If the US government and taxpayers allow the telecommunications industry to dictate the terms under which they receive $4.7 billion now and much more later in broadband stimulus money, then the government and the taxpayers deserve what they get, which won’t be much.
We’ve learned this expensive lesson already. In 1996, the US government forked over $200 billion to build out broadband. Phone companies spent it on long distance instead because there wasn’t really any way for the government to enforce how the money was spent.
Sound eerily familiar? Three years beyond the 2006 deadline that was basically suggested and not demanded, the US is embarrassingly far down the list in terms of broadband speed and access with “competitors” in the market charging 40 times bandwidth and 7,000 percent SMS markups.
So now there’s broadband stimulus money up for grabs, intended to stretch broadband out to rural areas where only dial-up or expensive satellite connections are available. Keeping good on a commitment to open networks, the Obama Administration via the Commerce Department and Congress have attached conditions to this money requiring new networks to be open and nondiscriminatory.
The telecommunications and cable industry don’t like this because it requires them to spend the free money the government gives them in precisely the way the government would like them to spend it. They’d rather have free money they can do whatever they want with.
Well, who wouldn’t? But despite Hank Paulson’s apparent belief the US Treasury is a big business raffle for those with the saddest sob stories, it’s not. The telecom industry is acting like a teenager who wants to spend her lunch money on a thong. They get mad, shout it’s not fair, and declare that once they have the money it’s their money to do what they want with it.
It’s that kind of teenage logic and audacity that’s caused a lot of problems lately, not the least of which is the whole country just got knocked up by a gang of deadbeat dads.
The telecoms want to let four guidelines created by the FCC in 2005 stand as proper oversight. These would be the same guidelines then FCC chairman Kevin Martin admitted had no teeth whatsoever, and that Comcast is contesting in court while declaring the FCC lacks the authority to enforce them.
This is a typical money grab, and the government shouldn’t fall for it a second time.
