Encouraging Demand > Building Supply for Broadband?

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[Commentary] We can not achieve our goals of achieving a broadband nation without an equal emphasis on generating demand as supply. Even if you don't like the idea of putting more money into the pockets of incumbents, you can't deny that the more people you can get onto the network of networks that is the Internet at higher speeds, the more valuable that network becomes. Increasing demand can also have a positive affect on increasing supply. For example, at the core of the Connected Nation model is an effort to aggregate demand in areas without broadband to show providers that there's business to be had in these areas, helping spur deployment. Also, as consumers use more bandwidth there's upward pressure on operators to increase capacity just to keep up lest these networks don't deliver the service they promised. And if we can get enough people demanding true broadband, it can help make the business models for deploying full fiber networks even more feasible than they already are. Imagine what happens when instead of the customer base being 50% of households it's 75%? More customers means more revenue either to fund fiber deployment directly or create more customers so there's more room for competition that leads to increases in capacity.


Encouraging Demand > Building Supply for Broadband?