The Cure for America's Internet

[Commentary] In 2004, President Bush pledged "to have a universal, affordable access for broadband technology by the year 2007." As if on cue, last year, Mr. Bush's chief Internet officer John Kneuer declared "Mission Accomplished" -- that all the international surveys were misleading and that the "free market" had ensured that Americans across the country enjoy real choice in high-speed Internet access. What he and his White House compatriots refuse to acknowledge, though, is that a free market approach for Internet services in the U.S. is a chimera. The only hand in play here belongs to the phone and cable duopoly, which controls broadband access for more than 98 percent of homes. The net effect of this duopoly is a dearth or real choices; allowing providers like AT&T and Comcast to exact high prices from Internet users, while delivering connections that are too slow -- and, often in the case of cable, too congested - to meet growing demand. Public policy should be designed to make it profitable for corporations to behave in ways that better serve both the free market and the public interest. And we're seeing more and more from international examples that that requires a shared vision with a light but clear legislative touch. The construction of a universally accessible Internet superhighway ranks as important today as building the Interstate Highway System was in the 1950s, and it can be accomplished with even stronger collaboration between the public and private sector. Future policymakers who are serious about America's well-being should learn from our failings and from success in other countries so we can deliver the vast benefits of an open connection to every American. It's time we started construction.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/timothy-karr/the-cure-for-americas-int_b_1...