BY DEMOGRAPHIC

Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project