Calif. Broadband Report a Waste of Time
January 21, 2008It’s 84 PDF pages long, filled with attractive photos of fiber-optic cable as well as informative graphs, tables and statistics about broadband usage, pricing and geographical coverage. But without any active buy-in from players with skin in the game — meaning top legislators and the biggest communications providers — the California Broadband Task Force’s recent report is a massive waste of our time, offering a Fantasyland blueprint for a broadband nirvana that will likely never come to pass.
Why? Because without a political or private-sector champion, the task force’s guidelines will remain just that — guidelines — and will leave us here on the Left Coast no closer to better broadband then we were before the politically and economically correct assemblage of folks embarked on their year-long study of the obvious. Perhaps the well-researched topics and well-intentioned recommendations can become a starting point for real implementation plans, and if so, then the staffers and executive assistants who did the real work are to be commended for at least getting the ball rolling. But the reality of the situation — specifically the state’s current billions in budget deficits — says that without any active backers, the broadband plan won’t be anything more than a fancy-looking report for the foreseeable future.
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Broadband | Tagged: Arnold Schwartzenegger, AT&T, Broadband, California, Charlie Giancarlo, Verizon | 
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Posted by Paul
