"Public good" has a fairly technical meaning that doesn't fit here. Wikipedia's article on it is pretty good: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good http://en

"Public good" has a fairly technical meaning that doesn't fit here. Wikipedia's article on it is pretty good: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good Basically public goods have to be non-excludable and non-rivalrous. Internet access is neither (you can both kick people off and there's a marginal cost to hooking new people up). The article on rivalry[1] mentions that it's possible internet infrastructure is non-rivalrous if there's unused capacity, so once someone's hooked up actual internet use might be a club good. If you don't want to imply the other stuff about rivalry and exclusivity you could say that gigabit internet access for everyone would have positive externalities (which it certainly would) and leave it at that. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivalry_(economics) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivalry_(economics)