August 14th, 2009
Telecoms don't want broadband bucks with strings attached
How would you like $4.7 million to build out broadband to rural America? If you’re Verizon or AT&T, the answer is clearly, “no, thanks.” The Washington Post reports that none of the three major telecoms is interested in taking those funds.
The reason is simple enough: they don’t want the net-neutrality strings that come with the money.
“We are concerned that some new mandates seem to go well beyond current laws and [Federal Communications Commission] rules, and may lead to the kind of continuing uncertainty and delay that is antithetical to the president’s primary goals of economic stimulus and job creation,” said Walter B. McCormick Jr., president of USTelecom, a trade group that represents telecoms including AT&T and Verizon.
So if not Comcast, Verizon and AT&T, whose going to do that work? Small rural telecoms?
“If you want to get broadband out, you have to do it with [those] who brought you to the dance in the first place, and in this case it is the incumbent cable and telephone carriers who have 85 percent of lines in the country,” said Robert Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a Washington tech policy think tank. “This is not basket weaving. This is really complex and intensive technical stuff that takes a fair amount of sophistication and scale to be able to do right and to continue to upgrade.”
If the big private companies won’t do it with a carrot, then maybe a stick is appropriate. Or maybe a “public option” is appropriate. Government subsidies can go to a long way towards building competence in small companies. Perhaps the equivalent of rural utilities need to be created. But I am pretty tired of mega-corporations who have essentially been granted a license to print money crying that regulations are cramping their style.
Internet is a utility. Regulations apply. For the public good, not just for the benefit of shareholders and top executives. It’s time for telecoms to accept net neutrality, and it’s time for the FCC to simply law down the law. They have the power to regulate these companies and they should do so.
