The Mike Abundo Effect

Why are people talking as if the Philippine National Broadband Network deal makes any sense at all? If the Philippine government wants to get connected, have them hook their offices up to existing Philippine ISPs and be done with it. A government VPN over DSL, cable, and satellite plans from the best providers in each province would cost far less to build and maintain than this $329 million white elephant.

Connectivity is a commodity. The Philippine government is not YouTube; its bandwidth requirements simply do not justify building its own Internet backbone. Whatever your politics are, the NBN is just stupid.

Rarely do you hear about a large corporation hiring a powerful lobbyist for a good cause. That’s exactly what Google is doing to ensure the $10 billion US government auction for wireless service licenses isn’t hogged by greedy telco monopolies.

Three months ago, Google (GOOG) retained Richard Whitt, former head of the regulatory department for MCI, the telco formerly known as WorldCom now owned by Verizon (VZ). Whitt, acting as Google’s Washington telecom and media counsel, is lobbying the Federal Communications Commission on some of the biggest issues facing the wireless industry. These include ensuring certain wireless airwaves are made available for free public use and making sure the auction is carried out in such a way that up-and-comers get a shot at entering the market.

For sure, Google’s interests are far from selfless — they don’t want telco monopolies getting between them and their eyeballs — but their interests happen to be aligned with the common good. Works for me.