Is broadband investment too much? New report says it's a requirement for socio-economic inclusion

Supporters of the $7.2 billion eonomic stimulus investment in rural broadband say without such money, some rural areas may never have access to high-speed Internet, but not everyone agrees the investment is a good idea. "The move casts a virtual lifeline to the country’s most remote residents, even as it poses a question of how far government must go to help rural areas keep pace," Scott Canon of The Kansas City Star reports. "Or whether government even needs to."

"There’s no God-given right to broadband at a certain speed," Jim Harper, the director of information policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, told Canon. "Living in a rural area has a cost, just like living in an urban area has a cost." Harper thinks "businesses would come up with more inspired ways to wire the country’s plains and valleys if they didn’t feel in competition with subsidized services," Canon writes. (Read more)

That's pretty speculative, especially at a time of economic stress and limited investment, the current situation reminds us of the Great Depression, when most rural Americans lacked electricity because private power companies considered running lines to them too expensive. Only through the Rural Electrification Administration [now the Rural Utilities Service], the Tennessee Valley Authority, other federal programs and rural electric cooperatives did they get electricity. One has to wonder how long they would have waited for it without those programs, and how long today's rural Americans will have to wait for broadband -- a utility that didn't exist when most of them decided to live where they do, but one that "has become a requirement of socio-economic inclusion, and low-income communities know this," says a new report from the Social Science Research Council. The study, sponsored by the Federal Communications Commission, found price is just one factor in adoption of broadband, and often relates to more than just a monthly fee. Libraries and other community organizations are also facing added pressure to fill the gap between low rates of home broadband access and high demand for it in rural communities. --Al Cross, Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues