Broadband policy is vital to U.S. economic future

I’m a member of an elite class in America. Chances are good that you are, too. According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, one-third of all Americans belong to a class called “the highly wired, broadband elite.” That simply means that I have broadband Internet access in my home and I use that access for a variety of activities. Does that make me elite? Hardly. In fact, I find the moniker — and what it says about the United States — depressing.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) says the United States is backsliding in its efforts to increase broadband penetration throughout the country. The OECD comprises 30 First World countries. Among the OECD nations, the United States ranks 20th in the growth rate for broadband penetration among our citizens.

As for per capita broadband use, the United States ranks 15th, falling behind such countries as Denmark, the Netherlands, Iceland and Korea. Moreover, these numbers reflect a decline. In previous years, the United States ranked higher in the growth rate for broadband penetration and per capita broadband use.We may have invented the Internet, but we are failing to take full advantage of it. This could have huge social and economic implications for the United States as we struggle to compete in a global economy.

Universal high-speed Internet access is critical to our economic well-being. As we have witnessed with outsourcing, jobs are able to move to the regions of the world that have an educated base of workers who can perform work over the Internet. Many countries understand this and have a national policy to deliver broadband services — and consequently jobs and prosperity — to as many citizens as possible.

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I’m a member of an elite class in America. Chances are good that you are, too. According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, one-third of all Americans belong to a class called “the highly wired, broadband elite.” That simply means that I have broadband Internet access in my home and I use that access for a variety of activities. Does that make me elite? Hardly. In fact, I find the moniker — and what it says about the United States — depressing.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) says the United States is backsliding in its efforts to increase broadband penetration throughout the country. The OECD comprises 30 First World countries. Among the OECD nations, the United States ranks 20th in the growth rate for broadband penetration among our citizens.

As for per capita broadband use, the United States ranks 15th, falling behind such countries as Denmark, the Netherlands, Iceland and Korea. Moreover, these numbers reflect a decline. In previous years, the United States ranked higher in the growth rate for broadband penetration and per capita broadband use.We may have invented the Internet, but we are failing to take full advantage of it. This could have huge social and economic implications for the United States as we struggle to compete in a global economy.

Universal high-speed Internet access is critical to our economic well-being. As we have witnessed with outsourcing, jobs are able to move to the regions of the world that have an educated base of workers who can perform work over the Internet. Many countries understand this and have a national policy to deliver broadband services — and consequently jobs and prosperity — to as many citizens as possible.

It’s time for the United States. to develop a national broadband plan. The Clinton and Bush administrations have failed to develop and advance a plan. Instead, the telcos, ISPs and other companies with a financial interest in broadband use control who gets what kind of access, and at what price. I’m all for a free-market economy, but not when the corporations benefit at the expense of the country as a whole.

According to a report from the OECD expected out soon, customers in the countries that lead the broadband push pay less than one dollar per megabit-per-second of service. In the United States today, the rate is about $10 per Mbps — ten times as much as other countries pay! And that’s just for regular old cable or DSL service. We’re not even talking about fiber-to-the-home, which is barely a blip on the radar in the United States (but is getting big in Japan).

Ignoring what’s happening in other countries, the fact that the United States does not have universal broadband coverage is causing quite a digital divide right here at home. The October 2005 Pew report “Digital Divisions” points out the disparity in broadband access among various U.S. demographic groups. Historically disadvantaged groups lag behind in their Internet usage, and the Pew report points directly at connection speed as an important factor. African-Americans, people with disabilities, the undereducated and people over the age of 65, for example, are less likely to have high-speed Internet access at home, and thus are much less likely to use the Internet for such purposes as education, entertainment, private and government services, e-commerce, and employment.