A Champion for the Internet?

It may just be rhetoric, but New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer says he wants to be a champion for the Internet.

While New York has a vast transportation infrastructure to move people and goods, we don't have the broadband infrastructure to move ideas and information. If you're a kid growing up in South Korea, your Internet access is ten times faster at half the price than a kid growing up in the South Bronx. New Yorkers are at a competitive disadvantage that is simply unacceptable.

Later on in the same speech, he compared those who don't want New York to invest in broadband to those who did not want Gov. DeWitt Clinton to build the Erie Canal.

He sounds serious, and it would not be difficult for New York to corral the needed infrastructure. Chances are, most of it can be done with dark fiber already in the ground. If necessary, a trunk could be lain right alongside that old Erie Canal (nice symbolism), then down the New York Thruway.

The big problem, of course, would be the last mile, but with a Governor demanding it, how long could Verizon really refuse? Especially since it would be very inexpensive to coat New York City with WiFi and WiMax.

And if New York can have universal fast broadband, what about the rest of the country?

This could get very interesting very quickly.