Schwarzenegger: Free market best solution for broadband

Russ Steele

This from an article on c/Net News by Declan McCullagh

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger showed up in Los Angeles on Tuesday to give a keynote speech at a state broadband conference, but didn't say much in his speech about broadband after all.

Although the event was held by the USC Annenberg School's Center for the Digital Future, Schwarzenegger spent most of his time talking about old-fashioned infrastructure, primarily roads, water, and levies in the Sacramento delta.

What he did say about broadband:

During a question-and-answer period afterwards, the governor did allude to a recent study from the Sacramento Regional Research Institute that estimated California could gain 1.8 million jobs a year--assuming that the broadband use of the state's population grew by 3.8 percentage points a year.

Schwarzenegger struck a free market note on how best to accomplish that. "I've been pushing the (Public Utilities Commission) in becoming much more aggressive in pushing broadband," he said. "If we get more out of the way"--that is, if the government doesn't interfere--it will "move technololgy forward in a free way."

Full article here.