The Navajo Nation almost lost its Internet service this week. Tribal members were cut off from access in April and they face the same problem again if reseller OnSat Network Communications – whose Web site only brings up a blank white page – can’t pay its bill to underlying provider SES Americom. SES Americom had planned to flip the switch on Tuesday but now says it will give OnSat until Aug. 1. That means the Navajo Nation has time to see about retaining its high-speed service, which also happens to power its public safety network.

The reprieve has to come as small consolation to the 165,000 residents of the Navajo Nation. And the situation just so happens to collide with a philosophical conundrum raised this week: whether broadband access constitutes a civil right. Democratic FCC Commissioner Michael Copps said on July 21 that yes, it does; he was speaking at an FCC hearing in Pittsburgh on broadband and the digital future.

I wonder if Copps understands the complexity of what he said. See, a civil right, by definition is citizens’ right to political and social freedom, as well as equality. (Webster specifically cites the 13th, 14th, 15th and 19th amendments as bestowing civil rights.) Frankly, it seems demeaning to place Internet access on par with the achievements of voting rights for women or equal opportunity no matter race, gender, etc. Yet if Technopoly author Neil Postman is correct that “...the words of [the First Amendment] presume and insist on a public that not only has access to information but has control over it,” then broadband access seems as vital as the protections afforded by the Constitution.

But how does the right of broadband access square with the free market, under which America operates? Obviously SES Americom has a right to make a profit and cut a non-paying customer. However, does it have the right to leave 165,000 people in the digital dark? Is the federal government now responsible for paying OnSat’s bill? God knows we’ve bailed out many a corporation already – Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, anyone? Is this any different? (And if someone says it is because we’re talking about a rural sovereign nation within our nation, I would argue that’s hypocritical.)

All I can conclude with is this: the reason we have voting and equal rights is thanks to unrelenting social activism. For broadband to be cemented as an accepted, ensured civil right, there would have to be an uprooting of our entrenched economic and capitalistic systems. And that seems unlikely to happen.

User Comments !

Exactly right, Kelly. We have a lot of nuts in the government who don't know what they're saying or doing. Broadband access is not anywhere enshrined in the Constitution. To have it, one would also need a right to a computer and to electricity. This country guarantees "negative" rights, rights which don't demand the resources of others to satisfy. Re-distribution of assets by government is very simply theft, like it or not, made no more palatable that it is backed up by police and military power.

Posted by: Pranav | July 31 2008 08:27:54