Giving Compass' Take:

• Broadband is the primary infrastructure need of Americans. 

• Who is most impacted by lack of broadband access in America? Why hasn't political momentum matched national needs?

• Find out why we can't get rural America online.

For years economists, civil engineers and politicians have warned that America's physical infrastructure is in an increasingly desperate state of disrepair, so much so that the American Society of Civil Engineers has given the nation a D+ overall. Levees in the South do need repairs and the tunnel connecting New York to New Jersey remains damaged from Hurricane Sandy.

Still, did you know that they hold their elections online in Estonia? Or that a person in South Korea accesses the internet four times faster than the average American? Or that a quarter of all payments in Kenya are made via cell phone?

Meanwhile, hundreds of school districts across the American West have collapsed to a four day school week in order to save money.

Infrastructure is not just about roads and bridges and delivering things from Point A to Point B. It's the mechanics of what makes a society and an economy function.

Instead of focusing on the public works projects from 50 years ago, politicians need to start thinking about what the interstate highway of the 21st Century will be. Ensuring broadband to every citizen might be revolutionary today, but modern society is built on the fact that the electric grid was guaranteed to everyone instead of getting handed over to the whims of a 1930's Comcast.

Read the full article on American infrastructure by Eric Reed at The Street