Copps Says Inflating the Government Not Broadband Plan’s Goal

Copps’ comments came in response to a written question from the audience. “Are we talking about the government taking over the private sector?” the anonymous questioner asked. “If so how could it do broadband any better than it has Social Security, Amtrak? The end result is that the taxpayer will foot the bill. Why do we need to spend this money when we are broke?”

Copps replied, “I think we're just talking about using the resources we've got. The private sector has always led the way. The private sector has the expertise, hopefully will have access to the capital. But throughout our history, whenever we've built this infrastructure we've also had policy goals and a sense of national purpose. This is what the country needs to do right. … This is not a new model or big government coming to take over something. This is going back to the way we've built the place in the first place.” Copps cited the government’s building roads, canals, bridges and railroad lines or promoting their construction.

Clyburn noted that an applicant for a federal broadband grant is a rural electric utility. “I don’t have to remind anyone from South Carolina that if not for the Rural Utilities Service, we would not be connected by way of electricity,” she said. “If not for the Universal Service Fund, we would not be connected by way of the plain old telephone service. … The model has been set.”

Copps was sharply critical of the last administration, telling the audience it had not demonstrated “leadership” on broadband. “There was no leadership to say, ‘OK, we're going to get broadband out. How do we get to the [Department of] Housing and Urban Development, so that every unit of subsidized housing that goes up is already wired for broadband?'” he said. “When I spoke here in 2004, we hadn’t made much progress in getting broadband built out. And we are still a long way from getting the job done in 2009. Truth is, government was asleep at the switch for too many years, thinking that somehow broadband would just magically appear -- even in those places where there was no business plan to attract any business to build it.”

The commissioners were joined by former Sen. Ernest “Fritz” Hollings, Copps’ longtime boss. “I congratulate you … on going out to Ravenel,” Hollings said. “Small business in this area has got to have broadband. In the rural areas we need broadband. Broadband is not just for the Boeing plant or the [Charleston] Navy Yard.

“Where information flows, commerce flows,” said Ernest Andrade, the Charleston Digital Corridor’s director and a panelist at the forum. “We are increasingly dealing with a global marketplace for goods and services and it appears that we are on the losing end. … We've got to employ new technologies to increasingly sell goods to the global marketplace.” The absence of broadband isn’t just a rural problem, Andrade said. “Let me tell you, folks, right here where we sit if I walked out basically 500 feet, 800 feet, 1,000 feet, we've got areas in this old city … that are as challenged for service.”

Charleston Trident Urban League CEO Otha Meadows said: “You either have access to the technology or you don’t, and if you don’t you are at a very significant disadvantage as it relates to your ability to participate in American society and the global marketplace. You cannot do an effective job search in 2009 without access to broadband.”

The broadband road show resumes Thursday, when FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski and Commissioner Meredith Baker hold a forum on spectrum and mobile applications at the University of San Diego’s Joan B. Kroc Institute of Peace and Justice.