Internet Access -- An Incomplete Promise

[Commentary] The US has failed to deliver on universal high-speed, wired Internet service. The consequences for America's disconnected are a litany of troubles: economic decline population loss, less access to education, and poorer quality medical care. History is likely to judge the United States very harshly in how it met its Internet telecommunications infrastructure challenge. If the nation and its leadership had engaged in proper planning and budgeting a generation ago for the construction of ubiquitous fiber to all American premises, by now, the nation would be fully fibered and reaping the complete promise and value of the Internet. Instead, the previous two decades were squandered on inaction.

[Fred Pilot is from California and writes the Eldo Telecom blog.]

[June 1]