Case closed: why most of USA lacks 100Mbps 'Net connections

In 2002, TechNet said the government should commit to a goal of 100 Mbps to 100 million homes and small businesses by the end of the decade -- in other words, now. But in case you didn't notice, 100Mbps x 100 million didn't happen.

About 75 to 77 million Americans currently access some kind of broadband, according to the latest data. That's only assuming, however, that you accept 200Kbps as a flavor of "high speed Internet." And a huge chunk of the population (over 30 percent) never go online at all -- less because they're retired and not interested; more often because they can't afford the prices. So why this shortfall of progress, especially compared to other countries? Some argue that everything is going fine. The US is just too spread out, that's all -- and we'll catch up in due time. Others contend that we just haven't spent enough government or private sector money on the problem. But the big thesis these days is that we missed the boat by curtailing wholesale network access to the big telcos and cable ISPs. By making it more expensive for smaller providers to link to AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, or Time Warner Cable in order to build out their own middle-mile systems, the government condemned most consumers to two ISP choices, at best.