Infrastructure Megaprojects: Communication

Think about what your life would be like without a phone, without television, without internet access, without books, without music. Really sit and consider that for a minute. I'm betting that if you're reading this, you can't even imagine what you'd do with most of your time. Now imagine your life to date without those things.

Will anyone dispute that information is a necessity in this world?

The US information infrastructure is pathetic compared to most of the developed world. But it's fixable! Estimates have Google Fiber costing about $1,500/home to install. Figure 100 million homes in the US, and to wire the country with high-speed fiber would cost something like $150 billion. Even if it's double that, it's trivial on the scale of projects we're talking about. And following the Google Fiber model, it should be possible to supply most households with free high-speed internet access, only charging for higher bandwidth connections.

But it shouldn't stop there. Wired communication is only part of our information consumption. Right now there are a large number of incompatible cellular networks in the country. How much could we save by standardizing those networks on a single interoperable technology? Think about that. With appropriate leasing agreements in place, you could use anyone's tower, and just let the providers haggle over who pays whom on the back end. And once there's a single universal standard, expanding coverage and service becomes much easier and more efficient.

How much would it cost to pay everyone to switch their towers over to a shared technology? Figure there are 200,000 towers in the US, and we want to change out 90% of them to match the rest. At $150,000 per tower, the entire network would cost $30 billion to build from scratch. Assuming the electronics involved are only a tenth the cost of the tower, we're talking about three billion dollars. Chump change. Once a standard was in place, the government would probably spend more than that building additional towers just to improve coverage.

Unfortunately, we're now beyond my technical knowledge. Are there actual technical advantages to Verizon's approach over, say, Sprint's? Is one objectively better? Is there some technical reason what I've proposed is unworkable? I can't say. But anyone who's ever considered switching cell providers knows what I mean when I say that anything to reduce vender lock-in is a good thing.

Oh, and while we're at it, let's get rid of bundling the cost of a phone into my monthly bill. If it's a $600 phone, don't tell me it's a $200 phone with an early termination penalty if I leave before 2029. Just tell me it's a $600 phone. Finance it, pay cash, whatever, but vender lock-in needs to die.

No, that's not a megaproject. But let's do it anyway.