BusinessWeek

The race to provide ultrafast broadband is on.

If the U.S. military ranked 17th in the world, you can bet that as a nation we would make strengthening our armed forces a national priority. Yet that's just how the U.S. stacks up against the rest of the world in terms of access to high-speed Internet connections.

As part of its National Broadband Plan the federal government wants broadcasters to relinquish and let the government sell excess airwaves, which could then be used by wireless carriers to deliver mobile-Web access. Opposition from the National Association of Broadcasters is just one of the hurdles the government must clear as it presses ahead with a plan to bring broadband access to almost 100 million U.S. residents.

When it comes to broadband, we Americans are a bit like Maverick and Goose in Top Gun. We feel the need for speed -- download speed, that is. No one is denying that download speeds matter. But too heavy an emphasis on megabits and gigabits per second threatens to obscure a more pressing issue during a period of high unemployment: how broadband can be harnessed to create jobs.

Apparently, the Federal Communications Commission is considering a plan to pay broadcasters to vacate airwaves it could use to alleviate network strain caused by the surging use of smartphones such as the iPhone.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt hinted in July that display advertising would probably be the next of his company's businesses to generate $1 billion in sales. Analysts say 2010 is the year he'll deliver on that prediction.

AT&T has stumbled into a quagmire. When it secured exclusive rights to support Apple's iPhone on its wireless network, AT&T vastly underestimated the iPhone's appeal.

Julius Genachowski is not a member of President Barack Obama's Cabinet, but the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission is likely to have more influence on our lives than many...

Don't be fooled by the latest round of price cuts by Verizon Wireless and AT&T.

When companies start to imitate one another, it's usually either an extreme case of flattery -- or war.