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07.10
ITIF Debate Focuses on Global Broadband Access
By Barton Reppert
Resolved: That the
United States is lagging seriously behind other
countries on broadband access and this is due
primarily to a failure of U.S. telecom
regulation.
Those were the key issues under
consideration in a 90-minute debate on 21 June
among telecommunications policy experts
sponsored by the Washington-based Information
Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF).
Presenting views in line with
the debate resolution were Sascha Meinrath,
director of the Open Technology Initiative at
the New America Foundation, and Matthew F. Wood,
associate director of the Media Access Project.
Participants offering views opposed to the
resolution were Robert D. Atkinson, president of
ITIF, and George Ford, chief economist of the
Phoenix Center.
Meinrath told the meeting that
with regard to broadband Internet service, “the
overwhelming evidence is that the U.S. was the
leader in the first quarter-century, but that
our fall from No. 1 began about 10 or 12 years
ago. And today our international ranking is
middling. OECD [Organization for Economic and
Cooperative Development] statistics put the U.S.
at 15th in broadband communication as
of December 2009.”
He observed that “what’s
becoming glaringly clear in recent years is that
there’s a much-needed interplay that has to
happen between regulation and healthy markets.
For too long the U.S. has been engaged in a
government regulatory environment that is much
too laissez-faire, and that this attitude has
actually created massive failures across
multiple markets. . . . “
“We are entering a time when
communications is the single-most important
economic force multiplier of our age, and we are
woefully under-equipped to handle that,”
Meinrath said, adding: “Whether you look at
Canada, Finland, Hong Kong, South Korea, Sweden,
the U.K. or a growing list of other countries,
their broadband is faster and cheaper. These
countries have proactive policies in place to
set parameters for their broadband markets.”
Wood, of the Media Access
Project, also presenting remarks in support of
the debate resolution, noted that “the problem
with describing our broadband position as
primarily due to ‘a’ failure of U.S. telecom
regulation, described in monolithic and general
terms, is that there are so many different
failures, inadequacies and areas to choose from
in which both federal and state regulators have
been inattentive over the last decade and a
half.”
He focused mainly on failures in
competition policy, as evidenced in FCC merger
review decisions, deregulatory “streamlining”
and policies towards wholesaling and open
access; failures to adopt and enforce adequate
transparency and truth-in-billing rules for
broadband; and failures to reform and recast the
universal service fund as a tool expressly
designed to support broadband deployment and
adoption.
Atkinson, president of ITIF,
spoke in criticism of the debate resolution,
contending that America’s situation with regard
to broadband adoption is better than widely
recognized, depending on what kind of metrics
are utilized. “It’s per household that matters,”
he said. “European countries have very small
households compared to the U.S., and if we had
everybody in the U.S. that has broadband we’d
still be behind. On a household measure, we’re
11th rather than 15th.”
Atkinson added that “if we had
the same level of PC ownership as the top six
countries in the world in broadband access we
would actually have ranked 5th in
world broadband adoption — not 11th,
not 15th. Only 62 percent of
Americans have a PC at home, compared to 78
percent in Japan and 75 percent in Sweden.”
“The real problem is not that we
have had bad broadband, expensive broadband,
limited broadband,” he said. “The real problem
is that we have digital access problems, digital
illiteracy — people who just don’t know how to
use it or won’t use it.”
Ford, of the Phoenix Center,
also voiced criticism of the debate proposition.
He observed that there are many policymakers in
this country — including Federal Communications
Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski — who
apparently believe that the U.S. is falling
behind in broadband adoption and that therefore,
aggressive regulatory intervention is called
for. This belief is derived largely from data on
broadband connections collected and reported by
the OECD.
At the same time, Ford said, “in
numerous papers, I have debunked the idea that
these rankings can be used as a measure of
relative performance. One reason per-capita
connections are an invalid measure of broadband
penetration is that each country has its own
unique maximum value or the measure (all share
zero as the minimum). In other words, if in
every OECD country every household and business
had broadband (the “Broadband Nirvana”), you
would still observe large differences in their
per-capita subscription rates. As such, each
per-capita subscription rate has its own scale,
and consequently, comparing per-capita
connections presents the quintessential
apples-to-oranges problem.”
In mid-March, the FCC unveiled a
National Broadband Plan (NBP), mandated by
Congress, and aimed at providing access to very
high-speed broadband Internet service for all
American homes and businesses.
The FCC plan contended:
“Broadband is the great infrastructure challenge
of the early 21st century. Like
electricity a century ago, broadband is a
foundation to economic growth, job creation,
global competitiveness and a better way of life.
It is enabling entire new industries and
unlocking vast new possibilities for existing
ones. It is changing how we educate children,
deliver health care, manage energy, ensure
public safety, engage government, and access,
organize and disseminate knowledge.”
The NBP was applauded by
IEEE-USA's leadership, including President
Evelyn H. Hirt, who said in a 16 March letter to
Genachowski at the FCC: “Creating a modern
communications infrastructure and set of
services for the nation is vitally important.
The FCC’s comprehensive due diligence in
defining the critical needs of the U.S.
broadband infrastructure is a monumental task
and we applaud your efforts. Furthermore, we
offer our support for the NBP agenda.”
Barton Reppert is an independent science and
technology writer, mainly focusing on Washington
coverage of S&T policy issues. Previously he
worked for 18 years as a reporter and editor
with The Associated Press in Washington, New
York and Moscow.
Comments may be submitted to
todaysengineer@ieee.org.
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