And while many industries will benefit from the more broadly realized rollout of high-speed access, critics say, among them the online adult industry, broadband adoption has been stymied by numerous factors and technological setbacks over the past few years.
One major setback for broadband rollout has been supplying the costly hardware it would take to cover some of the more rural parts of the country, MSNBC reports. Additionally, servicing rural areas are typically not as lucrative for high-speed providers as urban areas.
"We ought to have universal, affordable access to broadband technology by the year 2007," Bush said in his speech. "And then we ought to make sure as soon as possible thereafter consumers have plenty of choices."
And while some organizations applauded the president's ambitious statement, others felt that his claim was "thin on details and difficult to examine" after numerous similar predictions on the availability of broadband for U.S. homes have so far fallen flat, and only 20 percent of the U.S. is currently wired for broadband.
According to Rob Rich of research firm Yankee Group, wiring the rest of the country could cost billions of dollars. He went on to tell MSNBC that Bush's statement was an "extremely ambitious goal."
Rich estimates that in some of the more extremely rural areas of the country, wiring just one DSL subscriber could cost telecommunications companies as much as $9,000 per subscriber.
"There simply is no way a telecommunications firm can recover that kind of investment," he told MSNBC.
One critic suggested that the U.S. consider subsidizing telecoms that lay broadband wiring in rural areas, similar to the 1934 creation of a Universal Service Fund, which was designed to encourage the rollout of telephone service nationwide.
