Edwards: WiFi For Everyone!

This is the "chicken in every pot" for the 21st century. And as you will see, it's extremely doable and completely worthwhile for American competition, entrepreneurship and technological advancement.

In short, the FCC is about to auction off a portion of the broadband spectrum. All the major telcos like Verizon and AT&T are expected to bid on the prime real estate. But John Edwards has a better idea. He wants to have the FCC use that spectrum to increase Internet access for all Americans, young or old, rich or poor. This is the text of his letter to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin:

Dear Chairman Martin:

The upcoming 700 megahertz spectrum auction presents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to shape the next generation of American technology.

In recent years, the Internet has grown to touch everything and transform much of what it touches. It's not the answer to everything, but it can powerfully accelerate the best of America. It improves our democracy by making quiet voices loud, improves our economy by making small markets big, and improves opportunity by making unlikely dreams possible.

As you know, the Federal Communications Commission is now preparing to auction the 700 megahertz slice of the spectrum. This "beachfront" band is particularly well suited to wireless broadband because it has wide coverage and can easily pass through walls.

By setting bid and service rules that unleash the potential of smaller new entrants, you can transform information opportunity for people across America -- rural and urban, wealthy and not. As much as half of the spectrum should be set aside for wholesalers who can lease access to smaller start-ups, which has the potential to improve service to rural and underserved areas. Additionally, anyone winning rights to this valuable public resource should be required not to discriminate among data and services and to allow any device to be attached to their service. Finally, bidding should be anonymous to avoid collusion and retaliatory bids.

I urge you to seize this chance to transform the Internet and the future.

Sincerely,

John Edwards

Not only is Edwards asking that the principle of net neutrality be mandated for anyone who buys this spectrum (which is a big victory in and of itself), but he wants a significant portion to be used to wire America. Ultimately, broadband should be no different than electricity; the access should come standard in any home, and you should pay the way you pay your electric bill. Additionally, we should be wiring rural areas the way that FDR pushed rural electrification projects as part of the New Deal. It was actually predicated on the same premise.

Although nearly 90 percent of urban dwellers had electricity by the 1930s, only ten percent of rural dwellers did. Private utility companies, who supplied electric power to most of the nation's consumers, argued that it was too expensive to string electric lines to isolated rural farmsteads. Anyway, they said, most farmers, were too poor to be able to afford electricity [...]

By 1939 the REA had helped to establish 417 rural electric cooperatives, which served 288,000 households. The actions of the REA encouraged private utilities to electrify the countryside as well. By 1939 rural households with electricity had risen to 25 percent [...]

When farmers did receive electric power their purchase of electric appliances helped to increase sales for local merchants. Farmers required more energy than city dwellers, which helped to offset the extra cost involved in bringing power lines to the country.

Just as FDR worked to bridge the electrical divide in the 1930s, we should be bridging the digital divide today. Poor and rural areas should be given the capacity to use the Internet, which will open new markets, allow for increased communication and expanded educational tools, and create that equality of opportunity that ought to be a goal. That a top-tier Presidential candidate is pushing this forward-thinking a policy is very cheering.

Combine this with Edwards' plan to take on the oil companies over rising gas prices, which is good and bad but is certainly bold, and you're seeing a pattern of someone committed to real change, and standing up for the middle class and the poor. The thing a lot of people wonder about Edwards is whether or not his progressive stances in 2007 are the real deal, compared to his fairly moderate voting record in the Senate. He was a neophyte politician then, and he relied on Beltway consultants like Bob Shrum, who details in a new book how he talked Edwards into voting to authorize the Iraq war, against Edwards' better judgment. In an excellent post by Chris Bowers that you ought to read, he discusses this evolution in Edwards' political development.

Returning to Edwards for a moment, I don't actually find this passage to be a particularly damning characterization of his political instincts or lack of leadership. Rather, I think is shows how his decision to originally support the war in Iraq probably served as a useful object lesson for a politician still trying to find his comfort zone. In 2002-2003, against his own instincts, against the advice of his wife, and against what he had seen as a member of the Intelligence Committee, Edwards listened instead to the contorted rationalizations of the Democratic establishment. Unsurprisingly, that establishment was also entirely wrong about the Iraq war, which has indeed become one of the biggest mistakes this country has made in decades. It is difficult to imagine a better way to learn to trust yourself then the catastrophic results of not trusting yourself on Iraq. Considering the many ways that Edwards has since bucked that same establishment--not firing McEwan and Marcotte, being the first to refuse a Fox News debate, publicly apologizing for his vote on Iraq, developing a populist, anti-corporate message--my belief is that Edwards learned from his past misplacement of trust in the Democratic establishment and the DLC, and has decided instead to trust his own, far more progressive instincts. For a politician who has been in the game for less than a decade, such a transformation seems entirely believable and genuine.

He may get nicked for this from the likes of Tim Russert. But I wish someone would have the cajones to go on that show and say, "Tim, have you ever changed your mind before? Are you supposed to be some kind of robot that has the same opinions and beliefs from the cradle to the grave? Have you ever been presented with new information? What you may call flip-flopping, I call learning." It's hard to divine who's being honest when so many politicians tell the electorate what they believe it wants to hear. But I think Edwards is genuine, for all these reasons, and I believe he would make an amazing President.