Broadband Leadership? It Starts at Home

So I'm struck by the difference between what we were able to do back in the 60s and 70s, with sheer will power, perseverance, and good old American can-do attitude, compared with what we are not doing today as a nation, as we watch countries like Japan, Korea, Sweden, and France, move ahead with strong national leadership and vison, as they implement a broadband strategy to create a national communications infrastructure that befits the 21st Century. Why is that? How come, I ask myself, broadband doesn't capture the imagination of people today the way that space exploration did back then? Well, for one, we've become pretty used to techological magic in the past 40 years. For another, we lack the leadership we had back then. No leadership focus, no national mobilization.

Personally, I wore out on this whole discussion and took a voluntary hiatus from the national broadband debate sometime last summer, as I became more focused on my own activities here in Central Texas. But a recent essay by metropolitan broadband luminary Jim Baller has brought me back to this topic, and its time to weigh in. Jim's essay really demands some inspection and review, as Jim is one of a handful of true experts in this field, and his tireless efforts to promote progress deserve this attention. I respect him.

So, Jim Baller wrote this essay on a National Broadband Strategy last month (January 2007), commenting on his article in the October 2006 issue of FiberPrism journal, where he and his partner opined on the need for a national broadband policy. In his recent essay, Jim takes a stab at a point-by-point program to get to such a policy. I recommend both of these articles.

Doing a little more digging, I came up with this article cited in the essay: in Foreign Affairs magazine, Thomas Bleha comments on the need for a national broadband policy, back in Summer 2005. In a followup article, Philip J. Weiser takes a slightly different tack and we have also the commentary from Bleha. All this talk about broadband policy in the US, amidst all this action abroad (see this link for a good update on OECD broadband activities, circa June 2006).

I have to admit that I've become disenchanted with the long wait for national leadership in this area. In fact, I've structured a career that doesn't depend on national leadership - I'm putting my money on local leadership. I've met enough impressive local leaders that give me confidence. I still hope for national leadership that will mobilize the public on this issue and will focus resources to get our country moving, so that we will be competitive over time.

But I have to say, we could all grow old waiting for the powers that be to get serious about wiring up our country with fiber optics to the "last mile." It was three years ago that President Bush, in his style, laid out a vision for Ubiquitous Broadband by 2007, and then his adminsitration failed ot follow up on it. We had a couple of blogs on this topic on this site a full 18 months ago, here and here. So, its out of my control, and in Stephen Covey Seven Habits fashion, I suggest that we focus on what we can control in order to get results and make progress, and that, my friends, starts at the local level. Better, in my opinion, to get busy to get local projects underway, to start generating the lessons learned and all the little steps that need to be done to move a country forward, collectively, in this area.

I trust that real leaders like Jim Baller and others will continue to work to motivate our national political leaders, and that a National Broadband Policy Task Force will someday get organized and busy on doing the necessary heavy lifting to get the full weight of the country's resources behind this effort. But as for me, I'll keep doing my little part to move things forward, by showing that we can do something today, and that something is to get individual cities wired up, with wireless and with wired broadband networks, and where possible, to get regions to collaborate.

But part of me longs for the type of leadership and can-do spirit, the imagination and chutzpa we had a generation ago in this nation, the "right stuff" that would send men up in tin cans into space, and bring them back alive, just to show that we could. I feel better when I reflect on that - that same kind of spirit still resides in the hearts of local leaders that initiate and promote these municipal wireless projects and see them through. In our own way, here in the 21st Century, we are pushing out the envelope on technology in a myriad of ways, and forging new paths, if on a less dramatic stage than back then.

And so it goes, as I approach 50. My own dreams, like those of our nation, are a little scaled down now, in this more complex world of the 21st Century, where I find myself as an adult. But I'm now a player in the game, rather than a spectator. After all, there is undeniable progress on the digital front. I watched this movie on a DVD on my flat screen TV, whereas I watched the Apollo moon landing on a tiny black and white screen as a budding teenager. I'm active in spreading broadband connectivity at the local level, and I'm blogging on a laptop in my living room, as I watch the movie.

And .. oh yeah, as a postscript, the Apollo crew made it back down to earth, in one piece, thanks to the thousands of people on the earth that supported them. Our dreams may be more distributed today, more "down to earth," if you will, but we're still pushing out the frontiers. And the wireless networks we build are going up thanks to the thousands of people in this new industry who are helping to make it all happen.