The State of U.S. Broadband

Google’s Fiber Network was launched on July 26, 2012 in Kansas City, MO with certainly a few eyeballs on their latest move.  Can Google influence the marketplace to bring down high-speed internet rates while delivering a faster and more reliable service?  It’s a maneuver that may yield financial gains and a new revenue stream for the company but it also helps to try and shift a market that has been slow to adapt in comparison to other high tech countries.

Akamai’s State of the Internet Report  (2011 Q4) lists South Korea leading the world with an average connection speed of 17.5 Mbps.  The US is ranked 13^th with an average connection speed of 5.8 Mbps.  When you also look at the average cost of Internet among the top U.S. cities at $38 per month compared to South Korean cities that are averaging about $26 per month.  The U.S. is paying more for a far inferior product.  Plenty of factors come into play as to why this is the case.  Some may view the infrastructure being much larger in the U.S. which will take time to overhaul the system or maybe it’s the lack of political support to help drive the foundational change necessary while others may contend that the demand has not required the Internet Service Providers to fully embrace the high speed revolution.  As with any large scale technology update it has multiple variables at play that limit progress from happening.

The U.S. created a plan to reinvest in the system and help bring the U.S. Internet into the 21^st century.  The passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 was part of a response to the global economic crisis from the years before.  With the passage of the Recovery Act the FCC spearheaded a plan, calling it the National Broadband Plan with its goal to enable every American robust, affordable Internet.  To give you a better understanding of the plan I have listed the four pillars below:

Government can influence the broadband ecosystem in four ways:

1. Design policies to ensure robust competition and, as a result maximize consumer welfare, innovation and investment.
2. Ensure efficient allocation and management of assets government controls or influences, such as spectrum, poles, and rights-of-way, to encourage network upgrades and competitive entry.
3. Reform current universal service mechanisms to support deployment of broadband and voice in high-cost areas; and ensure that low-income Americans can afford broadband; and in addition, support efforts to boost adoption and utilization.
4. Reform laws, policies, standards and incentives to maximize the benefits of broadband in sectors government influences significantly, such as public education, health care and government operations.

In addition, the plan recommends that the country adopt and track the following six goals to serve as a compass over the next decade.

Goal No. 1: At least 100 million U.S. homes should have affordable access to actual download speeds of at least 100 megabits per second and actual upload speeds of at least 50 megabits per second.

Goal No. 2: The United States should lead the world in mobile innovation, with the fastest and most extensive wireless networks of any nation.

Goal No. 3: Every American should have affordable access to robust broadband service, and the means and skills to subscribe if they so choose.

Goal No. 4: Every American community should have affordable access to at least 1 gigabit per second broadband service to anchor institutions such as schools, hospitals and government buildings.

Goal No. 5: To ensure the safety of the American people, every first responder should have access to a nationwide, wireless, interoperable broadband public safety network.

Goal No. 6: To ensure that America leads in the clean energy economy, every American should be able to use broadband to track and manage their real-time energy consumption.

These six goals help provide a better understanding as to why the U.S. should make a strong push for updating their internet infrastructure.  For many Americans, innovation is synonymous with the U.S. and the viewpoint is that we rank at the top of the global community in producing the latest and greatest in regards to innovative solutions.  According to the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation’s (ITIF) 2011 report on Innovation and Competitive Benchmark Study the U.S. is losing ground within the space and dropped from first to fourth in overall ranking.  Updating the internet infrastructure cannot alone be the driver of innovation because consumers and businesses need to have devices that are capable of using the broadband speeds to deliver appropriate content and applications.  But device manufacturers, application developers and content providers will not even begin to imagine what they can accomplish with higher data speeds if the infrastructure is not in place to support these pieces.  Imagining the possibilities becomes more and more difficult the longer we wait to update the current infrastructure.  In a world that relies heavily on technological innovation influencing economic prosperity, can the U.S. afford to take so long to update the network?