MuniWireless

There’s no way to be polite about the state of US broadband. Study after study has shown that the country is falling behind not only other developed nations, but is now lagging developing countries as well. Free Press has published a report that sticks it to the incumbent-backed sock puppet think tank industry that wants people to believe that everything’s just fine. There’s no way to be polite about the state of US broadband. Study after study has shown that the country is falling behind not only other developed nations, but is now lagging developing countries as well.

Free Press has published a report that sticks it to the incumbent-backed sock puppet think tank industry that wants people to believe that everything’s just fine.

Free Press correctly points out the problems that bedevil US broadband consumers: the lack of competition and availability. Both of these factors have been the driving force behind municipalities’ push to deploy citywide Wi-Fi networks.

Among the keypoints in the Free Press report:

(1) No matter how one measures broadband penetration — whether it’s per capita or per household — the United States still ranks 15th in among the 30 OECD nations.

(2) There is absolutely no correlation between a country’s population density and its broadband penetration. The geographical size of the United States doesn’t explain the poor state of broadband adoption and availability.

(3) Critics claim the OECD measures are flawed because they don’t count mobile wireless. But a cell phone is no substitute for a true broadband connection — and if these phones were counted, the United States would fare even worse in the world rankings.

(4) While U.S. consumers have at best two choices for a wired broadband connection, in Europe consumers have many choices — sometimes dozens — among providers on just a single platform.
Many of the countries ahead of the United States in the world rankings still have higher levels of absolute broadband growth. And the U.S. broadband penetration growth rate during the second half of last year was the second lowest in the entire OECD.

I have not had a chance to read through the report, but I will do so this weekend and publish an extensive commentary.

At one of my Muniwireless conferences, I put up slides showing broadband penetration, price and bandwidth statistics among various countries and showed the US lagging behind. I criticized many local governments (cities and counties) for preferring to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on sports stadiums instead of critical broadband (fiber, wireless) infrastructure. The result: I was branded anti-American and told to go back to where I came from (Amsterdam) where, fortunately, we have a lot of choice, lower prices and higher bandwidth (so it’s not as if I’m suffering here). And when I get FTTH via the Amsterdam Citynet project, I’ll be in heaven — as will a lot of entrepreneurs here (e.g. Joost, the new video service from the Skype guys) who will develop next-generation services. Yes, there is a huge economic price to be paid for failing to invest in broadband and physical infrastructure.

Please download the report from here and post your comments below.