Slashdot Mirror
US Broadband Policy Called "Magical Thinking"
eWeekPete writes "Is the pipe half full or half empty? Not surprisingly, the talk at the second annual Tech Policy Summit was decidedly mixed. 'The US is still the most dynamic broadband economy in the world,' said Ambassador Richard Russell, the associate director of the White House's Office on Science and Technology Policy. 'As opposed to being miles ahead, though, we're only a little ahead.' But Yale Law School's Susan Crawford called Russell's position 'magical thinking. We're not doing well at all.' She proceeded to call the White House's effort 'completely inadequate on broadband competition.'"
"A little ahead" in this context means "behind Denmark, Netherlands, Iceland, Korea, Switzerland, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Canada, United Kingdom and Belgium" in broadband penetration.
And that's with a very liberal view of what broadband really is (256 kbps or above). If only looking at true broadband capable of video streaming both ways, the US is WAY down the list behind almost every other non-third-world country.
Geographically, it becomes even worse, with broadband being largely unavailable outside cities and suburbs, while other countries have ensured that penetration also reaches areas with a low population density.
The US is much like the Holy Roman Empire in that it refuses to acknowledge that its days are numbered and that to survive, it needs to accept that it's not #1, and that it must accept help from the outside.
Or, to use a vehicle analogy (this is slashdot, isn't it?): The train has left, and the US was not on it. Even though the many of the engineers are Americans, the passengers and their agents were too busy haggling over the ticket price, so they missed its leaving the station.
ILEC = Incumbant Local Exchange Carrier.. basically your local telco who controls the last mile or so. FTTP = fibre to the premesis... replacing the analog loop from the telco switch to your home. All POTS lines and other telecommunications equipment use analog lines for the home run loop from the switch to the home... replacing it with digital can dignificantly increase line speeds in the US. FTTN = fibre to the neighborhood... basially the same thing but it connects small switching stations which service neighborhoods via fibre. One of the biggest issues is that the home runs between your handset and the telco or local switch are analog lines, which means that a) processing must be done on the signal to modulate it, and b) its going to be slower and more error prone because of the nature of an analog signal.