Tom Wheeler, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, is committed to bringing high speed broadband service to Americans. Believe it or not, there are a lot of Americans out there who do not have access to high speed broadband internet service. Most of the time, this is because of the cost of getting service from a local cable provider. This week Tom Wheeler will be speaking to the house about a few subjects and this is one of them. Wheeler wants to come up with a plan for a speedy broadband rollout, and is using Google Fiber as an example. Google Fiber was announced back in 2011, and it is Google’s way of bring faster broadband service to us here in the states. The rollout for Google Fiber has been good enough to catch the eyes of Wheeler. The process for Google Fiber, as described in the quote, require that a checklist be completed. This checklist includes, providing information about the existing infrastructure of a city, help providing access to existing infrastructure, and help making construction speedy and predictable.
Tom Wheeler has been a big believer in bringing speedy internet to folks in America. Think about it, if more folks can have access to the internet, there is more access to knowledge for them.Tom Wheeler prepared this statement in his speech for the house this week. “The private sector must play the leading role in extending broadband networks to every American. That’s why the FCC is committed to removing barriers to investment and to lowering the costs of broadband build-out. Google has developed a checklist for cities that want to participate in their Google Fiber project of steps that can be taken to ensure easier access to existing infrastructure and to make construction speedier and more predictable. The FCC should be asking similar questions about our own rules, cutting red tape wherever possible.”
This is very good to hear, not only for the job well done that Google is doing, but us Americans. The more competition we get in the broadband internet field, the better pricing will get for us. The FCC is also talking about a “community broadband” which is local forces coming together to provide us access and prevent states from banning competition for broadband. Hopefully we will be hearing much more on this later this week and we start seeing easier access to broadband!