U.S. broadband: "Slowest, most expensive in the world"

Submitted by acohill on Tue, 01/31/2006 - 10:35

With a hat tip to Chris Miller, this article underscores the seriousness of the broadband crisis in the United States. We're paying more than anybody else in the developed world for "broadband," while getting a lot less, performance-wise (50 to 100 times slower in most cases).

Other countries with better broadband using it to supercharge economic development; Ireland was a basket case twenty years ago, and in part, due to their investments in broadband, it is the hottest country in Europe for jobs and business, as just one example. In Asia, fast, affordable broadband is driving opportunity everywhere. It's not accident that India is stealing jobs from the U.S.; the only reason they can do that is broadband--lots of it, at affordable prices.

Meanwhile, in this country, too many economic developers are missing the obvious. If companies are willing to outsource to India, with all the attendant costs and disadvantages of working at such a distance, export/import issues, and language issues, why not outsource within the United States, where much of the baggage associated with offshoring disappears.

But in too many areas of the country, we are not investing in broadband and our leaders still do not see the connection between broadband and economic development. This article is particularly important because it reviews the history of electric power deployment. Seventy years ago, local, state, and Federal government began to invest in municipal electric services because the private sector was leaving great swaths of the country underserved. A great wailing and gnashing of teeth ensued, with the private electric industry claiming it was the end of Western Civilization, or something close to it.

Universal access to affordable electric service was an economic development issue then, and today, universal access to affordable, fast broadband is an economic development issue. The good news is that public broadband investments can be made in a way that not only do NOT compete with the private sector, those investments can open new markets and help create new private sector jobs.

We can all win if this done right, and step one is to re-read the history of technology deployment in U.S. communities. We've been here before.