A New Twist on Technological Neutrality

I'll have more commentary on the FCC's recently released rural broadband strategy report in the coming days but I wanted to start by pointing out one thing in there that really stood out to me.

The most common refrain heard in formulating broadband policy is the need to maintain a strict regime of technological neutrality. The reasoning for this is threefold:

- Government shouldn't be picking technology winners and losers.
- Each community has different needs and characteristics requiring different technologies.
- Technology changes at such a rapid pace anything we pick will soon be outdated.

Instead of spending time now refuting these misguided principles, I want to pick out something I found notable related to this topic in the FCC's report, namely:

"Nevertheless, every technology has inherent capabilities and limitations. Those characteristics vary greatly among technologies. Similarly, every rural area presents its own special challenges, and a particular technological solution may be well-suited to one situation and poorly-suited to another. Therefore, decision makers should proceed on a technology-neutral basis--by considering the attributes of all potential technologies--in selecting the technology or technologies to be deployed in a particular rural area."

Notice that while they still tout "technology-neutral" there are some new wrinkes in there.

For one they acknowledge that every technology has capabilities and limitations, and that these characteristics vary greatly among technologies. Then they suggest that while decision makers should proceed forward on a technology-neutral basis that they need to be cognizant of the attributes of those technologies when making decisions.

Now pair this with the array of attributes they recommend rural broadband networks should be able to support--like latency, scalability, reliability, upkeep--and you've got the start of something interesting.

The challenge with how technological neutrality was perceived before was that everything boiled down to speed or capacity. If broadband technology X can support broadband capacity Y, then it should be considered as roughly equal to every other broadband technology that claims to deliver that much bandwidth.

The problem with this mindset is it obfuscates both the limitations of lesser technologies as well as the capabilities of greater technologies. It allowed the purveyors of lesser technologies to say, "Well we can deliver that much speed but at a cheaper price so choose us" despite the fact that whatever technology they're peddling has clear physical limitations.

While I'm a believer that the best broadband is a fiber pipe to every house with wireless over the top, I'm not suggesting at this time that we completely abandon efforts by decision makers to remain technology neutral.

But what I am celebrating is what appears to be the dawn of a new age of what technological neutrality means.

No longer will the consideration of broadband technologies be boiled down to just speed. Now it appears as though we're going to have more well-reasoned, multi-faceted examinations of the full range of characteristics that make up world-class broadband networks.

And in so doing, we'll be able to ensure that all Americans get equal access to the best broadband while simultaneously avoiding wasting money on lesser technologies that can't deliver the connectivity our country needs.