In case you don’t remember, the U.S. Government came up with the idea of wiring first schools and then homes, primarily with fiber, with the goal of bringing high-bandwidth communication everywhere. The mechanism by which this was to have been accomplished was by encouraging through tax credits for telephone companies to upgrade their networks and by imposing a tax on telephone users to support the wiring of schools.
It didn’t work. Our homes didn’t get networked in any large numbers, not enough to keep up with much of Europe and Asia. Even many schools are still off the net, despite the fact that tens of billions of dollars in taxes were paid by consumers and hundreds of billions in taxes were forgiven to telephone companies.
The residual impact of pumping $200 billion not into tax credits for telephone companies but directly into installing fiber to homes and backbones to support that fiber would be huge. Network equipment prices would plummet, bandwidth costs would decrease, and neighbors and schools alike would benefit whether they were part of the program or not.
Quelle: A Prius in Every Garage
Kein Wunder, dass auch hier in der Schweiz auf Grund der ihre Pfründe verteidigenden, schnarchlangsamen Swisscom nun sogar staatliche Elektrizitätswerke so richtig Gas geben – und dem verfetteten Riesen zeigen, wie man Zürich in kürzester Zeit zur Internet-Hauptstadt der Schweiz macht.
Wohl angesteckt durch den von staatlicher Seite angestossenen Wettbewerb (erstaunlich, nicht?) zieht nun eine ostschweizerische Stadt nach. Zwar werden mit WLAN-Installationen auf städtischem Boden keine Geschwindigkeitsrekorde gebrochen – doch die Idee, Internet den Bürgern gleich kostenlos* zur Verfügung zu stellen, ist bestechend. (* kostenlos – natürlich ist für Steuerzahler Ende des Jahres Zahltag).
