US Broadband Critics Focus on Faulty Comparisons, Miss the Big Picture

[Commentary] Unfortunately, there’s been a long-standing campaign by a few academics & advocates to talk down America’s broadband market, while holding up France and Hong Kong as broadband Nirvanas for innovation and consumer pricing. A growing body of evidence, however, shows that the U.S. is no broadband backwater.

Akamai data puts the U.S. at No. 1 when considering “other countries with either a similar population or land mass.” That point is key: it’s impossible to make valid comparisons between a continent-sized landmass (that includes the Great Plains, Alaska and western Texas) and largely urbanized countries that look more like the Northeastern U.S. Corridor. Comparing California to Hong Kong is simply not useful. Looking at individual states, we can see that the best U.S. states beat out most of the rest of the world, both in average speeds, and peak connection speeds. Broadband critics typically ignore the mobile industry, presumably because its wild growth over the last five years doesn’t fit their chosen narrative. Finally, on broadband pricing, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation’s study concludes that “American broadband is affordable and in part reflects the significant private investment in American infrastructure. The OECD data indicates that entry-level broadband services are available to U.S. consumers at the second-lowest cost in the OECD.