From today's Wall Street Journal: U.S. Lags Behind in High-Speed Internet Access.
The U.S. continues to lag behind rich nations in Europe and Asia in adopting high-speed Internet connections, a critical form of technological infrastructure, according to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
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Access to high-speed Internet connections is about much more than being able to download movies or music quickly. The quality of communication networks is a major determinant of productivity growth, allowing products and services to be made more efficiently and opening up new markets.
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In many of the countries at the top of the rankings, governments have taken an active role in spurring broadband use and in some cases in building communications infrastructure as they would a public utility like highways or airports. In Stockholm, the municipal government laid fiber-optic cables throughout the city and rents them out to commercial operators who sell Internet services to consumers. In South Korea, the government heavily subsidized telecom companies to encourage them to lay fiber to villages and towns.
Another approach used in countries such as the Netherlands has been to force telephone companies to allow rivals to use their lines to offer Internet services to consumers. Known as "local loop unbundling," this approach causes the number of Internet providers to proliferate, leading to lower prices and faster access as the companies jockey for customers.
The U.S. passed a law mandating such a policy in 1996, but lobbying from phone and cable companies and several court decisions have undermined parts of these efforts. In recent years, regulators have rolled back many "unbundling" requirements because they contend that competition is forming on its own among cable, Internet companies and phone-service providers, making regulation unnecessary.
'Nuf said.
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