Schwarzenegger: Free market best solution for broadband

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger showed up in Los Angeles on Tuesday to give a keynote speech at a state broadband conference, but didn't say much in his speech about broadband after all.

Although the event was held by the USC Annenberg School's Center for the Digital Future, Schwarzenegger spent most of his time talking about old-fashioned infrastructure, primarily roads, water, and levies in the Sacramento delta.

(Credit: California Governor's office)

"It is not a sexy subject," Schwarzenegger said. "It's very tough to go out and say, 'We'll build more roads. We have to go out and fix our levies.'" California needs to spend $500 billion on infrastructure in the next 20 years, he added.

During a question-and-answer period afterwards, the governor did allude to a recent study from the Sacramento Regional Research Institute that estimated California could gain 1.8 million jobs a year--assuming that the broadband use of the state's population grew by 3.8 percentage points a year.

Schwarzenegger struck a free market note on how best to accomplish that. "I've been pushing the (Public Utilities Commission) in becoming much more aggressive in pushing broadband," he said. "If we get more out of the way"--that is, if the government doesn't interfere--it will "move technololgy forward in a free way."

In politics, hope springs eternal. This is the same California PUC that the Pacific Research Institute, a free market think tank in San Francisco, said in 2004 "should be embarrassed" of its extensive new wireless regulations, and that the California Chamber of Commerce said was sticking "its fingers into the highly competitive wireless industry for no good reason other than it can."

[mailbox001]

US broadband is a joke

Compared to Europe & Asia, we should have 50mbps not 1.5mbps.

[rapier1]

Agreed

They did have the luxury of leapfrogging but the position we are in <br />now is, to be polite, pathetic. Perhaps competition will spur things <br />along but I don't believe the capital is there at the ROI to attractive <br />the private market without incentives.

[alegr]

ISDN anyone?

Eropean broadband was bigger joke. When US were deploying ADSL, Europe was still clinging to ISDN.

[jawinterb]

New regulation is required

Simply opting out of regulating broadband providers will increasing present risk to public safety.<br /><br />The Internet is increasingly being used to make telephone and video calls and is, in a growing number of households, being used to replace the existing telephone service. This is because cheaper per call, and largely free from state and federal communications taxes. It does however come at a cost.<br /><br />It is not very good at supporting emergency calling. The existing solutions deployed throughout America (and the world) to address VoIP calling are essentially inadequate and certainly don't scale to Internet proportions. Customers of VoIP service providers often lose other services too, such as the good old 1800 local routing routing that we all know and love.<br /><br />This problem comes about because the Internet, unlike existing telephony services, separates access providers and other services providers. And ISP provides access, a voice service provider (VSP) such as Vonage, provides voice services, and doesn't really care which ISP you use. <br /><br />Reduce regulation on broadband the Governator says? Well here is the catch. Existing regulations in the States (and most other countries) put the onus of delivering emergency calls on the VOICE PROVIDER. How is the voice provider to do this, if they don't know where the caller is calling from? In the Internet world the caller can be anywhere on Earth. It is the access provider that knows where the caller is, or has the best chance of being able to find the caller.<br /><br />ISPs and access provider must provide location when they provide Internet access. This is going cost the ISPs and access providers as they have to put in and maintain new systems, and it won't happen without regulation and legislation. But without this, emergency calls using VoIP will remain a risky business.<br /><br />Some regulation and legislation changes for broadband are required in the interests of public safety and service continuity.

[Squashman2]

Fiber

I am hoping Fiber will roll out quicker than Cable and DSL did. AT&#38;T is really dragging their feet on that compared to Verizon. Plus AT&#38;T's Fiber solution apparently isn't a true Fiber to the home solution. They still use copper the last couple hundred feet.<br /><br />We still don't know what Google is going to do with all the Dark Fiber it has bought already plus what they are planning on doing with bidding on the 700mhz Wireless spectrum up for grabs.