Dialuggers have company in high places

If you're stuck with mid-1990s era dial up Internet access, you have company in high places. For example, Congresswoman Donna Edwards, who represents a district just outside Washington, D.C., and can't get broadband service at her Fort Washington, Maryland, home. (Keep in mind this is a major metro area and hardly the kind of rural area where many erroneously believe is the only place where broadband black holes can be found in the U.S.)

According to this item in PC World, Edwards said at a a OneWebDay event in Washington that she hasn't used her home dial-up connection for months. "It's too much of a pain," PC World quoted Edwards as saying. "It's too cumbersome. All of the data, all of the information that really I most want, you can't just handle on dial-up." Very true as many frustrated dialuggers well know.

PC World reports Edwards and Federal Communications Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein called on Congress to develop a far-reaching broadband policy that would accelerate the rollout of faster broadband across the U.S. But what specifically? How about greater financial assistance for communities and local governments to build open access fiber optic last mile infrastructure for starters since the existing telco/cable duopoly apparently can't absorb the required capital expenditures. After all, if the government can come to the aid to the U.S. financial services industry with hundreds of billions of dollars, it seems to me it could also help in the development of the infrastructure over which finance and commerce is increasingly transacted. A bonus would be increased economic activity as indicated by this California study issued last November that concluded the state stands to gain 1.8 million jobs and $132 billion of new payroll over the next 10 years with a 3.8 percent increase in the utilization of broadband technology.