The National Broadband Plan that the Federal Communications Commission released Tuesday is ambitious in the right way, staking out such immodest national goals as building the most innovative and fastest wireless networks on the planet and vastly improving the wired infrastructure within a decade. But the commission moved so cautiously toward those goals, it’s hard to see at this point how it’s going to reach them.

The commission’s voluminous report detailing the plan describes broadband as “the great infrastructure challenge of the early 21st century” because of the Internet’s key role in so many aspects of the economy, and we agree. Only one part of that challenge would be met with tax dollars: the construction of a mobile broadband network for police and rescue workers. Everything else would be left up to private companies and their investors.

To read this report in The Los Angeles Times in full, see:
www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-broadband17-2010mar17,0,7082633.story