ITIF: Framing a National Broadband Policy
Dr. Robert Atkinson, president of the D.C.-based Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF), recently published a paper titled "Framing a National Broadband Policy" in the telecommunications law journal CommLaw Conspectus.
In exploring whether or not a national broadband policy is needed in the United States, Atkinson starts by addressing one of the most contentious issues in the debate: the data that compare the U.S. to other nations. For example, some critics have challenged the oft-cited rankings by the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) that place the U.S. 15th out of the 30 OECD countries in the number of broadband subscribers per capita (the U.S. held the 4th spot as recently as 2001). Others point to data by the European Commission that suggests the U.S. leads most E.U. countries as proof that the U.S. is a leader in broadband, and some dismiss altogether the idea of comparing the U.S. to other countries.
Atkinson defends the OECD's findings that the U.S. lags behind other countries, and concludes the following:
The low and falling rank of the United States is a clear indicator of the need for a more proactive national broadband policy. Even if the United States led the world in broadband penetration, the policies recommended by this article would remain valid; the fact that the United States lags behind many other countries only adds urgency to the broadband policy debate.
In response to market-oriented conversatives who believe that the current state of broadband is better than some of the data suggest, he goes on to say that, "just as wiring the nation for electricity seventy years ago led to a host of other positive developments, accelerated widespread adoption of high speed broadband will do the same today."
Atkinson also refutes what he calls the "core of conversatives' arguments against a proactive national broadband policy" -- namely that "broadband is similar to other products that the market does an adequare job of producing and distributing." He contends that market forces alone won't yield the amount of investment that is "societally optimal" and that government policies to spur broadband are needed because there are significant benefits for society that he says don't exist with other types of consumer technologies.
So what types of benefits would a national broadband policy spur?
According to Atkinson, more broadband would give rise to a host of new services and applications and would increase consumer efficiency and productivity. He also points to the benefits associated with telemedicine, telecommuting and distance learning, and notes broadband's role in national competitivness and regional economic development. In fact, he states that broadband is less like a consumer service and "more like a capital investment, akin to technology such as a server or a computer network."
He describes seven primary goals of a national broadband policy, each with its own trade-offs:
- Expanding acces to more geographic areas
- Increasing adoption rates, particularly by low-income households
- Ensuring low costs for service providers
- Ensuring low prices for consumers
- Spurring higher broadband speeds
- Boosting competition among service providers
- Guaranteeing an open, neutral network
Atkinson concludes that more analysis and debate are needed to determine exactly what broadband policies should look like, but he asserts: "It is time to move beyond the debate of whether the United States needs a national broadband policy. It does. The task now is to craft it and implement it."
You can download a PDF of the 33-page paper to read it in its entirety. Published: January 18, 2008.
Note: Robert Atkinson is a member of the advisory board for Tech Policy Summit and ITIF is a research sponsor of the 2008 Summit.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.techpolicycentral.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/907
