Calls for US policymakers to speed the rollout of broadband-speed Internet access to American homes and businesses have gained some new weight since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
With the already battered telecommunications industry seemingly thrown into a prolonged slump, the argument goes, a concerted national effort to boost broadband could be the best elixir to get telecom, and maybe the whole economy, growing again.
Businesses disrupted by air-travel restrictions and anthrax scares -- and in lower Manhattan, the literal destruction of their offices -- have found that enabling employees to work from home can be a crucial contingency plan for coping with disaster, terror-related or otherwise. That calls for more broadband, the high-speed "always on" Web connections provided by cable modems, digital subscriber lines (DSL), or wireless and satellite technology, because telecommuting by dial-up modem is few people's idea of productivity.
Old arguments
At the same time, Sept. 11 crystallized some old arguments. For a nation grappling with how to move forward and foster prosperity, many say, "universal broadband" could be a powerful stimulus to the 21st century economy as the transcontinental railroads, rural electrification, or interstate highway construction of decades past.
"Technology got the economy going," said Isadore T. Katz, a former Massachusetts telecom regulation analyst who is now president of Lightchip, a Salem, New Hampshire, optical-networking manufacturer. "What can revive the economy? Put telecom back on its feet again."
Katz thinks policymakers should take a serious look at a "national broadband bill" with subsidies funded from the same kinds of "universal service" fees that subsidize rural phone service (Companies like his ultimately could benefit).
At the same time, however, other analysts warn that a government effort to promote broadband is fraught with perils, including misdirected and wasted subsidies and tax breaks.
In a speech last Friday, Michael K. Powell, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, said the problem does not seem to be that Americans can't get broadband -- but that they won't, at least not for the prevailing US$50 a month. Citing studies by J.P. Morgan and others, Powell said nearly three-quarters of all US households have access to cable modems, and another 45 percent can get phone-based digital subscriber lines. But only 12 percent, or just under 8 million households, have signed up so far, according to Jupiter Media Metrix.
"We all want some broadband. There also is some angst that it is not here, or that it is not coming fast enough," Powell said. But in weighing whether "government actions" are needed to promote broadband, Powell said he is convinced that "the key measure is the availability of the service, not adoption rates. Consumers may not yet value the services at the prices they are being offered."
While questions of what role federal and state policy makers should play in promoting broadband are likely to be hashed out for years, it is clear that once-booming broadband growth seems to be stagnating, especially in DSL. And last week was a bad-news week for broadband: SBC Communications said it is slashing capital spending next year by 20 percent, with most of the cuts in its "Project Pronto" effort to bring DSL to the last 40 percent of its service area. SBC squarely blamed federal regulations for the cuts.
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