Over at Ars Technica they are running an article about how the current US broadband plan still will leave the USA as a second tier country as it relates to internet access. I agree for the most part that this is unacceptable, but I understand the challenges.

First of all we have a very large country as it relates to land mass. This means it takes far more infrastructure and at a higher cost to provide access. Companies have not been properly motivated to roll out the fast access since they are driven by profit and can lock people into contracts. This allows them to be slow in rolling out access since they know that people can not change companies for a few months or even a couple of years.

They can also play the money card with regulators. They can easily claim that they simply don’t have money to spend on the infrastructure or that spending it will put the company under undo stress financially. While I don’t agree with most government regulations and I think they government should have a limited roll in business if any at all. This is one area I am for the government laying down mandates. Doing so will allow US kids to have access to cheap fast broadband access that will encourage learning and development. It will also help draw the greatest minds from around the world since we will have the internet infrastructure to allow them to do research with ease.

Now that leaves the question of what we should be shooting for by 2020? Well I would think that 10Gbps synchronous or asynchronous would be a good start. I would also like to see our cell networks capable of 1Gbps by 2012! I am not really confident that either will happen or that law makers really care. I just know somethings needs to be done.

FCC broadband plan will put US in “secound tier of countries” by Nate Anderson at Ars Technica