Homes With Tails: What if You Could Own Your Internet Connection?
Source: New America Foundation
From press release:

America’s communications infrastructure is stuck at a copper wall. For the vast majority of homes, copper wires remain the principal means of getting broadband services. The deployment of fiber optic connections to the home would enable exponentially faster connections, and few dispute that upgrading to more robust infrastructure is essential to America’s economic growth. However, the costs of such an upgrade are daunting for private sector firms and even for governments. These facts add up to a public policy challenge.

Last week the New America Foundation’s Wireless Future Program released a new working paper proposing a novel idea to solve this problem: consumer-owned fiber connections.

In Homes with Tails: What if you Could Own your Internet Connection?, New America fellow, Tim Wu and Google Policy Analyst, Derek Slater, proposed a model that encourages consumers to purchase and own the “last-mile” connection that runs into their home. By purchasing their own fiber optic connections, consumers would be able to connect to a variety of service providers. This model holds the potential for higher broadband speeds, greater competition, and lower Internet service prices.

+ Full Paper (PDF; 206 KB)

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 4th, 2008 at 12:35 am and is filed under Business and economics, Consumer issues, Internet, Telecommunications. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.