Much Ado About Nothing: President Bush On Broadband

Say That Again

from the and-therefore...? dept

Everyone seems to be talking about this speech where President Bush briefly mentioned: “We ought to have universal, affordable access to broadband technology by the year 2007.” Now everyone’s trying to figure out what it means. I don’t think it means very much. Pretty much everyone wants to be able to offer universal, affordable broadband access – it’s just that everyone differs on the best way to do this. Is it to allow open access to lines that have already been put down? Or is it to encourage new technologies that route around incumbent providers? So, the real issue isn’t providing “universal, affordable access”, but how will we get there? Hell, I’d just as soon say “We ought to have world peace by the year 2007” and it would have about the same impact.