WSJ's Mossberg Calls For a Tougher Broadband Plan

GovTechGuy writes "Wall Street Journal tech columnist Walt Mossberg thinks the FCC's national broadband plan is long overdue, but he criticized it for being vague on the details and too focused on expanding access into rural areas. Mossberg pointed out that what passes for broadband in the US wouldn't even qualify as such in many other developed countries. He also noted that Americans pay more per unit of broadband speed than our competitors. He called on the government to devote time and resources to making sure Americans have the broadband access they need to stay competitive in the 21st century global economy."

Comments

Re:Right on

[AigariusDebian]

Ditto the US Constitution. Read it sometime. Carefully. It gives the nation-states of the US the power to completely abolish the US, and go off on their separate routes. You are trying to make a difference where none exists.

That would be false. Read up on the Civil War. All the Southern states wanted was to secede from the Union. Only Texas has that 'right' due to the peculiar way it joined the US.

The US and EU are more alike than different. Consider that 75% of laws are now passed, not by state parliaments, but by the central EU. We have a near-identical arrangement in the US.

All laws in Europe are written and passed by state parliaments. Some parts of some of the laws are written to satisfy the recommendations of the EU (issued as EU Directives), however there is a huge degree of variance between the laws that is allowed in the directives and sometimes the laws are written outside the specification of the directive and then the country and EU negotiate - EU could fine the country some amount of money or just forget the infraction if the country offers something else in return.

So before you go off and compare US and EU, better learn something about both.

Re:We pay a lot more

[Zak3056]

Compare that to France's 28 mbps for ~$38 US, 50 mpbs for ~$65 or even 2.5 down/1.2 up gbps in Paris for ~$90 or how about Germany: 6 mbps for ~$26 or 32 mbps for ~$38.

You realize those service levels are not universal, right? My company's HQ is located between Bremen and Hamburg. The best data service available economically is 4Mbit DSL... anything better would require pulling a DS3 from Hamburg at phenomenal cost (>10k EUR/month). We have another site about 15 miles from Paris, and costs and availability are similar. Another office about 10 miles from Leeds in the UK. Similar story. Another office located in Shanghai, and the costs there were so high when we were shopping for an MPLS provider that it almost killed the project.

The most cost effective connectivity we have is in Bedford, NH, with the local cable co's lowest tier being 16mbit (they can live without comms for a few hours without suffering too much, so no SLA required).

(OTOH, our US HQ in east Tennessee can't get anything at all--not even consumer grade circuits--faster than DS1s at ~$750/month for each circuit).

Anyway, to get back on topic: whenever I hear that $COUNTRY is an absolute utopia for broadband that we have to emulate, I take it with a large grain of salt.