US; A Broadband Backwater: drops from 4th to 15th out of 30 indusrtrial countries in 6 years ...

The Cure for America’s Internet - CommonDreams.org
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A Broadband Backwater

The shortcomings of the U.S. broadband market are tremendous - more than 10 million U.S. households remain un-served, while nearly 50 million homes are priced out of subscribing to broadband services - and the social and economic consequences are dire.


Late last month, yet another global survey confirmed this, showing the U.S. to be more of an Internet backwater than a world leader. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Internet access and services in America have slid to 15th place among 30 developed nations, a drop from our 12th place ranking in 2006, and from fourth in 2001 when the OECD began its international survey.

In real terms this means Internet users in Japan pay little more than half the price (65 cents to the dollar) for an Internet connection that’s 20 times faster than what’s commonly available to people in the United States.
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In 2004, President Bush pledged “to have a universal, affordable access for broadband technology by the year 2007.”

As if on cue, last year, Mr. Bush’s chief Internet officer John Kneuer declared “Mission Accomplished” — that all the international surveys were misleading and that the “free market” had ensured that Americans across the country enjoy real choice in high-speed internet access.
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What he and his White House compatriots refuse to acknowledge, though, is that a free market approach for Internet services in the U.S. is a chimera. The only hand in play here belongs to the phone and cable duopoly, which controls broadband access for more than 98 percent of homes.

The net effect of this duopoly is a dearth or real choices; allowing providers like AT&T and Comcast to exact high prices from Internet users, while delivering connections that are too slow — and, often in the case of cable, too congested - to meet growing demand.

The market imbalance is beginning to take its toll. A Brookings Institution study counts 300,000 new American jobs each year for every 1 percent increase in broadband adoption.
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Japan Pries Open Its Market

In 2000, Japan faced a similar dilemma — an Internet industry stifled by the heavy hand of a few network gatekeepers. But the government responded by pulling together the nation’s leaders from the pubic and private sector to launch an “e-Japan strategy” aimed at connecting 40 million of Japan’s 46 million households within five years.

The Japanese government quickly moved to create a highly competitive private sector by compelling regional telephone companies to open their residential lines to wholesale access by other competitors. They also adopted policies to prevent the type of online discrimination that has reared its head recently in the U.S.

In 2001, Japan counted only 2.2 broadband subscribers per 100 inhabitants. By mid-2004, ultra-high-speed broadband connections were available to more than 80 percent of Japan’s citizens. By 2006, Japan declared that it had surpassed the broadband goals of e-Japan and was ready to launch its next national strategy, called “u-Japan“. The “u” takes the nation’s broadband beyond “ubiquitous,” to become “universal,” “user-oriented,” and “unique.” ...