Still Looking For Leadership On Telecom Policy: Page 2 of 3

You want a lack of specifics? The Bush site is happy to provide ideas devoid of answers. From his speech in New Mexico, where Bush first mentioned broadband, the President said:

This country needs a national goal for broadband technology, for the spread of broadband technology. We ought to have a universal, affordable access for broadband technology by the year 2007, and then we ought to make sure as soon as possible thereafter, consumers have got plenty of choices when it comes to purchasing the broadband carrier. See, the more choices there are, the more the price will go down. And the more the price goes down, the more users there will be.

Later, Bush offered one more bit of advice:

Let me say one thing about broadband -- we don't need to tax access to broadband. The Congress must not tax access to broadband technology if we want to spread it around.

So -- Bush wants the industry to create lots of services, none of which make any money because the price is cheap. And don't tax it; don't worry, the lines will pay for themselves, and service providers will line up to wire thousands of miles of desert for a few hundred thousand customers. If you can follow that logic, you may also believe in his plan to find men from Mars.