Taking the Reins

The Democratic National Convention started this week in Denver, while the Republican National Convention kicks off next week in Minneapolis. The media maelstrom surrounding these two events will be rife with campaign posturing, while the barrage of political advertisements continue to reign our TVs.

These waning summer months of a presidential election year bring the promise of a new White House administration in January, which will also bring a change in public policy. The broadband industry sure could use it. The United States has consistently been ranked in the middle of the pack, globally, when it comes to broadband deployment penetration. New blood at the helm could spark new innovations to boost the broadband market. Or this country will be stuck with more of the same.

We have been talking here about the prospect of a national broadband policy as a means put more emphasis on deploying high-tech and high-speed communications networks. However, will such a policy hamper this rapidly changing market?

Some industry experts have urged the government to make changes to slacken regulations on broadband, like Verizon’s Dick Lynch, who says, “The public interest can best be served by getting as much broadband in front of as many people as possible, as quickly as possible and ensuring that investment keeps up with demand. To a large extent, this is a matter of taking down the barriers to investment and refraining from erecting new ones.”

Speaking at a recent meeting of the Progress and Freedom Foundation, the Verizon executive vice president and chief technology officer adds, “Dynamic industries like ours require flexible solutions that can evolve and adapt to a changing environment — not rigid regulatory solutions that are one step behind the marketplace.”

Others, like John Cooper, president of the consulting firm MetroNetIQ and a frequent commenter on this blog, say that citizens and public leaders must be proactive in the effort to deploy broadband to their communities. Instead of waiting for policymakers and private companies to make these decisions, Cooper says that public policy should come from the public.

“The first step is to accept that we’ll have to take matters into our own hands,” Cooper wrote, commenting on a July post. “When communities realize that they have inside their own boundaries all the skills, talents, resources and initiative they need to do this on their own, then they will be off and running.” The key to helping communities realize this, Cooper says, is education.

You can view the candidates' views on broadband (and technology in general) on their campaign Web sites. For the Democrat, go here. For the Republican, go here. Do you think either candidate will make a big difference in the broadband industry? Does one have a better policy, or will just the addition of fresh blood spark the market? Am I opening a can of worms?