Somehow the United States has become a broadband backwater. America has gone from a position of technology leadership to a non-contender in many ways. Lawrence Lessig has a great podcast about how the telecommunications lobby has managed to protect its near-monopoly on broadband through new legislation. The article mentions how 14 states have passed laws forbidding the local governments from providing high-speed internet access. The truly sad part of the story is how the telecommunications companies have spent $1 billion dollars lobbying to pass these laws.
Right now, the broadband situation in this country is pretty grim. In most parts of the country, you are limited to one or two primary providers—one cable, one DSL, and several resellers, usually of DSL service. DSL is usually offered only through the local “Baby Bell” and many areas of the country only have a single cable provider. Pointedly ignoring the satellite broadband providers as they are generally much more expensive than their terrestrial counterparts, with a much lower quality of service. This effective duoploy of cable and telco has limited competition, reduced innovation and kept prices relatively high.
When broadband internet first started, the United States was the most advanced in terms of the quality of our network and the numbers of people connected. Currently, as Lessig points out, we are ranked 13th. The country that is probably ranked as first is South Korea. The government of South Korea spent a large amount of taxpayer money to ensure the high-speed internet infrastructure would be developed quickly. Currently, 3 out of 4 people have high-speed internet in Korea. This is exceptionally amazing if you realize that they started in 1995 with only one percent of the population having internet access at all. A major part of our decline in rankings is not due to the lack of progress made in the US, but due to an leap in advances made in other countries—America has fallen behind the curve.
Currently, the Korean broadband speeds can reach more than 20 Mbps. This is the minimum speed needed to provide on-demand High Definition television programming. Current speeds in the US range from 128 Kbps for longer DSL runs to 6 Mbps for premium cable internet service. Prices are also more favorable in Korea, with monthly service fees of $23-30 dollars, compared to the $30-60 range for service in the US. Korea was among the first countries to offer video on-demand services to its consumers.
The way South Korea achieved this is through government leadership and funding for the broadband backbone. If the telecommunications industry in this country can prevent government from providing such leadership, we, as a nation, will only fall further behind. The development of the high-speed Internet infrastructure has led to a growth in Korea’s economy as industries related to equipment and services needed for the high-speed network flourished. Further growth in the economy came as the high-speed technologies allowed the rise of new businesses and industries.
By allowing the telecommunications companies to limit competition, even government sponsored broadband access in areas that would not be of interest to the telecomm companies, America is allowing them to limit the growth and expansion of the industries related to a viable high-speed internet. By doing so, America is also allowing them to create a digital divide in the country, where access to high-speed internet is a resource the middle-class and upper-class can take advantage of—and one the lower class can not afford.
America has already lost significant ground in the information technology industries, with a large number of our information technology workers being foreigners, here on H1B visas, and many of the previously existing jobs being lost to outsourcing overseas. America’s economy is no longer dominated by manufacturing, as it once was, but has a large part of the GDP based in information technology and services. Can America afford to allow other countries to surpass us and take over leadership in what is rapidly becoming an important part of our economy?
America should take back it’s technical leadership from the hands of large telecommunications companies, and push for a widespread deployment of high-speed internet, even to economically deprived areas. America should establish programs to train new generations of IT workers and bolster the teaching of mathematics and science in our schools. Inexpensive, wide-spread, high-speed internet can lead to more innovation and growth of new industries, similar to what has happened in South Korea. Failure to resume such technical leadership will eventually lead to America being displaced as a technical innovator and leader.
Update: There’s an article on Macworld which talks about the need for stronger technical education programs and wider adoption of broadband in the United States.