Susan Crawford Calls for Expansion of Fiber Networks

Tech policy expert Susan Crawford joined the non-profit think tank Four Freedoms Center of the Roosevelt Institute today and called for the expansion of fiber networks in America. For her, looming monopolies are a threat to Internet equality and the expansion of faster Internet connections, specifically fiber, which she called "the global standard," is the future.

The fight against the digital divide is the "21st century version of electrification," Crawford wrote on her first post for the Next New Deal, the blog of the Roosevelt Institute. "Expanding high-speeding Internet access to all Americans is as essential now as the Rural Electrification Act was in the 1930s."

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At the beginning of the 19th century, rural America didn't have access to electricity, just like rural America now has no access to high-speed Internet, Crawford argues. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt regulated the market and provided federal loans to expand the electrical network to reach far-out areas of the country, making electricity a utility everybody takes for granted.

Today, according to Crawford, the utility everybody should expect to have is high-speed Internet, something we all increasingly need everyday. "You can't apply for a job without high-speed Internet connection," she said, responding to a question from the audience at the announcement today in New York. "Some states are even requiring you to apply for unemployment benefits using an online connection." Thus the need to give everybody equal access to fiber.

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Her mission as a fellow at the Four Freedoms Center will be to educate the public and make citizens understand the importance of these issues. "I wanna make sure that we continue to see the Internet as a basic input," she said. "A neutral basic, electricity-like foundation for life that actually disappears into the background," something that makes possible not only entertainment but important activities like telemedicine and remote education.

Changing the tide is not going to be easy though. Telecom companies pour millions of dollars in lobbying against regulation, and many politicians don't pay attention to these issues. "We have a titanic battle ahead of ourselves to reverse this set of events," says Crawford. "It will take asking questions about high-speed Internet capacity at every single debate making sure that every candidate for office cares about this and understands how important it is. It will take getting the national media aware that this is a central issue just like electricity was back in the 1920s."

Of 314 million people Americans, 100 million lack high-speed Internet access. Compare that to South Korea, where 95% of citizens have access to fiber broadband, a network that was subsidized by the government. Crawford believes that highlighting countries where the situation is better can potentially make people aware, but local examples will have a more powerful effect. That's why she praised Google Fiber, an initiative that's going to bring affordable 1GBits connections to Kansas City. Once the search giant will install the super-fast network, "jealousy" will kick in and people across the country will demand the same service.

Why is she doing this? Because "The advent of the Internet was the most exciting thing to happen in my adult life," she said before telling the story of her first time online, when she visited her first website and clicked on her first link. That's when she "felt as if the back of the computer had fallen away."

Photo courtesy of Flickr, Joi

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/susan-crawford-calls-expansion-fiber-networks-080725868.html

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