Legal Research

The Broadband Gap (The Sky Is Falling, Again)

Saul Hansell of the NY TImes has just finished a three-part series comparing U.S. broadband Internet with the rest of the world. Here’s my executive summary:

Part 1: Why is theirs faster? It’s all about population density. DSL speeds vary by distance, so the closer that people live to the phone company equipment, the faster the Internet connection. “Half the population of South Korea lives in very dense apartment complexes, mostly in or near Seoul. And most of its very fast broadband service has been delivered by fiber connections into the basements of these buildings, then delivered by fast DSL up to each apartment.”

Part 2: Why is theirs cheaper? In a word, competition: “Most big countries have devised a system to create competition by forcing the phone companies to share their lines and facilities with rival Internet providers.” This is called “unbundling”. I’ve previously blogged about how popular that concept is with Verizon.

Part 3: Why Do They Have More Fiber? Governments make it happen by subsidies with strings attached: “In many countries, especially in Asia, government assistance has gone hand in hand with an expectation that private companies will accept lower profit margins in order to assist in achieving the national broadband goals.” (I sorta blogged about this previously, too.) Would that fly in the U.S.? “The lesson from the rest of the world is that if the Obama administration really wants to bring very-high-speed Internet access to most people faster than the leisurely pace of the market, it will most likely have to bring out the taxpayers' checkbook.”

Full post as published by Jenkins Webblits on March 12, 2009 (boomark / email).