Why Government-Funded Broadband Is A Bad Idea
While not a new idea in the least, the inauguration’s massive online presence has prompted yet another suggestion that the government needs to get on top of providing broadband to all homes. This is a bad idea, or at least, an unsustainable one.
I’m not fundamentally against goverment aid in spreading technology, in fact there are many cases in which it’s just the ticket, but it’s only really useful for technologies which mark a fundamental change in the way things are done (installation of computers in schools, for example). People talk about broadband access as though it’s something entirely distinct from dial-up, a completely new way to access the internet, but this is rubbish, it’s just another step in the chain of bandwidth increases.
Certainly, there are services which dial-up users can’t reasonably access, video primary among them, but this will always be the case with some technology or other. Sometime in the next decade we’ll likely have gigabit internet connections at the top end, and what then? Should the government once again fund an upgrade? Should they do this for all time, constantly spending to ensure faster internet access? It would be a monstrous waste of resources, and an entirely unneccessary one.
Consider, for example, that the government don’t ensure access to the latest computers, because a better graphics card simply isn’t necessary for computer utilization.
Since broadband is only the second step in bandwidth development, it seems as though it is a fundamental shift, but in time we will recognize that it is just another stage in development, and there will be an endless succession of stages. As people with cheap computers can’t use the latest software, so people with dial-up access can’t watch videos, but this, while unfortunate, is not cause enough to warrant a never-ending series of goverment interventions. We must let the market do it’s job, because only the market can do it sustainably.
