The Need for Modern Infrastructure

Readers of this blog know that I believe in federal and state investment in infrastructure and that I include in this grouping two items often left out: namely education and broadband access to the Internet. Today I would like to briefly comment on the potential for the latter.

First of all, I believe that if taxpayer money is to be spent on stimulating jobs (and I, unlike many center-right conservatives, do believe in such investment) then it should be spent on projects that are truly needed and on those projects most likely to produce a future benefit. These projects should also be located where they are most needed. In other words, such money should not be directed by political patronage, but instead directed where it can be objectively shown to produce the most benefit to the United States and its citizens.

One possible infrastructure project that has been explored by Wired Magazine is the production of a "Smart Grid" that would make our electrical distribution system more efficient, thereby saving huge amounts of money, energy and fuel. Such a system, again as advocated by Wired, could follow along the existing Interstate Highway system to minimize expenses and to allow for easy access for construction, upgrade and repair. This would be similar to the old idea of placing telegraph lines along train routes.

Such placement of a grid system might not, at first glance, seem as efficient as cutting through the country side and building a system that follows more direct paths from Point A (the power company) to Point B (the individual home or business). However, the federal and state governments already have access - both physically and legally - to land along the highways, so such an approach should be vastly cheaper and quicker to establish.

I would advocate that we not only use this new Smart Grid system to better distribute electrical power, but also to broaden access to the Internet. We need to have free, or at least inexpensive, broadband access for everyone in the U.S. and this new power grid system might just be the way. The FCC has been exploring the potential of Broadband over Power Lines (BPL), a system that would offer Internet access to anyone who has access to an electrical outlet. Any school that has a donated modem and computer, any business that invested in a computer system, any teenager that saved his dollars for a computer kit from Radio Shack, would have access to a world wide and ever expanding economic system.

Just as broadcast radio once opened up minds and wallets in the 1920s, and just as broadcast television did the same in the 1950s, a coast to coast broadband system could entertain, educate and potentialize. The American entrepreneur spirit could be rekindled by allowing everyone to be a potential online entrepreneur.