More Government Over-Reach: Broadband Plans!

Do we really need the FCC to develop a national broadband policy?

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission plans to release a national broadband plan next week that will lay out an ambitious set of goals for broadband deployment and adoption.

The official version of the plan will be released at a commission meeting Tuesday, but FCC followers have seen the agency unveil several major thrusts of the plan in a series of speeches and briefings in recent weeks. In a mid-February speech, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski kicked off the announcements by saying it was the agency's goal to bring 100M bps (bits per second) broadband service to 100 million U.S. homes by about 2020.

Many members of the U.S. tech community have called for a national broadband policy for years, and Congress, in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act passed in early 2009, required the FCC to develop the plan.

That last bit was the Porkulus Bill, in case you've forgotten.

Do we really need the federal government to handle broadband as if it were a trip to the Moon? Hasn't private enterprise done a pretty good job of developing and spreading internet access over the last 15 years? Can Uncle Sugar do it any faster?

Not bloody damn likely, and the only real justification for turning the Hounds of FCC Hell loose on it is to eventually regulate and/or eliminate private enterprise so that the Progressives can control our information flow as well as our health care and energy supplies. If you hated dial-up (which was a necessary step on the way to better systems) just wait until the government must decide whether you qualify for ObamaConnect!

Don't believe the spin from the pseudo-industry groups that are really fronts for socialist and progressive philanthropy. They talk a good game about America being "competitive in the global marketplace" but the first thing they want to do is kill off one of the big success stories of the last quarter century, our private internet technology companies.