It’s generally frustrating to listen to all the reasons why our government sometimes can’t seem to get anything done, but it’s specifically frustrating to listen to all the reasons why the U.S. can’t have a broadband policy that guarantees access in areas there are underserved today.

The thing is, everyone agrees it’s a great idea, in fact, it’s essential to our economic future -- and that future isn’t looking all that bright right now. But there is little agreement on how it should be done. For example, there are multiple efforts right now, to identify where broadband is available and where it is needed. There are multiple bills before Congress and one of them, Sen. Richard Durbin’s (D-Ill.) Connect the Nation Act, which was attached to the Farm Bill, H.R. 4212, might have a chance to pass Congress this year.

Among some staunch broadband proponents, however, Durbin’s approach is coming under attack because it would allow private-public partnerships to obtain federal and state grant money to do the broadband mapping, much as Connect Kentucky has done in that state, and its parent company, Connected Nation, is preparing to do in Ohio, West Virginia and Tennessee. Such partnerships are too easily co-opted by incumbent telcos, the argument goes, as critics claim Connect Kentucky has been, and municipal networks, as well as small ISPs and wireless companies are pushed aside.

These broadband proponents believe it’s essential to give consumers a choice of broadband services.

That sounds all well and good, but in many areas of the U.S. choice may be a luxury we can’t afford. Reed Hundt, who served as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission under Bill Clinton, suggested as much in a recent interview: “If you have one broadband provider or a dominant broadband provider charging a tenth of what’s being offered today and providing ten times the throughput, there’s nothing wrong with that,” Hundt said. “That would be a decent broadband policy.”

His thought is to stop “nickel and diming” local telephone companies and fund broadband construction, with one important caveat: The network has to be open. “Going back to universal service, instead of seeing us reduce the amount of money we give to phone companies in Montana, I’d rather see us provide really high-speed access, even if it was just one company, provided they were open,” Hundt said. “Open,” by his definition, doesn’t mean giving away service – it does allow for the service provider to charge a reasonable fee per bit, but not to discriminate in its sales.

No doubt there are those who would disparage this approach as well. We seem almost addicted to the idea that there must always be multiple approaches, multiple forces at work, multiple choices, and, for the time being, multiple reasons nothing seems to get done.

E-mail me at cwilson3@telephonyonline.com.