How to Think About Broadband

[Commentary] What Americans should be chanting is "I want faster broadband and I don't care how."

Lesson One: Making fiber synonymous with fast broadband just confuses the issue.
Lesson Two: Let's think about broadband speed and pricing. Google offers gigabit speeds that few can use for $70 a month, about what cable operators charges for service perhaps 1/50th as fast. But cable's speed is sufficient for most users and this frees the operator to charge exorbitant prices to the relative handful of customers who are willing to pay for a faster Internet. This is called price discrimination and allows more revenue to be generated off a fixed infrastructure, and more people to be customers at a lower average price, than if every customer were charged the same.

A better question is: Do we deserve faster, cheaper broadband than we're getting because of a lack of competition? When you come down to it, many of the noisiest critics want Americans to have faster, more wide-reaching fixed access than customers are willing to support, which means it would have to be subsidized with tax dollars. This is especially true in rural areas. It's time just to say so.