Here’s the deal. Quiet simply...on the list of 100 top priorities in rural areas of America....this pretty much near number 88.
Farmers don’t have time to waste with high-speed access. Farmer’s wives have a pretty full day and fairly satisfied with 56k modem speed. If you give high-speed access to rural kids...you just get more addicted to World of Warcraft.
Who says that internet speed is a right? Who says that this is a priority? Who is pushing this entire agenda?
To offer some sarcastic views here. Farmer Joe will eventually cut back on farming hours (presently 15 hours a day), and spend six hours talking to Twinky Wilkerson who lives in NY City and is transgenedered. Farmer Joe will get involved in various online relationships...as will his neighbors. Half of them will eventually leave....and likely move to NY City to be near their online lovers. Who will farm the farm?
Farmer Joe’s wife? She will be a power-broker with various online syndicates out of France. She will eventually give up on her husband and move to Paris to paint abstract rural art with her lesbian girlfriend.
Farmer Joe’s son...Larry? He will become supreme commander of the galactic forty-four force within World of Warcraft. Larry will not pay any attention to the farm or learning the craft. At eighteen...he’ll move in with five other guys who sell oranges door-by-door....and play eighteen hours of gaming per day.
Farmer Joe’s daughter....Jenny? She will make a weekly video of herself riding a tractor with very little on, and share this via the high-speed connection. She’ll tweeter while she drives the tractor and have 188 different guys promising to be her future husband...of which 187 are 40 years old or more. One guy will be from Brazil.
We are delivering a service that will eventually bring down the farming belt.
Like farmers don't need electricity or running water or telephone service or any other modern utility? And do you really think "rural" still means "farm"?
The definition of rural gets tricky, but a common ballpark figure is that "rural" covers three quarters of the nation's land area and is home to 60 million people. 58 million of them don't farm. Rural America is small town America as well as the countryside.
We made the decision in the 1930's that, as a matter of public policy, we were going to extend basic utilities to low density areas. The question is how to do it. This is an interesting public policy question, and it is one where American exceptionalism is at the core of the story. Most of the world, for example, provides utilities services through state-run entities. Some of the New Dealers had that model in mind for the U.S. as well but there was enough opposition that we ended up, mostly, on an alternative course, with IOU's in urban areas and rural electric and telephone cooperatives covering everything else. (Rural electric coops deliver 7% of the nation's power but maintain over 50% of the grid.)
The coops are privately owned but are eligible for long-term, low interest federal loans to bring down costs. A subsidy, yes ... but one that probably minimizes federal cost and control. The alternatives are (a) nationalization and a buildout of capacity directly by a state-run enterprise or (b) a universal service requirement for low-density rural areas imposed on urban and suburban providers, which would impose a crazy-quilt pattern of cross subsidies varying wildly around the country.
Broadband is trickier than electric, telephone, or water service because a wide range of technologies are in play. It is not a natural monopoly situation. But that doesn't make the problem go away. The issue isn't your kids web-surfing instead of doing their homework or your neighbor streaming porn. The issue is that any community that lacks affordable broadband access is effectively redlined with regard to major economic development opportunities. The Hyundai plant ain't a-gonna come if dial-up or satellite is the only broadband service available.
At this point, the selective libertarians usually jump into the fray with the assertion that it's all about economies of scale and high-cost areas can just go without. We don't say that (and haven't for 75 years) for electric or telephone service, but some still say it about broadband. It's a fair debate.
But in my experience, most of the selective libertarians are suburban cowboys who take for granted the use of eminent domain to smash through other people's homes, neighborhoods and farms to build commuter expressways. They take for granted massive public subsidies to build out their own water and power systems. They take for granted public education bureaucracies that will ensure that new schools keep up with new subdivisions sprouting up out on the edge of the sprawl.
Rural broadband is small potatoes compared to the public investment in surbuban sprawl. (And in the long run, rural broadband, by enabling even more dispersed networking, is likely to be part of the solution to congestion and sprawl.) I do not mean to suggest that the Obama approach is correct; time will tell, and the devil is in the details. But I do support provision of rural broadband and am not averse to some form of public support.