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Krugman On the Connectivity Power Shift
In today's NYTimes (registration required), Paul Krugman's op-ed piece lays out in simple terms the statistical power shift in the online economy among Europe, Japan, and the US. This shift has been discussed here for some time, but it's good to see it coming to the attention of a wider audience. Quoting: "As recently as 2001, the percentage of the population with high-speed access in Japan and Germany was only half that in the United States. In France it was less than a quarter. By the end of 2006, however, all three countries had more broadband subscribers per 100 people than we did... [W]hen the Bush administration put Michael Powell in charge of the FCC, the digital robber barons were basically set free to do whatever they liked. As a result, there's little competition in U.S. broadband — if you're lucky, you have a choice between the services offered by the local cable monopoly and the local phone monopoly. The price is high and the service is poor, but there's nowhere else to go."
I live in a building where the developers contracted in a "triple-play" provider. Phone, internet and television are all provided by the one company, and poorly at that. We have zero competition to choose from, and only last week at the body corporate meeting did we (the resident owners who bothered to turn up) manage to reach an agreement that the monopoly situation was of no benefit to the residents nor the owners.
Dan. -- So what if it's spelt wrong, nobody's perfect
Interesting point, so I pulled a few numbers off of wikipedia...
_ population_density
In the entire 50 states of the US, the population density is: 31 per square kilometer (172nd in the world).
California is 83.85 per square kilometer.
New York (state) is 155.18 per square kilometer.
Massachusetts is 312.68 per square kilometer.
Washington State is 34.20 per square kilometer.
By contrast, Montana is 2.39 per square kilometer.
Japan is 337/km per square kilometer.
Germany is 230.9/km per square kilometer.
What I can't find quickly (and what would be useful) would be to see what percentage of Americans live in or near cities versus their European counterparts. I can't say for certain, but my guess based on the above would be that the number would be significantly less in the United States...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by
"Flag on the moon. How did it get there?"
There will never be real competition because it is usually only profitable for one company to service a municipality at a time. If another did move in and they shared the customers one would go under. I know for a fact cities in Ohio are not allowed to exclude any competitors, and that was before this legislation was passed (do you have a link?). If any company wants to offer cable, they must negotiate the terms with the local government in order to use their rights-of-way. In light of that, guess how many cities have more than one cable company serving them. AFAIK, none.
People used to complain to my peers and me on the cable advisory board that we shouldn't be giving Time Warner a monopoly over cable service. We showed them the laws on the subject. Anyone is free to offer cable service, it's just that no one wants to once there is an established player in town.
Except Canada, Sweden, Norway, Finland have much lower population density yet beat us handily in broadband penetration...
Krugman is actually quite the economist. His text, "Economics," written by him and Robin Wells is used in many universities in introductory courses (it's the number two text, I believe, after the venerable Samuelson), and his text "International Economics," written by him and Maurice Obstfeld is in it's ninth edition. He's a Professor of Economics and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton and has had numerous publications during his career, including 38 books. He also was the winner of the American Economics Association's John Bates Clark Medal in 1991 and is considered one of the country's foremost neo-Keynesian economists. As such, I'm fairly sure he has enough fact checkers at his disposal to make sure that his figures and conceptual grounding is much better than yours. You may not believe him or agree with his politics, but he is certainly not a "fruit".
That is all.
"At times, I wonder if the "spread out America" card gets played a bit too much."
The US has ~31 people per sq km, Australia is 1/100th the density with ~0.3 people per sq km, yet 97% of the population have a choice of service providers. The reason for this is that the copper network owners are required by law to lease their lines to competitors at "wholesale" prices, the leasing rules are a similar concept to what google is proposing for the spectrum auction.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
This is proof it's possible if those in charge have foresight, plan well, do it right, and don't give in to the pressure of the industry giants who'll try to stop them. Perhaps we should expect more from our
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
Here you go, enjoy. And enjoy the coming take-down notice, /.!
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There was a time when everyone thought that the Europeans and the Japanese were better at business than we were. In the early 1990s airport bookstores were full of volumes with samurai warriors on their covers, promising to teach you the secrets of Japanese business success. Lester Thurow's 1992 book, ''Head to Head: The Coming Economic Battle Among Japan, Europe and America,'' which spent more than six months on the Times best-seller list, predicted that Europe would win.
