Broadband Now! So Why Don't Some Use It?

[Commentary] Access to a fast Internet connection has become more than a convenience. It's being enshrined in some countries as a legal right of all citizens. Congress is clearly irritated that the United States has not done well in the international broadband Olympics. Other countries have national plans to accelerate the diffusion of broadband; America does not. So Congress has given the Federal Communications Commission a mandate to produce a plan with specific recommendations by next February. We shouldn't get caught up, however, in a space-race panic. We've actually done surprisingly well making a broadband connection accessible to a vast majority of American households. No less than 96 percent of households either subscribe to or have access to broadband service, according to an FCC task force, which presented a status report to the commission last month. The report does not play up the fact that almost all homes have, or could have, broadband service. Nor does it highlight the actual median speed of 3 megabits a second among households that now have broadband, (which is based on data that probably understates the speeds substantially). The authors seem happily caught up in the thrill of playing an international game of catch-up. The most interesting question here is the one that the FCC can't answer: Why have 33 percent of American households that have access to broadband elected not to subscribe? The reasons "are not well understood," the report says. A survey focusing on the nonadopters is under way. We've built it, but not all have come. Some may never come. Let's not assume that their and their nation's future will be hopelessly blighted if they don't. [Randall Stross is an author based in Silicon Valley and a professor of business at San Jose State University.]