[governance] America's Internet -- Now as Good as Angola's

[Riaz K Tayob]

Timothy Karr <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/timothy-karr>

Campaign Director, Free Press and SavetheInternet 
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/timothy-karr/americas-internet-now-as-_b_1138775.html


  America's Internet -- Now as Good as Angola's

Posted: 12/ 9/11 10:13 AM ET

A recent letter to the editor 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/08/opinion/bringing-high-speed-internet-to-all.html> 
of the /New York Times/ from Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg had me 
scratching my head.

Seidenberg wrote torebut a /Times/ Op-Ed 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/04/opinion/sunday/internet-access-and-the-new-divide.html?pagewanted=print> 
by former White House technology adviser Susan Crawford, in which she 
argues that the United States' high-speed Internet marketplace suffers 
from a lack of competition, a problem that drives broadband prices up 
and services down for American Internet users.

"Over the last 10 years, we have deregulated high-speed Internet access 
in the hope that competition among providers would protect consumers," 
Crawford wrote. "The result? We now have neither a functioning 
competitive market for high-speed wired Internet access nor government 
oversight."

*Our Broadband Backwater*

Indeed. It's gotten so bad the U.S. has gone from number one in 
broadband penetration at the close of the 20th century down to -- 
depending on the survey -- 18th, 22nd or 25th in the world. And 
Americans continue to pay a whole lot more and get a whole lot less 
<http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/sites/cyber.law.harvard.edu/files/Berkman_Center_Broadband_Final_Report_15Feb2010.pdf> 
of the Internet speeds that we deserve.

Compare our circumstances to those in Japan, for example, where Internet 
users are accustomed to surfing 
<http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/03/the-cost-to-offer-the-worlds-fastest-broadband-20-per-home/> 
the Web at speeds of 100 Mbps (or megabits per second) at the same 
prices Americans pay for dial-up. In Hong Kong, one provider now offers 
<http://www.convergedigest.com/DSL/lastmilearticle.asp?ID=33367&ctgy=> a 
$20 a month "triple play" package that includes a blistering 1,000 Mbps 
data service.

Despite the evidence, Verizon's Seidenberg wrote that Crawford was 
wrong; America's Internet is the best in the world.

"America has a very good broadband story; someone just has to be willing 
to tell it," Seidenberg argues in his letter to the /Times/. As evidence 
he cites a 2011 World Economic Forum global survey, which in the words 
of Seidenberg "ranks the United States first in Internet competition."

Say what? I had to see that for myself.

The most recent WEF "Global Competitiveness" report 
<http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GCR_Report_2011-12.pdf> (pdf) features 
U.S. rankings on page 363. The good news is that we're ranked first in 
the world for available airline seats. But the United States' Internet 
rankings are terrible. We're 18th in the availability of the latest 
technology, 18th in Internet users per capita and 26th in Internet 
bandwidth per capita.

Perhaps Seidenberg's evidence is buried elsewhere. On page 294 of 
another WEF report 
<http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GITR_Report_2011.pdf> (pdf) I found a 
section on "political and regulatory environments" that featured an 
Internet and telephone sector competition index.

The report allegedly looks at the level of competition for "retail 
Internet access services, for international long-distance calls, and for 
digital cellular mobile services," placing countries on a 0 (worst) to 6 
(best) scale.

But it doesn't actually measure market competition beyond determining 
whether these three separate fields remain state-sanctioned monopolies.

Well, U.S. telecommunications isn't a monopoly anymore. We did manage to 
break up Ma Bell in the 1980s, but her children are showing every 
intention to reassemble themselves as a modern-day equivalent. That 
hasn't happened. At least not yet, so on retail Internet access we get a 
2, indicating that its not a monopoly market; on international long 
distance we get a 2; and on digital cellular mobile services we get a 2.

Our cumulative score is a 6, according to the report, the best possible 
ranking -- or "first in Internet competition" in Seidenberg's profoundly 
misleading interpretation.

Want to know who else came in "first?"

*Sixty other countries, including Angola, Burundi, the Kyrgyz Republic, 
Venezuela and Vietnam.*

We're all Number One!

So if you are proud that the U.S. offers an Internet that's on par with, 
er... Angola's, stand beside Seidenberg and wave the flag.

But if you agree with Crawford that the lack of true competition in the 
U.S. has put us on a perilous path, demand that we do more to guarantee 
universal and affordable access in a marketplace with real choices.

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