Free & ubiquitous? How about costly & spotty?

You may not have heard, but the FCC and Congress have been scheming on a plan. No, we're not talking about more ways to give big corporations control of the radio or TV. This time, it's a good plan - Free Wi-Fi Broadband for Rural Areas. But our outgoing President? He doesn't like the idea too much.

First some background: New parts of the wireless spectrum are being auctioned off next year and Congress & the FCC would like for the winners to set aside a quarter of the space for a "no-fee service to rural areas that don't have broadband access." The speeds would be a downstream of about 700Kbps

Okay, I'll say it - that sounds really awesome, actually. My mother lives in the middle of nowhere Arkansas and even though she has what they call DSL, she's lucky if she reaches 56Kbps. When she was on 56Kbps, she was lucky to transfer at 1Kbps or 2Kbps. It's truly sad.

In an open letter to the FCC, Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez used that common tactic of FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt), "This mandate would likely lead to congested and inefficiently used broadband." How exactly? That's not important. What's important for the Bush administration and Carlos Guitierrez is that it could happen, so why even try?

Mr. Gutierrez shows his lack of knowledge on the difficulty of getting broadband access to rural America when he says, "a government-mandated free nationwide network is not the most effective or efficient way to assist underserved (sic) areas." But these are areas that are so spread-out, that no company really wants to run wires to them. The ROI is pitiful. So options are pretty limited - the phone lines already there are outdated and worn and since the whole promise of internet through electrical wire seems to be no closer to a reality, a nationwide rural broadband network could be exactly what these areas need.

The good news is that Obama's candidate for Secretary of Commerce, Governor Bill Richardson, is an outspoken fan and supporter of free rural broadband access. So Bush can have his fun while he's still in office, but perhaps in the first 100 days of the Obama Presidency, we'll make a move to actually get most of this nation online for real.