The Number
$8 billion
That’s the amount of money that the federal government spends on subsidizing telephone service for rural and low-income communities each year — our tax dollars. As part of the plan of FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s chairman to bring the country fully into the broadband age, that money would be redirected toward “high-speed Internet” in “underserved areas.” The fund is now called the Universal Service Fund.
That’s just one big pot of money we should all think differently about. Access to information should, as Len Downie’s Reconstruction of American Journalism report outlined quite well, include the creation of worthwhile news and information. Yes, more (Corporation for Public Broadcasting+++) money for creation of journalism, and making it available through the high-speed.
It seems to me that we’re all a bit confused in this country between access and information. We pay hundreds of dollars for access — cable, Internet, wireless monthly bills — but we don’t like the notion that a news company might charge us the price of a grande latte for a news app, or god-forbid, a monthly subscription for news. News publishers’ new look at how to charge for iPad/tablet products is part of re-addressing the access/content charge conundrum. Another part that should get revived; Downie’s (and others’) arguments that spending billions on access while content creation is starving is counterproductive.
Just what exactly do we hope (and plan) the “100 Squared Initiative” web will carry?