http://www.savetheinternet.com/blog/2007/08/29/a-tale-of-two-cities/
A Tale of Two Cities
August 29th, 2007 by caaron
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
And when it comes to broadband, Tokyo is a long way from Little Rock.
The Japanese enjoy broadband speeds that are up to 30 times faster
than what’s available here at a far lower cost. This faster, cheaper,
universal broadband access – according to an excellent article in
today’s Wa****ngton Post – “is pu****ng open doors to Internet
innovation that are likely to remain closed for years to come in much
of the United States.”
To the Japanese, our “high-speed” Internet service doesn’t look much
different from dial-up:
The speed advantage allows the Japanese to watch broadcast-quality,
full-screen television over the Internet, an experience that mocks the
grainy, wallet-size images Americans endure.
Ultra-high-speed applications are being rolled out for low-cost,
high-definition teleconferencing, for telemedicine — which allows
urban doctors to diagnose diseases from a distance — and for advanced
telecommuting to help Japan meet its goal of doubling the number of
people who work from home by 2010.
- - - -
Open Secrets
What’s the secret of Japan’s success? Open access.
Less than a decade ago, DSL service in Japan was slower and pricier
than in the United States. So the Japanese government mandated open
access policies that forced the telephone monopoly to share its wires
at wholesale rates with new competitors. The result: a broadband
explosion.
Not only did DSL get faster and cheaper in Japan, but the new
competition actually forced the creaky old phone monopoly to innovate.
As the Post explains:
Competition in Japan gave a kick in the pants to Nippon Telegraph and
Telephone Corp. (NTT), once a government-controlled enterprise and
still Japan’s largest phone company. With the help of government
subsidies and tax breaks, NTT launched a nationwide build-out of
fiber-optic lines to homes, making the lower-capacity copper wires
obsolete.
“Obviously, without the competition, we would not have done all this
at this pace,” said Hideki Ohmichi, NTT’s senior manager for public
relations.
- - - - -
Made in America
If this quaint idea of “competition” seems familiar, that’s because
America invented “open access” policies in the first place. And open
access worked for decades to bring lower prices and more choices in
long-distance phone service and dial-up Internet access.
The Japanese first adopted open access because they were worried about
falling behind us. But under pressure from our own phone and cable
monopolists, the Bush administration abandoned open access – and the
fundamental protections for Net Neutrality along with it.
Now they’re standing idly by as America drops further and further
behind the rest of the world in every measure of broadband progress.
But instead of recognizing their mounting failures and charting a new
course (or really, just getting back on the old one), our policymakers
prefer to shoot the messenger.
Left Behind
Which bring us to Little Rock.
On Tuesday, Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor hosted a public hearing on
high-speed Internet access. Rural groups, educators and librarians
turned out to decry the lack of broadband service and high-tech
op****tunities in their communities.
“We have not successfully transitioned into the information age, and I
would contend a lot of that is because we’re not delivering broadband
to our people,” testified Rex Nelson of the Delta Regional Authority,
according to a story in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. “Having access
to broadband in even the most rural areas of our country is as
im****tant as getting that electricity to them and air conditioning to
them back in the 1940s and the 1950s.”
Also on hand were FCC Commissioners Michael Copps and Jonathan
Adelstein — two notable exceptions to the usual inside-the-Beltway
blindness on broadband issues. They bemoaned America’s digital
decline.
“While some have protested the international broadband penetration
rankings,” Adelstein said, alluding to some of his colleagues at the
Commission, “the fact is the U.S. has dropped year-after-year. This
downward trend and the lack of broadband value illustrate the sobering
point that when it comes to giving our citizens affordable access to
state-of the-art communications, the U.S. has fallen behind its global
competitors.”
Copps called the lack of a national broadband policy “tantamount to
playing Russian roulette with our future.”
“Each and every citizen of this great country should have access to
the wonders of communications,” Copps said. “I’m not talking about
doing all these people some kind of feel-good, do-gooder favor by
including them. I’m talking about doing America a favor. I’m talking
about making certain our citizens can compete here at home and around
the world with those who are already using broadband in all aspects of
their lives.”
Bringing the benefits of broadband to all Americans would seem like a
no-brainer for any politician. But if the reaction thus far from the
White House and the majority at the FCC is any indication, you’d think
Copps and Adelstein were speaking in Japanese.
--
"Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government
talking
about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order.
Nothing has
changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists,
we're
talking about getting a court order before we do so"
-George W. Bush, April 20, 2004
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