| Could Broadband Investment Help The Economy? Teleworking continues to expand in the U.S., and most teleworkers need broadband. In that sense broadband is a part of the transportation infrastructure, and investing in it is an alternative to the same as building new roads and repairing old ones, or helping transit agencies buy buses and rail cars.
The teleworker's car stays in the driveway, and helps reduce the need for other transportation investments. So does Internet commerce, because consumers can shop on the net instead of driving to the mall, and their postal carrier or FedEx or UPS can bring the products to their door. It also reduces pollution and global warming, and is increasingly important to education and healthcare.
For these reasons it is important to recognize that the broadband infrastructure is a part of the transportation infrastructure in many respects. Policymakers need to start allocating part of federal government transportation infrastructure spending to expanding broadband deployment, and they need to increase the share devoted to that purpose in the future. |
