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Information Age: the political side

Election 2020 is just around the corner, and many issues will be on the minds of voters.

The need for information is as great as ever. It’s therefore ironic that there hasn’t been more discussion of telecommunications (the process of how people acquire information they need in order to be informed).

Costs related to electronics in the home have mushroomed in recent years. When I moved into my first apartment as a college student in the late 1980s, I paid only $25 a month for cable service. Now I don’t know of any way to get cable for less than the $114 a month that I pay.

The idea of “bundle and save” is only partly true. There might be an immediate cost reduction, but it cuts into the level of competition in the marketplace. Sooner or later, probably with the expiration of an introductory offer, the price is likely to go up.

We’re fortunate that the cost of cars, appliances, furniture and food haven’t gone up at the same rate. The only thing that seems to have increased and expanded as much is the cost of health care.

Maybe there’s a need for a public option in telecommunications, one that would aim to control costs to the consumer in much the same way that Obamacare is intended for medical expenses.

Industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie saw the wisdom of having public libraries available in both large cities and smaller towns. They were not just for the wealthy. They were for anyone, white collar or blue collar, who wanted to use some free time to learn about a wide range of topics.

We haven’t as yet seen a similar, across the board push with telecommnications. Instead it starts with having a private Internet provider.

What the provider charges is based somewhat on the cost of providing service. That cost often comes down to “economy of scale”, meaning that with more of a customer pool in a local area it’s more possible to limit the monthly bill. It’s one of many factors, but it does make populated markets attractive to providers and tends to bring about choices for service.

With less populated places, on the other hand, it’s been difficult to even get private providers to invest in the start-up. The payback is slower. The quarterly returns aren’t as high.

An article in the monthly Rotary International magazine that I get at home spelled out the impacts. Some states that pride themselves on being good locations for technical companies actually have sparsely populated areas with little or no Internet service.

Rural broadband initiatives have been needed to bring service to many communities, even ones that have their own school districts. It’s meant that these locations can use online alternatives for education, business and entertainment.

The alternative is to be kept in the dark, to be left on the wrong side of a digital divide comparable to the Grand Canyon.

Who would move to a community with that kind of isolation from modern technology? How would those places have any chance to grow?

With that in mind, telecommunications is a 21st century equivalent to rural electrification, indoor plumbing and rural water systems. It’s a matter have setting minimum standards for quality of life, creating a point where those standards become a right rather than a privilege.

It probably won’t be possible to bring about a “public option” for the $25 a month that I paid when Reagan was President. Still, it should be possible even with just cable to get public broadcasting, networks, news channels, weather, and informational programming for much less than what’s spent to have all the bells and whistles.

Many of the best programs are on channels that run on low budgets. It should be possible for companies to have a low-cost option.

That doesn’t mean socialism through government regulation. Instead it could create an affordable consumer choice. Something with a captive market, a needed product offered at high price ranges, is definitely not capitalism.

When I was growing up it was considered important for households to have sets of encyclopedias. If you didn’t have one, kids wouldn’t do as well in school. Thus it became a captive market to the tune of about $400 when children became old enough to use them.

The stakes are higher in 2020. It’s about a cost of more than $400, one that has to be paid every year.

Telecommunications is not the single most important issue of the 2020 election. It is, however, one of many things to keep in mind when filling out a ballot.

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