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Technology Stocks : The *NEW* Frank Coluccio Technology Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: axial who wrote (31947)	11/5/2009 1:10:10 AM
From: Maurice Winn	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 46821

I don't see why people want things to be universal as in "universal fibre to the home". The digital divide is not a matter of economics, it's a matter of intellect [you can lead a horse to fibre but you can't make it think]. There's a digital divide in reading newspapers and text books and science magazines and learning about financial relativity theory and in use of libraries and in many ways. But again, it's not that books cost a lot, or anything, it's that some people are not inclined to or able to read them, even with a helper on each side. There is already plenty of fibre around the place which people would buy and are buying if reasonably priced. Until the existing fibre is used to an economic level, there's no point in rolling out a spider web of more fibre which will be used even less because of higher costs than the existing fibre. People who want fibre can buy an apartment or house beside it. They can move their business to it. That's why cities grew around harbours. People chose houses and business locations where the infrastructure and economic impetus led them. Fibre is nice, but those who really want to cross the so-called digital divide can make do with ADSL which reaches anywhere fibre is likely to go in NZ. I'm way over the digital divide into the cyberspace realm and am sitting here with slow ADSL. It's near enough for my purposes, though it's annoying at times. The best thing governments could do is say "It's open slather on cyberspace". No rules, no price controls, no taxes, no kleptocratic permit issuers and inspectors. Replace the taxes which come from cyberspace with CO2 taxes on imported carbon [which is theoretically a problem rather than a benefit though there's no evidence of a problem]. It's true that tax cut is easy to glibly write and some fine print would be needed. Perhaps there could be no GST on ISP, mobile phone, or phone accounts - companies operating ONLY in cyberspace could be tax free and their employees tax free too. With government guarantees of no interference regarding price-setting and other bureaucratic harassment such as "You must provide service to these important people" there would be surging investment and fibre rolling out all over the place and burgeoning income from booming cyberspace. Cyberspace is shovel ready. All that's needed is for governments to get out of the way. No subsidies are needed. Tax cuts would be good. Mqurice