Kevin Martin Dials Up Broadband Spin

KEVIN MARTIN DIALS UP BROADBAND SPIN
[SOURCE: CJR Daily, AUTHOR: Paul McLeary]
[Commentary] Despite FCC Chairman Kevin Martin's commentary earlier this week, between 2000 to 2003 the United States actually fell from 4th to 13th place in global rankings of broadband Internet usage per capita. Currently, the majority of American households can access only a broadband service that is "among the slowest, most expensive, and least reliable in the developed world," as Thomas Bleha wrote in the May/June 2005 issue of Foreign Affairs. What's worse, despite all the high-minded rhetoric coming from Martin and the Bush administration, the United States still has no national initiative to upgrade Internet service to bring it up to the level of most other developed nations. How much has the lack of focus by the FCC cost American business? A 2001 study conducted by an economist at the Brookings Institution "estimated that 'widespread' adoption of basic broadband in the United States could add $500 billion to the U.S. economy and produce 1.2 million new jobs." In 2004, another Brookings economist stated that "as much as $1 trillion might be lost over the next decade due to present constraints on broadband development." That is the real state of domestic broadband and high-speed Internet service. Regulators have made a decision to allow local telephone monopolies to impede competition; as a result, while more Americans are signing up for high-speed access, they're not getting anything close to what they could be getting. And it's going to take more than spin for American broadband to catch up with the rest of the world.
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