The quest for high-speed fiber: a conversation with Susan Crawford

The web may be growing, but in America the physical infrastructure most people use to access it is barely keeping pace. Eighty-five percent of the country is still stuck with cable modem service as its fastest available internet, and if we want to move towards a future of telepresence and widespread streaming video, that's not going to cut it. It's a huge problem for the growth of the web, and Cardozo School of Law professor Susan Crawford laid out in a Q&A how it happened as telecommunications companies consolidated power and colluded to escape regulation. "We don't make progress until you can see something," she says. "In America, we don't see how badly we're doing." Since the federal government isn’t interested in fiber, she’s making the case city by city, convincing mayors of the benefits of a wired populace.