Then it all changed, and American despondency turned into triumphalism. Partly this was because the Clinton boom contrasted so sharply with Europe's slow growth and Japan's decade-long slump. Above all, however, our new confidence reflected the rise of the Internet. Jacques Chirac complained that the Internet was an ''Anglo-Saxon network,'' and he had a point -- France, like most of Europe except Scandinavia, lagged far behind the U.S. when it came to getting online.
What most Americans probably don't know is that over the last few years the situation has totally reversed. As the Internet has evolved -- in particular, as dial-up has given way to broadband connections using DSL, cable and other high-speed links -- it's the United States that has fallen behind.
The numbers are startling. As recently as 2001, the percentage of the population with high-speed access in Japan and Germany was only half that in the United States. In France it was less than a quarter. By the end of 2006, however, all three countries had more broadband subscribers per 100 people than we did.
Even more striking is the fact that our ''high speed'' connections are painfully slow by other countries' standards. According to the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, French broadband connections are, on average, more than three times as fast as ours. Japanese connections are a dozen times faster. Oh, and access is much cheaper in both countries than it is here.
As a result, we're lagging in new applications of the Internet that depend on high speed. France leads the world in the number of subscribers to Internet TV; the United States isn't even in the top 10.
What happened to America's Internet lead? Bad policy. Specifically, the United States made the same mistake in Internet policy that California made in energy policy: it forgot -- or was persuaded by special interests to ignore -- the reality that sometimes you can't have effective market competition without effective regulation.
You see, the world may look flat once you're in cyberspace -- but to get there you need to go through a narrow passageway, down your phone line or down your TV cable. And if the companies controlling these passageways can behave like the robber barons of yore, levying whatever tolls they like on those who pass by, commerce suffers.
America's Internet flourished in the dial-up era because federal regulators didn't let that happen -- they forced local phone companies to act as common carriers, allowing competing service providers to use their lines. Clinton administration officials, including Al Gore and Reed Hundt, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, tried to ensure that this open competition would continue -- but the telecommunications giants sabotaged their efforts, while The Wall Street Journal's editorial page ridiculed them as people with the minds of French bureaucrats.
And when the Bush administration put Michael Powell in charge of the F.C.C., the digital robber barons were basically set free to do whatever they liked. As a result, there's little competition in U.S. broadband -- if you're lucky, you have a choice between the services offered by the local cable monopoly and the local phone monopoly. The price is high and the service is poor, but there's nowhere else to go.
Meanwhile, as a recent article in Business Week explains, the real French bureaucrats used judicious regulation to promote competiti
New York (state) is 155.18 per square kilometer.
Massachusetts is 312.68 per square kilometer.
Washington State is 34.20 per square kilometer.
By contrast, Montana is 2.39 per square kilometer. Sweden has 20.0
Finland has 15.5
Countries which tend to rank among the highest in this regard. If California has four times the population density as well as a much larger population in absolute numbers, I don't really see how this would be a factor against the infrastructure.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Who modded this nitwit informative? Libertarians most certainly do not believe in a government which can't stop people from blowing up their competitors factories. Those are anarchists, not libertarians. Libertarians fully believe in government that exists to prevent coercion, of which the blowing up factories would fall.
You obviously fail to grasp the ideas behind libertarianism, so you're hardly qualified to criticize them.
Krugman is on the receiving end of character assassination because he's stood in opposition to the Bush presidency even when it was popular, based entirely on their policy position. He's been characterized as "shrill" due to his consistency in holding this position. Some would call this intellectual honesty in a pundit, but those who dislike his conclusions can't admit that.
Has he made a few errors? Yes, even a few doozies, which have been corrected, ad nauseum. I do believe that he's more vulnerable to fact-checking based errors because he actually works to base his columns on facts, vs. working through baseless assertion and anecdote - paging David Brooks, Maureen Dowd, and many, many others who pretend to be working in fact but instead focus on rhetoric. These "colleagues" (i.e pundits at the NYT and other top-circulated newspapers) are rarely held to the same standard that he is. It's much easier to "let them off the hook" for far more sweeping assertions because their reflecting CW, and not challenging it.