This past Tuesday in New York I participated in a press conference to help launch a bipartisan coalition, InternetforEveryone.org. The coalition is a groundbreaking initiative to make access to a fast, open and affordable Internet a basic right for all Americans.
The diverse group of Internet enthusiasts is unified under four basic principles:
- 1. Access: Every home and business in America must have access to a high-speed, world-class communications infrastructure.
2. Choice: Every consumer must enjoy real competition in lawful online content, as well as among high-speed Internet providers, to achieve lower prices and higher speeds.
3. Openness: Every Internet user should have the right to freedom of speech and commerce online in an open market without gatekeepers or discrimination.
4. Innovation: The Internet should continue to create good jobs, foster entrepreneurship, spread new ideas and serve as a leading engine of economic growth.
You can watch/embed/share the full press conference (33 minutes) via YouTube. A search on Google News for InternetforEveryone.org, will give you a number of press "clips" from sources on the event.
As one of the only Republicans in the coalition (Vint Cerf of Google is a registered Republican), I believe it's crucial for Republicans to embrace a national broadband strategy. Here's a short clip from the press event of me outlining my position:
As a Republican it is common sense why Republicans would support ensuring national access and availability to a high-speed Internet connection. The reason is that over 50 percent of Americans -- primarily dominated by rural/Appalachia America -- are forced to still use an inferior dial-up service to access the Internet. That's more than 10M households.
Rural Americans are our kind of voters and John McCain needs these voters to compete on Election day (and fighting for him in the trenches in the modern world).
In fact, as recently reported by the non-partisan Center for Rural Strategies, John McCain leads Barack Obama among rural voters by 50-41. Of note, this is the same margin found four years ago between George W. Bush and John Kerry and Bush went on to win the rural vote by 19 percentage points.
In other words, right now Republicans aren't fielding a full team on the field of the modern game. A huge segment of our voting bloc is forced to receive their news from mainstream media and talk radio outlets -- effectively keeping them out of the online fight.
If Republicans want to catch up with Democrats online it is essential that we ensure every American have an equal opportunity to access a high-speed Internet connection - even those that enjoy living in rural America.
I believe that to ensure national access we will need a public-private partnership to do so. If we wait for the ISPs to wire America, we're likely going to be waiting for a very long time because the cost-benefit of building up the infrastructure does not outweigh the financial interests of the ISPs. I get that which is why I believe the government will need to creatively encourage the market or free-up available spectrum white spaces to do so.
Whether or not we'll be able to wire rural America by 2008 is unclear. However, we can start the discussion now and hope that John McCain and other key Republicans take this issue up in the very near future. The sake of our party catching up online depends on it.
