National Broadband Initiative.

Is anyone listening? 1,100 communities are competing for the ultra-fast broad band networks that Google is going to install. Google is going to deliver Internet connections of 1 GB per second to more than 500,000 Americans. I don’t get it. Isn’t Google a search engine company? Where are Sprint, Verizon and AT&T in this competition? Where is the FCC? Aren’t they about to launch a large broad band initiative due to be put in place sometime in the next decade?

Meanwhile, Google just forges ahead showing the communication companies and the administration how it should be done. Does America want high speed Internet service? More than 1,100 American communities say they do in a big way. Some cities are announcing Google-day just to get some PR for their city. If the administration were not bogged down in the political morass of selling health bill that is already “passed”; if they were listening, maybe the administration would hear what America is shouting. “We need high speed Internet everywhere.” And Google representatives say we are only initiating the broadband initiative to show it can be done.

Private enterprise is wonderful. Apple computer builds a phone that more than 40 million people purchase. Google develops and sells a phone. Google installs high speed broad band just to show it can be done. I still like Sprint, but I doubt if they have a plan to build a better computer or a better search engine and that is just my point. Innovation, the ability to counter internal product myopia, you either have it or you don’t.

Who is listening? Not the communication companies and not the administration. The country could get behind a national broad band initiative, fiber and wireless. It would be better and bigger than the space program. It would create more jobs and drive the stock market to dizzy heights. Now hear this.