US broadband, little competition ... new we're falling behind Japan, Germany, France ...

Why your Internet connection is too slow | By: Steve Benen on Tuesday, July 24th, 2007 at 10:46 AM - PDT

In 2001, after the explosive growth of the Internet and online businesses in the 1990s, the United States had taken the lead online. In terms of percentage of the population with high-speed access, countries like Japan and Germany had half the penetration we did. France had less than a quarter.

Now, all three of those countries have passed us. We’re falling behind in providing high-speed access to the Internet, and just as importantly, our high-speed connections are much slower and more expensive than other countries.
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And when the Bush administration put Michael Powell in charge of the F.C.C., the digital robber barons were basically set free to do whatever they liked. As a result, there’s little competition in U.S. broadband — if you’re lucky, you have a choice between the services offered by the local cable monopoly and the local phone monopoly. The price is high and the service is poor, but there’s nowhere else to go.

Effective market competition and effective regulation produced quality results. Then Bush took office.