I cannot live without broadband.  I’d rather have no internet at all, than have no broadband.  If my area were to suddenly have NO broadband connection to the internet I would either have to move or sell all my computers.  The simple fact of the matter is that computers are incredibly limited in their functionality if they don’t have a good internet connection.  And as online services continue to grow at the rate they are now, it won’t be long before ALL of our electronics follow the same path.

Already, people go nuts if their Xbox Live or Playstation Home service gets interrupted.  Subscribers went ballistic when the Sidekick service went offline.  If mobile broadband were suddenly gone from existence, outright riots would ensue!

So why is it then, that it’s so hard to get broadband in many places in the United States?

The simple answer is this: Money.

The big telecom companies don’t see much profit from going out and wiring remote areas with broadband.  As they see it, the millions of dollars it takes to wire an area for internet can’t be recouped by the few subscribers who live out there.  And from a business standpoint, they’re absolutely right.  Thing is, internet access is becoming less of a “oh, nice toy” kind of service and more of a “life doesn’t carry on without it” one instead.  For people who think I’m making too big a deal about it, let me point out that I’m not just talking about your Facebook access, or playing FarmVille.  The world won’t end tomorrow if you can’t see YouTube.  What I am talking about is general data access; phone services that travel over fiber instead of copper, television service that is sent by IP, monetary transactions that happen millions of times a day . . . all over the internet.  In many cases, people’s internet connections are replacing their phone and tv connections.

Can you imagine a school that has no data connection to the outside world?  Student records are sent by mail.  Health notices are never received.  Important district updates never get to your child because no one at the school knows they are even there.

Way back in the day, this same issue was faced with telephone service.  Not everyone had a phone line in their home or sometimes even in their town.  To fix this, Congress passed a bill that created a special government fund that was used specifically to wire the whole country with phone lines.  Phone service was deemed something that no one should be without.  Times have changed, and we have a new service we can’t do without.

With this in mind, the FCC is launching a new plan to get the United States fully wired for broadband internet.  Without knowing the how’s or who’s or where’s, the basic idea is to get some kind of interconnected broadband service to every American population center for an affordable cost.  Before everyone starts to get worried about the cost of such a project, let me point out that the same budget/fund the was used to wire us for telephone service is still around . . . and not being used!  Probably hasn’t been for years!

Not everyone is happy with this idea of “broadband for everyone”.  Namely, the big telecom companies that have already spent so much on their own systems.  The reason you might pay $19 for your phone service but $49 for your internet is not because the internet is more expensive; it’s because your service provider is trying to make back the money they spent getting the high-speed data lines to your home.  If the government does that for them instead, they can’t charge you those fees anymore!

To prove that broadband access and costs are really an issue, the FCC has launched a new speed test at Broadband.gov.  They also have an iPhone app that is free to download for you to use if you’d like.  Your results will be paired with your address and your ISP (which it pulls automatically) and compiled for a nationwide assessment.  The FCC is presenting their plan to Congress soon (like, tomorrow) so be sure to send everyone you know there today!

It doesn’t matter which political party you side with or how you feel about government spending, this is something that this country needs.  Letting things continue as they are now would be a great disservice to the American people.