Because universal broadband is a key initiative of the new administration, here's an early look at current thinking. There are two bills (House of Representatives and Senate) that differ in two key respects: The House bill proposes an investment of roughly US$6 billion, while the Senate bill is for $8 billion; and the House bill earmarks roughly half of the funds to be administered by the Rural Utility Service. Both bills call for "net neutrality" requirements for infrastructure providers (a bit tricky because there's no agreed-on definition of net neutrality).

Then there's the open question of what, if any, role the Universal Service Fund will play. Both bills tacitly acknowledge the USF has been a disastrous failure, both in philosophy and execution. As I've noted previously, the USF managed to subsidize both the Gambino crime family and Wyoming billionaires. And the fund's basic design was totally whacked: It operated as a tax on telcos, which passed along the fees to their customers -- meaning that people who were paying full costs for telephone services already were being asked to pay again, while the actual users didn't need to pay.

Happily, both bills seem to conceive of an entity other than the corrupt, poorly managed, and poorly architected USF handling the job. So, how is this likely to play out?

First off, proponents of universal broadband tend to believe that $6 billion isn't nearly enough money. Gigi Sohn, a well-known communications-policy lawyer with whom I served on a panel recently, says the real cost of implementing universal broadband is closer to $20 billion; others say closer to $200 billion. If they're right, the investment is unlikely to be effective in reaching the goal of truly "universal" broadband.

If the net neutrality provision is passed, universal broadband proponents may discover that carriers aren't interested in a build-out under those terms. That may not be the end of the world -- municipalities and state and local governments could fill the breach despite their previous problems with Wi-Fi. Running Internet access as a direct public service -- rather than attempting to create a business case where none exists -- may be the exact right answer here.