Expanding access: with the United States lagging behind other industrialized nations in broadband Internet service, one public-minded firm proposes a radical plan

Diverse Issues in Higher Education, March 8, 2007 by Ronald Roach

Bruce Sachs, a general partner of Charles River Ventures, says he believes the FCC will take the M2Z proposal seriously. The need for universal broadband is most evident from an educational standpoint, especially among low-income students, he says.

"A national broadband service would provide a basic entry point for students needing Internet access at home," Sachs says. "This is a need for students at all levels of their education."

Dr. Edward J. Leach, vice president of the League for Innovation in the Community College, says his organization is sending the FCC a letter supporting M2Z's proposal. "It's a great concept to provide free service and high quality service," he says. "As far as community college students are concerned, it would be a wonderful opportunity for a large number of them that don't have access to broadband, whether it be wired or wireless at home, to have it through this plan."

M2Z officials say they are working with nonprofit organizations like the League for Innovation to help lobby for the federal government's support of M2Z's broadband proposal. The public broadband movement largely took root in Philadelphia in 2004, after city officials approved a citywide Wi-Fi access network. Other cities, including San Francisco and Tempe, Ariz., have plans to develop low-cost or free metropolitan wireless networks.

Closing the Market

If the M2Z proposal is to prevail before a Republican-dominated FCC, it has to overcome the objections of free market advocates. The primary argument against the plan is that granting M2Z national rights to the spectrum abandons the free market principles established by the auction process.

"My perspective is that this is not a good proposal. We should be moving in the direction of a property rights regime. This is kind of a throwback to the administrative allocation of spectrum that prevailed in the early days of radio and TV," says Dr. Thomas Lenard, the senior vice president for research at the Progress & Freedom Foundation, a market-oriented think tank in Washington, D.C.

Lenard says the government can provide direct assistance to Americans who cannot afford broadband rather than granting what would be considered a subsidy to a company offering the service for free.

"If the government wants to provide a particular good, it shouldn't choose one technology over another," he says.

Dr. Lawrence J. White, the Arthur E. Imperatore Professor of Economics at New York University, agrees that approving M2Z's proposal amounts to granting them an unjustified subsidy, not unlike what radio and television companies received decades ago.

M2Z "has good intentions. But what they want to do should be put to a market test," says White, who describes himself as a Democrat and a staunch free market advocate.

If the goal of the federal government is to facilitate universal access to broadband, then "let's do it in an explicit fashion and not through this non-competitive process," he adds.

Atkinson, at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, has declined to weigh in either for or against the M2Z proposal, but he has sought to raise the issues he believes should be debated.