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Joel Moses
Acting Director

Institute Professor
Professor of Electrical Engineering
and Computer Science

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Impact Spring 2003: Back Matter

ITC on 'Broadband Divides' | Spreading Broadband Access

ITC Offers Perspective on 'Broadband Divides'

By Nancy DuVergne Smith

Oxford, UK -- Inside Balliol College's ancient walls, MIT Program on Internet and Telecoms Convergence (ITC) leaders recently sketched a path toward a broader digital future. ITC Director David D. Clark offered lessons from America's residential broadband deployment experience in a keynote to the international conference, "Broadband Divides," March 27-28, hosted by the Oxford Internet Institute and co-sponsored by ITC and Syracuse University's School of Information Studies.

Clark's mission was to deliver relevant findings from Broadband: Bringing Home the Bits, a 320-page report by the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (CSTB) of the U.S. National Academies. Clark, CSTB chair, spearheaded the report.

"There are many perspectives on the state of broadband deployment," Clark said. "Is it a success, a failure, a hotbed for a new generation of monopolist, a societal imperative, or a product that has not yet proved its value to the consumer? Can it be all of the above?" The uneven pattern of current deployment makes U.S. national planning difficult, he noted, because market conditions and technological facilities vary radically. In the U.S., urban residents may have several companies competing to sell broadband services while some rural residents have no options.

Yet the U.S. example of delivering high-performance Internet service offers useful lessons. "Broadband deployment may be a patchwork, but a healthier patchwork than some might think."

The international conference tackled nagging issues involving equity, economic competitiveness, and policy incentives. Discussion papers by ITC's Sharon Eisner Gillett, Lee McKnight, Carlos Osorio and others addressed these issues:

• Social Divide: What are the equity implications of the uneven distribution of broadband within and between nations?

 
• Significance Divide: Is broadband access a luxury bringing easier access to entertainment or a social and economic necessity providing a gateway to important information, people, and services?

 
• Policy Divide: Will competition deliver market-led developments that break down the divide or must the public sector lead through policy initiatives, regulation, and investment?

The economics of broadband distribution raise key questions that have powerful implications for competition and industry structure. Who has the money to spend? Who will make money? How are the two linked? "It is money, not technology, that gates broadband," Clark said.

Clark sees a new role for local government leadership since municipalities are most familiar with deployment patterns and problems. Public initiatives can foster market entry by reducing the business costs of entering a market, local rules can encourage new service, and communities can increase local infrastructure capacities. Conference participants were particularly enthusiastic about one recommendation: establishing a clearinghouse for best practices. Promoting deployment is the highest priority, Clark says, and national policies on universal services should wait until broadband capacities and impact are more apparent.

Visit the ITC website for more information.

Spreading Broadband Access

Recommendations in Broadband: Bringing Home the Bits included these broad thrusts:

• Push widespread broadband deployment through policy, financial incentives, and capacity-building;



• Defer most new regulation and structure current rules to emphasize facilities-based competition and encourage new entrants;


• Regulation should target service not changing technologies or market assumptions; and



• Establish a national clearinghouse for best practices and support research on access technologies, socio-economic factors, and alternative content and services.

See more on Broadband: Bringing Home the Bits.

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