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Only 10% of rural Americans go online from home with high-speed connections, about one-third the rate for non-rural Americans.

Overall, 48 million American adults had high-speed connections in the home in February 2004. This represents a growth of 60% since March 2003 when 30 million Americans had broadband connections at home. Fully half of this growth has taken place since November 2003, suggesting that it was a broadband holiday season for many Internet users in the winter of 2003/2004.

As for the pool of dial-up users who may one day move to broadband, 40% say they would like to get it and 58% say they don’t plan to get it. Of the 40% who would like to get broadband at home, many are not interested in paying more for it: 22% say they would not pay an extra dime for broadband at home and on average this group said they would pay about $9.40 per month extra for broadband. Of the 58% of dial-up users who say that they are not interested in broadband at home, half say they would not pay anything extra for it. On average these users say they would pay only about $4.25 a month more for broadband.

State and local laws that make it difficult — if not impossible — for new competition to emerge in broadband markets should be reformed, according to Crawford. For example, many states make it very difficult for municipalities to create public wireless networks, thanks to decades of state-level lobbying by the industry giants. In order to help local governments upgrade their communications grids, Crawford is calling for an infrastructure bank to help cities obtain affordable financing to help build high-speed fiber networks for their citizens. Finally, U.S. regulators should apply real oversight to the broadband industry to ensure that these market behemoths abide by open Internet principles and don’t price gouge consumers. Should broadband Internet service be considered a public utility like water and electricity? “We treated the telephone industry like a utility and people don’t seem to be surprised by that,” says Crawford. “High-speed Internet access plays the same role in American life. It’s just that these guys have succeeded in making us think that it’s a luxury.”

According to Crawford, the interests of cable and telecom giants like Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Verizon, and AT&T, are not aligned with the interests of the public. Those corporate giants are concerned first and foremost with maximizing the profits of their shareholders. And all too often, profit maximization — especially in a market that lacks robust competition — is not consistent with providing the best possible service at reasonable prices.

“You let a little bit of competition exist so you can point to it and say ‘Ha, we’re competing!’ But otherwise it’s mostly controlled by one company.”

According to President Obama, $5B USD of the funding will be used to expand wireless coverage from 95 percent of Americans to 98 percent of Americans.  Most of these 3 percent live in impoverished or remote areas that don't make sense for the profit-driven telecoms to come to.  That said, these regions often perform vital functions to our nation's economy like food-growing.

According to President Obama, $5B USD of the funding will be used to expand wireless coverage from 95 percent of Americans to 98 percent of Americans.  Most of these 3 percent live in impoverished or remote areas that don't make sense for the profit-driven telecoms to come to.  That said, these regions often perform vital functions to our nation's economy like food-growing.

The benefits of the public safety network are obvious.  The government will be able to prevent some of the loss of life and property that occurred in events like Hurricane Katrina.  And the public will be less likely to endure the fear and uncertainty that it did on the infamous 9/11 attacks in 2001.