[Podcast] House Panel Takes A Look At Broadband

2 Responses to “[Podcast] House Panel Takes A Look At Broadband”

1. Anita Campbell
   May 17th, 2010 @ 9:28 pm

   Very very interesting, Dawn. I confess to being utterly puzzled by all this push about broadband.

   It’s like motherhood and apple pie — a good thing, as Martha would say. Who could argue against wider availability of broadband? we all want it right? And I CERTAINLY get it about Internet business models and their impact on small businesses.

   So why am I puzzled?

   In the long list of issues that keep small business owners awake at night, I just don’t believe this ranks high up there. Sure, small businesses in rural areas with limited broadband probably care. Some small wireless service providers probably care. But advocacy is about prioritizing key issues that cut across large numbers of small businesses. This just doesn’t really rank up there alongside other issues keeping business owners awake at night….

   Signed,

   Puzzled in Cleveland
   Anita Campbell´s last blog ..Small Business News: Tidbits and Tactics

2. The Journal Blogger
   May 18th, 2010 @ 7:44 am

   Well, it probably seems strange to you there in Cleveland but, for starters, there are actually places in the country where you can’t get anything but dialup. If dialup happens to be a toll call for you, that can get very expensive very quickly.

   Beyond that, I think members of Congress (or, at least, Mary Landrieu) are bothered because of how far behind the rest of the post-industrialized world the U.S. has fallen.

   Top broadband speeds of 95 megabytes per second in South Korea versus 9 megabytes per second in the U.S. — speeds which put us behind pretty much everybody from France to Japan — seem to bring out the competitive streak in our nation’s leaders. Landrieu has said more than once in hearings that it is unacceptable to her that we, who originated the Web, should fall so far behind everybody else.

   Then, too, since President Obama has stated that this is one of his priorities, it is not terribly surprising to find that Congressional Democrats are ready to fall in line behind him and that, unfortunately, Congressional Republicans are ready to oppose him.

   That said, I certainly agree that there are other priorities that one might imagine would be more urgent when it comes to small business policy. Part of what’s going on here is that President Obama is every bit as clueless about small business as everybody else in Washington, from what I can see. In addition, he has surrounded himself with a passel of corporate whores sycophants as economic advisors.

   Right now, I suspect that what’s keeping small business owners awake at night is broke customers who aren’t buying as much as they used to. There are limits to how much the feds can do about that. I think that is particularly true in light of the way the economy seems to be morphing into something other than what it used to be and nobody seems to know what that is yet.

   Thanks for stopping by, Anita! Always glad to see you here.