Over at Ars, the normally reasonable Nate misses the point on a national broadband strategy. He despairs over the fact that “we”, meaning the government, have no broadband strategy.
Actually, in the US, we have numerous broadband strategies. Verizon’s strategy is fiber to the home. AT&T’s strategy is fiber to the node. Comcast’s strategy is DOCSIS 3.0. Sprint’s strategy is WiMax.
Each of these strategies is backed by highly incentivized companies, risking their own capital — not taxpayer’s. Each strategy will have varying levels of success, with various market segments, at various times.
For example, Verizon has fiber available to over 6 million homes, and is adding availability at around 400,000 new homes per month at the end of last year. What government is doing that?
What we don’t have is a Congressionally-mandated, FCC-managed, taxpayer-funded broadband strategy, and for that we should be thankful.
Nate also feels the need to repeat the canard about advertised bandwidth around the world. Advertised? Jeez louise, I thought we were talking about broadband, not marketing copy.
I recommend that interested readers head over to speedtest.net to see actual measured throughput around the world. Here is a sample:
February 4, 2008 at 8:58 pm
[...] Internet diversity Following on to my previous post that multiple broadband strategies are better than a single one, we’ve been hearing quite a bit about cut cables in the Middle [...]
February 5, 2008 at 1:03 pm
[...] Japan claims to have deployed 100 Mbps fiber to eighty five percent of its homes. But Matt Sherman points out that while “we,” meaning the government, may not have a single, unified broadband [...]
February 7, 2008 at 10:57 pm
[...] The good folks at Technology Liberation Front asked me on to discuss the ideas behind this post, broadband policy and net neutrality. Be sure to grab someone you love, crack open a Colt .45 [...]