I read with excitement about how folks in Columbia (and Greenville by the way, and I'm sure some other fellow SC communities) are getting über-excited about Google Fiber.* How can we not? In this new century, much like our Automakers in the last, Google represents American creativity, enginuity and leadership. Besides, the way things are our internet service providers are terrible monopolies who really could give a hoot about their customers -- have you called Time Warner and tried to get a cable guy to come out? What about AT&T and their technicians?
My excitement didn't last long though. It gave way to disapointment. I thought: as good as Google is we South Carolinians shouldn't have to sell ourselves in quirky marketing gigs for higher speed internet access, or even access at all. Because it was only last year that our State's leaders (in what was the saddest, most undervalued giveaway in the state's history - worse than when we thought we could plug state budget holes by selling large portions of state property) sold 90% of ETV's broadcast bandwidth to two companies, Clearwire and BridgeMaxx for the low low price of $143 million over 20 years. (Yeah I mentioned this yesterday briefly)
That's $7.15 million a year, and when our state has a budget of $5 billion that's 0.143% of our annual budget, if you view the state's budget like others, then that money accounts for 0.034% of our state balance sheet. I call that a give away, don't you?
Wow, had they thought about it reasonably... had they stood up to the state's communications monopolies - here's looking at you Ma Bell and Time Warner - we wouldn't have to be so excited about convincing Google to come here to set up a living lab for their high speed internet. If a bit more sunlight had been thrown on to the process of putting out the bid let alone awarding the contracts, who knows perhaps Google would gladly have approached us. Instead we sold a public trust for less than pennies on the dollar, only to see those two companies do what.... >>crickets<<
