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President Obama’s just-released federal budget continues his “winning the future” narrative, which he debuted during the State of the Union address last month. For America “to win the future,” Obama explains, “we have to out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world.” Cresting the ‘out-build’ portion of this rallying cry is what Obama describes as a 21st Century communications network. Addressing a crowd at Northern Michigan University last week, Obama stressed that “This is a new century, and we can’t expect tomorrow’s economy to take root using yesterday’s infrastructure.” He went on to say that “[w]ithin five years we want to make it possible for businesses to put high speed wireless services in reach of virtually every American.” In the White House’s view, by outfitting the nation’s emergency personnel—first responders, police, etc—with high speed wireless networks, the high-tech infrastructure could then be harnessed to provide internet service to approximately 98% of Americans. Obama, whose timeline for this project is five years, aims to pay for this national interoperable public safety communications network through the sale of what has been deemed the underutilized end of radio spectrum. However, equitable access to this broadband wireless network of the future was jeopardized by recent rulings by the FCC on the fate what’s called net-neutrality.

GUEST: Derek Turner, Research Director at Free Press

Find out more at www.freepress.net.