Editor’s Note: Welcome to our weekly Reader Forum section. In an attempt to broaden our interaction with our readers we have created this forum for those with something meaningful to say to the wireless industry. We want to keep this as open as possible, but maintain some editorial control so as to keep it free of commercials or attacks. Please send along submissions for this section to our editors at: [email protected].
When President Eisenhower built the interstate highway system, would it have made sense to build the roads to accommodate the horse and carriage?
Of course not.
Yet the Federal Communications Commission is considering a proposal that would hard wire homes and businesses in rural America for broadband, while disregarding the mobile broadband technology that our citizens increasingly want and need. This despite the fact that the FCC’s own Technology Advisory Council predicts that by 2018, only 8% of households will have landline telephone service.
It should come as no surprise that this plan was written by the big landline telephone carriers. If it’s adopted, at least $42 billion from the Universal Service Fund – established by Congress to help bring telecommunications services to rural areas – would be invested over the next decade in outdated landline service, leaving at most $3 billion for mobile wireless broadband infrastructure. That’s right – this plan would allocate more than 93% of the available funding from USF to the landline technology that customers are abandoning in droves.
This is not a plan for our nation in the 21st Century – it’s a plan from industry giants desperately trying to hold onto a past that soon won’t exist.
Focusing USF on constructing new cell towers and expanding access to next generation mobile broadband services will create new jobs and help rural and small businesses compete in global markets. A recent report by Deloitte projects the creation of 15,000 jobs for every $1 billion invested in mobile wireless broadband.
Let’s do the math: If we invest the same $42 billion into new wireless broadband networks, we would create 630,000 new American jobs. Plus, we would build infrastructure to support mobile jobs for mobile people in a mobile future.
Americans can’t afford to be chained to a desktop computer any more than they can afford to be tied to a phone on the wall, and America can’t afford to exclude its rural residents from a fast-moving global economy.
People already depend on their mobile devices more than ever before. From the demands of business, to keeping in touch with family and friends, to public safety, a reliable, on-the-go Internet connection is a necessity.
Today, mobile device applications enhance productivity and increase efficiency. Soon, your mobile device will be able to make high quality video calls, transmit real-time data to physicians and send lifesaving pictures to a 9-1-1 operator.
Looking to the future, it doesn’t make sense to invest billions of consumer-contributed dollars into outdated technology, while allocating only a small fraction to mobile broadband.
The FCC will make a decision soon. We urge them, and our members of Congress, to make high-speed wireless broadband a priority. Federal investments made today should be about the tools of the tomorrow, not the products of the past.
