From New Brunswick to New Delhi – 4G Connects America, World

Since the Internet was first introduced to the American public about twenty years ago, politicians in general have not paid much attention to the benefits of making it readily accessible to everyone in the country. Earlier this year, President Obama broke the pattern started by Clinton and Bush when he supported the National Wireless Initiative, which aims to increase the percentage of Americans with high-speed Internet access to 98%. This goal will be achieved through the use of extensive back-to-back 4G mobile broadband networks. In this way, wireless technology does not only represent the future for busy residents of giant cities (like New York) and their surrounding metropolitan areas (New Brunswick, New Haven, New Rochelle), but also for people in more remote and rural areas who up until now have been left behind in terms of connection speeds.

In his speech introducing the Initiative, Obama referred to the fact that in other countries like South Korea, 90% of the population already subscribes to some form of broadband service. However, in the relatively technologically disinclined United States, little more than half of the residents matched that lavel of connectivity. While some people argue that the real reason why so many households are without high-speed Internet access has less to do with availability than price (many broadband services are considered by a lot of people to be prohibitively expensive, especially in rural areas), the President did not directly address this concern.

However, the Initiative, which recognizes the problem as one of inherent public interest, seeks to make mobile broadband service more affordable as well as more accessible through the use of private-public partnerships to build the necessary infrastructure. The cost of the development of these wireless networks will be subsidized through about 5 billion dollars in funding provided by the federal government. This public funding is justified by the fact that continuous wireless Internet coverage throughout the country will better enable a proposed high-speed public safety network and can be used to further efforts to develop and test mobile technologies in the energy, healthcare, and educational fields.

These days, people nationwide are beginning to look at access to a high-speed Internet connection as less of a luxury and more as a necessary component of everyday life, and the President himself drew a parellel between benefits of mobile broadband and those of electricity. It does not matter how densely or sparsely populated the place where you live may be – everyone has a need for both services. They both create certain economic opportunities, and in a country that prides itself on one’s ability to improve one’s station in life, it is not right to deprive anyone of such opportunities.

Only time will tell just how successful this plan will be, but it seems like just about every day a new 4G network pops up in a new location, which leads you to believe that progress is being made. Furthermore, the scope of mobile Internet extends far beyond U.S. boundaries. From New Brunswick to New Delhi, mobile Internet promises to be the next step towards a truly globalized world.

For more information on 4G coverage near you, visit clearinternetnewbrunswick.net.