OPEC 2.0

[Commentary] Americans are as addicted to bandwidth as they are to oil. The first step is facing the problem. Americans today spend almost as much on bandwidth — the capacity to move information — as we do on energy. A family of four likely spends several hundred dollars a month on cellphones, cable television and Internet connections, which is about what we spend on gas and heating oil. Just as the industrial revolution depended on oil and other energy sources, the information revolution is fueled by bandwidth. In an information economy, the supply and price of bandwidth matters, in the way that oil prices matter: not just for gas stations, but for the whole economy. If we aren't careful, we're going to repeat the history of the oil industry by creating a bandwidth cartel. That's why, as with energy, we need to develop alternative sources of bandwidth. The solution is to relax the overregulation of the airwaves and allow use of the wasted spaces. (Tim Wu is a professor at Columbia Law School and the co-author of "Who Controls the Internet?")