May 24, 2007
I'm a member of an elite class in America. Chances are good that you are, too. According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, one-third of all Americans belong to a class called "the highly wired, broadband elite." That simply means that I have broadband Internet access in my home and I use that access for a variety of activities. Does that make me elite? Hardly. In fact, I find the moniker -- and what it says about the United States -- depressing.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) says the United States is backsliding in its efforts to increase broadband penetration throughout the country. The OECD comprises 30 First World countries. Among the OECD nations, the United States ranks 20th in the growth rate for broadband penetration among our citizens.
As for per capita broadband use, the United States ranks 15th, falling behind such countries as Denmark, the Netherlands, Iceland and Korea. Moreover, these numbers reflect a decline. In previous years, the United States ranked higher in the growth rate for broadband penetration and per capita broadband use. We may have invented the Internet, but we are failing to take full advantage of it. This could have huge social and economic implications for the United States as we struggle to compete in a global economy.
Universal high-speed Internet access is critical to our economic well-being. As we have witnessed with outsourcing, jobs are able to move to the regions of the world that have an educated base of workers who can perform work over the Internet. Many countries understand this and have a national policy to deliver broadband services -- and consequently jobs and prosperity -- to as many citizens as possible.
It's time for the United States. to develop a national broadband plan. The Clinton and Bush administrations have failed to develop and advance a plan. Instead, the telcos, ISPs and other companies with a financial interest in broadband use control who gets what kind of access, and at what price. I'm all for a free-market economy, but not when the corporations benefit at the expense of the country as a whole.
According to a report from the OECD expected out soon, customers in the countries that lead the broadband push pay less than one dollar per megabit-per-second of service. In the United States today, the rate is about US$10 per Mbps -- ten times as much as other countries pay! And that's just for regular old cable or DSL service. We're not even talking about fiber-to-the-home, which is barely a blip on the radar in the United States (but is getting big in Japan).
Ignoring what's happening in other countries, the fact that the United States does not have universal broadband coverage is causing quite a digital divide right here at home. The October 2005 Pew report "Digital Divisions" points out the disparity in broadband access among various U.S. demographic groups. Historically disadvantaged groups lag behind in their Internet usage, and the Pew report points directly at connection speed as an important factor. African-Americans, people with disabilities, the undereducated and people over the age of 65, for example, are less likely to have high-speed Internet access at home, and thus are much less likely to use the Internet for such purposes as education, entertainment, private and government services, e-commerce, and employment.
The digital divide also depends on where people choose to live. Broadband access is widely available in cities and suburban areas -- too bad for people who prefer the peace and quiet of rural areas. Instead of listening to iTunes and watching TV shows over the Internet, rural dwellers are listening to the screech of dial-up modems and watching the slow progress of downloads via a phone line. The telcos and cable companies have dismissed these potential customers, saying it is too expensive to reach them. Of course, satellite is an option but it's not very reliable. Just try using satellite DSL on a stormy day.
In the absence of a national plan, many large cities are pursuing metropolitan wireless coverage. My own city of Houston is about to embark on one of the most far-reaching wireless coverage programs, planning to blanket nearly 700 square miles with wireless signals. For city leaders, a key factor in voting for this highly ambitious plan was the promise that service can be provided to low-income and other disadvantaged residents for about $10 a month. I have to applaud the city council for including this demographic in the overall plan. Otherwise, the digital divide gets even wider.
Today the Internet is an important utility, just as electricity and phone service are utilities. We need to treat it as such and develop policies and plans that will allow more people (if not all people) in the United States to access this resource at a reasonable cost over a reliable, high-speed connection. Without a plan, we'll watch other countries surpass our capabilities as we lag further behind.
Posted by: Linda Musthaler
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