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Tom Giovanetti of the Institute for Policy Innovation envisions a world in which Internet equality is indeed achieved -- the brown outs are spread even-handedly across TV, VoIP, website access, EMT communications, and spam.
And those naive enough to think that the government will provide all the bandwidth anyone might want should look at the area in which the government is already responsible for providing the bandwidth - roads:
Most government officials greet mounting congestion with a shrug and inaction. During the past two decades, driving has nearly doubled, but our nation's roadway system has grown by only 4%.
As a result, congestion causes 3.7 billion hours of delays, wastes over 2.3 billion gallons of fuel and costs the economy over $63 billion a year. Congestion has gone from a background concern to what Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta calls "one of the single largest threats to our economic prosperity."
Surveys show that residents in various major metro areas list congestion as their No. 1 complaint. A recent analysis asked CEOs of Silicon Valley financial firms to rank their business concerns. Traffic congestion tied with high housing costs for the top spot — ahead of perennial business headaches like taxes and health care. In desperation, the road builders are embracing markets just as the Internet-dependent techies want to abandon them:
France has shown ways around (and under) problems that many American leaders would regard as insurmountable. A missing link in Paris' A86 ring road has long created terrible congestion because officials were understandably hesitant to finish the road by building through portions of historic Versailles.
Instead of accepting congestion, as many U.S. cities and states have done, the French are filling in the missing link and preserving the historic space by building road tunnels beneath Versailles.
"Socialist" France has readily embraced market-based transportation innovations. The A86 tunnels are being built with private money, and France's 5,000-mile tolled motorway system is investor-owned. For the Nth time, people whose business depends on getting high-value content to consumers have a strong interest in being able to pay to ensure the timely delivery of that content.
posted by James DeLong @ 12:40 PM | Telecom
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