President-elect Barack Obama announced a massive public works campaign during his weekly address. Part of it is broadband availability for all Americans. Said Obama:

It is unacceptable that the United States ranks 15th in the world in broadband adoption. Here in the country that invented the Internet, every child should have the chance to get online and they'll get that chance when I'm President.

The pledge is a huge win for Kleiner Perkins-backed startup M2Z Networks, which last year proposed the FCC auction off spectrum for a free over-the-airwaves-Internet.

Perhaps getting early signals from Obama's transition team, FCC chair Kevin Martin earlier this week announced he put a variation of the proposal on the agenda for the FCC's December's meeting.

Martin's version has critics because it calls for filters that would try to prevent minors from accessing porn.

Critics say that's a technologically impossible feat and one the government shouldn't be allowed to bother with anyway. Cynical advocates whisper that porn filters are a technologically impossible feat and that we should all let the government make a show of trying -- the same argument Google uses for justifying doing business with China.

See Also:

FCC Chair To Push Free Porn-Free Internet

