Wave: You touched on DTV just a few moments ago. Let’s talk about rolling out wireless broad-band to more Americans. What should the federal government do in that regard?
Mr. Inslee: Well, we’re having a hard time right now with the validity of the OECD report and its evaluation of our world standing, but there are a few fundamental things we can do.
One of them is to try to prevent discriminatory or unwarranted taxes on wireless
service. I know people don’t normally associate that with broadband, but if you want people to use something, you don’t tax them excessively for doing so. There’s no technology that can help us bridge the digital divide faster or more effectively than wireless, and that’s why we should be concerned about excessive taxes.
Wireless also presents an interesting leap frog possibility. We’re seeing it in developing nations where there are more people on cell phones than landlines because the country essentially skipped the land-line generation. So, if a developing country skips landlines and goes right to wireless, what is that saying to a highly developed country such as ours? The prospects are huge, and we have to find ways to keep wireless growing.
Wave: Internet regulation, or what some call net neutrality, is an area where many believe the growth you just referred to could be seriously impeded. How do you define the issue?
Mr. Inslee: Well, I think there are a lot of misperceptions of what the issue is about. It’s my belief that we ought to have a mechanism where the companies that own the pipes delivering content can’t control what’s going through them. Once you start to allow that, the service provider could have its own content and discriminate against other content. That is the great sin that we want to prevent from starting to infect the Internet. This hasn’t happened yet, but I think there
are those out there with grand designs, and we need to prevent that. Statutory protection would do that.
Wave: What about the capacity concerns? The Internet needs to be built out to meet the enormous increase in demand, and someone has to pay for that. Who would make the kind of investment that’s necessary if they can’t recoup their investment?
Inslee: I have supported a net neutrality provision that I think doesn’t prevent
building networks and financing them. I think that’s a sweet spot that we hope to hit. A fundamental characteristic of the internet is free access to every bit of information out there, so I think it is a trade-off. The core value needs to be preserved even in the event it prevents or retards some degree of investment.
