U.S.: Slowpoke of the Internet

The fatboy on the high school track team. The escargot of the information superhighway. You'd expect this to happen to a third-world country, but statistics compiled by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) say America is sandwiched in between nations with cheaper broadband connections. And yes, you read that graph (right) correctly: Iceland and Luembourg carry more households with high-speed per 100 than we, the patriarchs of the Web.

Prospects look so bleak, in fact, that our Web woes have attracted the intervention of the Federal Government. So, the House Energy and Commerce Committee passed legislation Tuesday to start annually cataloguing every internet service provider in the country, including subscriber data and advertised bandwidth speeds.

Not only should the data draw a sharper picture of how the U.S. measures up, but bill-proponent Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., wants to target regions lagging behind on high-speed access.

But there's actually more salient reasons for this type of corroboration. The OECD neglects to factor in individuals who have broadband access at work or in their college dorms, says think tanks who favor total Internet deregulation (as opposed to government-controlled bandwidth).

Larry Cohen, The Communication Workers of America (CWA) president, wants to erect a policy now so broadband is guaranteed for everyone.

"Unfortunately, we don't know the full extent of our problem because our data is so poor. We don't know where high- speed networks are deployed, how many households and small businesses connect to the Internet, at what speed, and how much they pay. Without this information, we can't craft good policy solutions. So we continue to fall farther behind," he said.

Nevertheless, the statistic puts U.S. broadband at an unceremonious 15th place in 2006, down from 4th in 2001. And our current slog through cyberspace isn't close to diminishing, either. We're slouches in comparison to South Korea, whose government-regulated ISPs rent Digital Subscriber Lines (DSL) to consumers on the cheap. It's evidently working, since broadband connections rate 15 times faster than the average American user. Those Korean's got Seoul, baby!

Other examples pointing to U.S. sluggishness include Paris, whose "triple play" package (Web, TV, phone) costs half as much as our equivalent. Canada has 65 percent of households surfing at blazing speeds, much higher than America's 55. And lest we forget, Japanese users routinely connect with broadband as high as 100 megabits per second.

This renewed interest in widespread net-neutrality arrives about six years too soon. Democratizing the Internet shares its weight of pros and cons, but essentially it means no one company (AT&T, Verizon, etc) can have a stranglehold on how much bandwith is trickled down to the consumer.

Put another way, America finally has the chance to catch up. Yes, even to Iceland and Luxembourg.

Here's a spiffy explainer on the concept of net-neutrality:



Images Courtesy Associated Press, CNN.COM