The few remaining American telecoms want American consumers to focus only on options that they want to offer us. But we know how to use our slow American Internet to check out how other developed countries are developing their broadband coverage and speed.
At Alternet, [1]David Rosen and Bruce Kushnick have issued a devastating report card to the American telecoms. Here’s the bad news:
- America is now 15th in the world in broadband. While Hong Kong and other countries are rolling out 1 gigabit speed services, America’s average is a mere 5 mbps (i.e., 1,000 mbps = 1 gigabit).
- Americans paid over $340 billion for broadband upgrades that never happened; by 2010, America should have been completely upgraded with fiber optic services to every home.
- The FCC approved Comcast’s acquisition of NBC-Universal, foreshadowing a likely wave of integration of transport or carriage and content.
- Together, AT&T and Verizon control 80 percent of all wireless services and AT&T is now attempting to close down one of the only remaining competitors, T-Mobile.
What should we do about this? Rosen and Kushnick often many dramatic solutions–including divestiture–if only members of Congress would listen more to good ideas than to wads of cash handed to them by the telecoms.
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