Is America a Leader in Broadband, or a Straggler?

[Commentary] In response to a recent New York Times op-ed by Lowell C. McAdam, chairman of Verizon, Nelson writes, “there is a glaring failure amid the success: lack of broadband availability in rural areas, where Verizon and its cable counterparts have chosen not to invest in the infrastructure necessary to deliver the 100 megabits per second speed Mr. McAdam cites as available to over 80 percent of American households.” Nelson says cooperatives and municipalities need two things to help spread broadband deployment: government financial support and forbearance by telecommunications and cable companies not to seek to block what they are not going to build.

Eger writes that the McAdam op-ed is “yet another specious argument in favor of the existing loosely regulated monopoly system of Internet service.” He asks, “When will we wake up and recognize that a new economy dependent on broadband infrastructure is key to our success, indeed survival, in the world? Broadband is a public service that every individual and organization should have, and the United States needs to regulate this service as a public utility, not leave it to the so-called free marketplace.”

[Nelson is a founding member of WiredWest, a broadband cooperative of 42 towns in western Massachusetts. Eger is a professor of communications and public policy at San Diego State University, a former legal assistant to the Federal Communications Commission chairman (1970-73) and director of the White House Office of Telecommunications Policy (1974-76).]