After the elections in November, I wrote to a small group of colleagues suggesting that those of us interested in education and high-speed computer networking had a once-in-a-generation opportunity to shape a national broadband platform for education and global competitiveness.

The country’s high-speed networking architecture needs an overhaul. Once upon a time America was the global leader in digital networking — and in using those fast data pipes to drive economic growth. Today we have fallen behind, but the right stimulus to our networks could put us back on top technologically.

I have proposed that we model America’s broadband future on the way colleges and universities manage their networks. At colleges we are truly fortunate to have a technology architecture and business model completely unlike that of corporate providers of high-speed Internet services. We could extend the university network backbone to connect public-sector institutions to a network focused on local communities that would allow collaboration and shared services among health-care organizations, libraries, governments, museums, secondary schools, and public-broadcasting stations, to mention just a few.

From a technical perspective, the design of our community-based networks is more evolved and more intelligent than that of our public-sector and commercial networks. Community networks are designed as tightly bounded geographic hub-and-spoke configurations around local points of presence. Most traditional networks are more haphazard.

These community assets can connect back to their local college campuses and then to the Internet. Communities connected in this manner become large, extended “campuses.” A national broadband policy based on replicated fractals of community networks across the country would be a major step in the right direction.

Universities have already built — with significant public investment — a quilt of regional optical networks and two national backbones that could connect these new regional networks much faster than does the current commercial Internet.

It’s never too late for good policy. If we’re going to assist the new administration in developing a true national broadband policy in the public interest, the enormous talents of university technologists and faculty researchers need to be summoned to work with each other, mayors, governors, and federal agencies — along with public-opinion leaders and corporate leaders, to design and build a 21st-century blueprint for a broadband nation. —Lev Gonick

Lev Gonick, this month’s guest blogger, is CIO at Case Western Reserve University.

Categories: Leadership