Broadband -- or as some call it, broadband Internet -- today is as important as waterways, railroads and interstate highways of an earlier era. Cisco Systems, a leader in the telecom field has said: "Broadband infrastructure is critical to survival in the wake of a basic shift taking place in the structure of the world's economy. Its deployment is a key measure of success in the information economy and is crucial to the future growth of productivity."
In less than a decade, the great global network of computer networks called the Internet blossomed from an arcane tool used by academics and government researchers into a worldwide mass communications medium, now poised to become the leading carrier of all communications and financial transactions affecting life and work in the 21st Century.
Not surprisingly, cities the world over are struggling to reinvent themselves for the new, global knowledge economy and thereby attracting the most sought after creative and innovative work force. Those most successful at positioning themselves as "cities of the future" will decidedly have 24/7, broadband telecommunications in place: wired and wireless infrastructures connecting every home, school and office -- and through the World Wide Web -- to every organization or institution worldwide.
At the heart of this effort to provide broadband infrastructures to every community, and to foster a renewed sense of collaboration, is the effort to keep jobs in America. This is now a matter of some urgency. For example, in the last few years we witnessed the "outsourcing" of several million high tech jobs. Forrester Research predicted we would lose 3.3 million such jobs over the next 10-15 years. The University of California at Berkeley, however, said we would more likely see the loss of 10 percent of all white collar jobs over a similar period, not to outsourcing per se, but rather simply as a fact of life in a global economy.
Twenty years ago it was fashionable to blame foreign competition and cheap labor markets abroad for the loss of manufacturing jobs in the United States, but the pain of the loss was softened by the emergence of a new services industry. Now, it is the service sector jobs that are being lost, and the high tech, and even bio-med and biotech jobs that are being threatened.
These are not short-term adjustments or problems we will somehow how get behind us as our economy heats up once again. Rather it is becoming clear that the pervasive worldwide spread of the Internet, digitization and the availability of white-collar skills abroad mean huge cost savings for those global corporations. Consequently, this shift of high tech service jobs will be a permanent feature of economic life in the 21st century. On the positive side, some economists believe that this will improve the profits and efficiency of American corporations and set the stage for the next big growth-generating breakthrough.
America will benefit by "the next big thing" only if we wake up and only if we take action now to begin preparing for increasing globalization by nurturing our cities to become connected, digital communities to meet the challenges of a new, uncertain creative age.
Clearly our communications policies are bankrupt. Since 1996, when the last major Act was written, we have seen cable television, telephone, and Internet prices rise, media firms consolidate, and journalism and news outlets convert to the worst form of tabloidism. All this at a time in our history when our very freedoms and culture are being threatened in the wake of globalism. Our cities-centers of commerce -- crucibles of civilization and in the new economy, the most likely incubators of creativity -- are hamstrung by a backward looking federal communications policy and as well, often an absence of any policy at all at the local level.
If ever there was a time for municipal, state and federal action, it is now. Our city mayors must begin to fashion regional Internet-based plans. Our state public utility commissions should begin promoting broadcast over power lines, and encouraging broadband partnerships and other coalitions -- including our Telco and cable companies -- with local municipalities. And the Bush Administration must act too. We badly need to create new federal telecommunication legislation that recognizes the power of broadband and the rapid evolution of wireless alternatives. America must have the infrastructure of the 21st Century, thereby allowing our cities once again to retool so that all our citizens get connected.
John M. Eger, a telecommunication lawyer , and Van Deerlin Professor of Communications and Public Policy at SDSU was legal advisor to the Chairman of the FCC from 1970-1973, and Director of the White House Office of Telecommunications Policy until 1976.
