A recent report from a group of IT managers at over 2200 colleges and universities called EDUCAUSE has outlined an interesting plan. They propose that the government should support a program to roll out a fiber optic infrastructure across the U.S. that would allow for 100 megabits per second at any location.

The plan totals at a cost of $100 billion and would be supported over the next four years by the federal and state governments, each paying $8 billion (that’s a total combined contribution of $64 billion.) For comparison, the federal government could pay for this entire investment if they used the money currently used to support only 116 days of the Iraq war.The rest would be paid by the public or private-sector entity that would maintain and also construct the network. Read the rest of this entry »