Whenever I see or hear the words "public-private partnership", alarm bells go off in my head. This is how the latest initiative coming from the executive branch is being packaged and sold along with extravagant claims of improved broadband service. The author expresses her skepticism:
...do not let the corporate-funded dog-and-pony show fool you. As the US government begins plans to take-over, re-shape and sell back to you through corporate relationships, a new version of the internet, we should all we wary.Sascha Segan of PCMag is very doubtful. He writes:
The broadband crisis in the U.S. is about slow, expensive connections in the "last mile" to people's homes, not about backbone capacity and 3D medical imaging. The government could do something about that, but it won't.Craig Settles of Fighting the Next Good Fight is openly critical:
Will the government require the organizations that lease the land to build open access networks? Let’s cut to the chase. Broadband in the U.S. sucks in large part because we have little or no competition to the dominant telco or cableco at the local level. If this Executive Order lacks an open access requirement, incumbents can just roll into cheap deals courtesy of the Feds and then freeze out any meaningful competition. Think it won’t happen? Then you haven’t been paying attention.