On Wed, 26 Aug 2009, Fred Baker wrote:
If it's about stimulus money, I'm in favor of saying that broadband implies fiber to the home. That would provide all sorts of stimuli to the economy - infrastructure, equipment sales, jobs digging ditches, and so on. I could pretty quickly argue myself into suggesting special favors for deployment of DNSSEC, multicast, and IPv6. As in, use the stimulus money to propel a leap forward, not just waste it.
Broadband stimulus money = $7,200,000,000 Housing units in USA (2000) = 115,904,641 Stimulus money per housing unit = $62.12 one-time What definition of "broadband" can you achieve for that amount of money? Or for rural housing units (2000) = 25,938,698 Stimulus money per rural housing unit = $277.58 one-time What definition of "broadband" can you achieve for that amount of money in a rural build-out? How much will fiber to the home cost in a rural area?