Recommended reading: "Breaking the Broadband Monopoly"

Just as bringing electric power to homes and farms was America's great infrastructure challenge in the early decades of the 20th century, building out telecommunications infrastructure is the challenge of the early 21st as FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has observed.

Christopher Mitchell of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance has issued a call for Americans rise to this new challenge just as they did in the 1930s with the Rural Electrification Administration and local utility cooperatives. While noting that every generation believes it bears a bigger burden than those before it, Mitchell asserts building out telecom infrastructure while difficult can be done just as it was with electric power lines.

Mitchell like author Jack Lessinger suggests this build out like electrification of nearly a century ago will help fuel an economic boom. (Building telecom infrastructure publicly and cooperatively also fits into Lessinger's emerging socioeconomic paradigm where "what's in it for me" is being supplanted by a new ethic of "what's in it for us.")

I strongly recommend reading Mitchell's latest white paper, Breaking the Broadband Monopoly. It's a comprehensive and very current treatise on and making the case for locally owned and operated telecom infrastructure. The paper is loaded with examples of community projects, examples of how legacy incumbent carriers fighting the future have attempted to stymie them, and tips and traps to avoid for community activists and local governments looking to take control of their telecommunications destiny and build their own local networks.

Study points to demise of burbs as bedroom communities

A study by the Chicago-based Center for Neighborhood Technology found that long commutes to jobs in the Los Angeles basin from California's Inland Empire area (San Bernardino/Riverside) aren't really worth it when the cost of commuting is factored in. For decades, housing that costs less than comparable real estate closer to jobs in L.A. was the draw that fueled the region's growth. But when the costs of hours spent in cars and gasoline and maintenance are taken into account, it comes out a wash. (And arguably, potentially a net loss when the adverse work/life balance and health effects are included).

This story reported in the Inland Empire's Press Enterprise is a harbinger of socio-economist Jack Lessinger's predicted end of the surburbs. If their main attraction -- more spacious housing and bigger lot sizes for the buck -- begins to disappear, then the demise of the burbs as bedroom communities is at hand.

Local and regional planners want to revamp the region to bring in more employment to reduce out-commuting. But that can't be the only approach as it's likely not enough local jobs can be created to achieve a rough jobs/housing balance. Lots of creative and information-based work will continue to be connected to L.A.-based institutions. Those who work for them need robust telecommunications infrastructure to interact with and deliver their work product from their homes and local communities. This infrastructure is as critical to the survival of these suburban regions as the freeways that created them.