Enough Excuses

Rizwan Khan, Executive Vice President, Global Marketing, Tellabs

For someone living in or near a big city, high-speed data connections are about as common as the sound of sirens. We get hard-wired broadband at the office and at home that likely includes Wi-Fi – enabling us to use laptops even while we’re grabbing a snack. Smartphones and 3G wireless networks let us answer e-mail or catch up on a TV show while on the train to work. Even the watering hole up the street has wireless Internet to keep us amused before the game starts.

With so much connectivity, it’s easy to forget that many Americans don’t have broadband service at all.

For many, forgoing broadband is a matter of choice. They’re happy with dial-up to surf the Web and read e-mail. Others don’t have Internet connectivity of any kind because they cannot afford it or don’t want it.

According to a report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project, half of those who don’t embrace broadband find it irrelevant.

What about households that would like broadband, but find it is simply unavailable? Most are located in rural areas far from current cable TV or DSL service, though 10 percent or more of homes in urban areas also go unserved by DSL or cable modems.

A small part of the Obama administration’s stimulus package – some $7.2 billion – seeks to provide broadband connectivity to unserved and underserved Americans. Many service providers have received this funding infusion enthusiastically, especially those focused on serving rural customers.

The Rural Utilities Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture plans to distribute some $2.5 billion of this broadband stimulus money in the next 12-18 months. By comparison, it has distributed $1.35 billion in loans to boost rural communications service over the past eight years cumulatively. So this represents a huge infusion of money.

Significant as it may be, however, the $7.2 billion represents “only a down payment” on what is needed to fully connect all Americans with broadband, in the words of former acting FCC Chairman Michael Copps, quoted in BroadbandCensus.com. At the direction of Congress, the FCC has embarked upon developing a national broadband strategy for the United States, due next February. “We’re way behind on broadband,” Copps said. “There is a need to do something now.”

A back-of-the-envelope analysis suggests that the $7.2 billion now available can pay for connecting broadband to 7 to 20 percent of the nation’s households, depending on the technology used. That doesn’t include what carriers will need to spend to upgrade network cores. To do the job fully would require $25 billion in subsidies and tax breaks, according to estimates by the Telecommunications Industry Association. Free Press, a consumer advocacy group, recommends spending $44 billion.

There’s no question that full connectivity will be an expensive undertaking, but it is a task that other countries are pursuing with considerable success. The United States is ranked in the middle among the 30 countries surveyed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. This results largely from the difficulty of our task when compared to countries like South Korea and the Netherlands with denser populations.

But in a global economy where people all over the world are competing with us, excuses are irrelevant. We need to put our shoulders to the wheel and get the job done.

Rizwan Khan is executive vice president of global marketing at Tellabs. In this role, he is responsible for Tellabs’ global marketing, communications, competitive intelligence and partner initiatives. Previously, Khan was senior vice president of global marketing, where he managed various marketing and strategy organizations inside Tellabs including: segment, channel and portfolio marketing, market strategy, internal and external market communications, and business development. Khan has more than 15 years of telecommunications industry experience. His previous positions included director of product marketing and management for the Tellabs 8800 multiservice router series and director of the solutions center for Tellabs’ Asia Pacific region. Khan also has held several engineering and executive sales management positions at Motorola, Newbridge and Siemens. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from the University of Engineering and Technology in Lahore, Pakistan.

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