There is no doubt that the US is doing better on the issue of speed, but penetration is lacking. Sure, I may have DSL, but with an average speed of about 650 Kbps, it is not broadband, courtesy of the FCC updating their standards. DSL is also the ONLY choice I have, along with vast chunks of the midwest. If you live in a town of at least 15,000 people you probably have choices, otherwise you don't. And don't start referencing EVDO, don't use anything based on cell phone technology when talking about broadband. There's always a catch with it, usually outrageous prices or bandwidth limits. Urban America may be right there with the rest of the world, but the places that are 90 miles away from the nearest Walmart, the places that can benefit the most from high speed internet, are woefully behind the curve, and have no options beside the ONE ISP that serves them.

This debate reminds me of a probably apocryphal anecdote about Eisenhower and Krushchev. During a summit meeting, trying to build that all-important leader-to-leader raport Eisenhower sighed and remarked about constant phone interruptions in his job. Nervous, volatile, and insecure, Krushchev flew into a rage, starting to shout" Phones??!! We have PLENTY of phones too here in the Soviet Union! We have more phones than you do!"

Of course US broadband is "inferior" to say, Japan, in speed, penetration, amount of fiber, whatever - and what of it?

The fact is, given the public policy choices we've made (in the US, that is) we have what we need and get what we deserve. The bandwidth is quite adequate, market and engineering solutions improve regularly, there's a modicum of competition but less than the "higher performing" countries, and there's every prospect of this continuing to improve steadily. Is Japan suddenly leading the world in telemedicine brain surgery or somesuch because we have "lost" broadband opportunities?

There's no need to try to cobble together some argument about how our rural densities are even worse than their rural densities, or sure in Korea it may be fast, but here we pass more homes than Europe, etc. etc.

What Denny might spend more time pointing out is that Japan achieved what it did through an entirely different means. One for which there was and is no national consensus here in the US, and which, as is their right, ILECs like Verizon did their utmost to ensure would not take place. The Japan story is one of programmatic government intervention (the 'e-Japan' strategies, etc.), backed by extremely significant non-market subsidies including: reduced fixed asset taxes for designated network equipment, BoJ loan guarantees to ISPs and broadband providers, rural and low-density government subsidies for FTTH capital expenditures.

All of the "higher performing" broadband countries have some sort of government intervention + subsidies to thank for where they are today.

First, let me state that I love Verizon PolicyBlog...and Verizon for that matter...and far be it from me to challenge your President on COO on where the US is ranked in broadband deployment...however, aside from Verizon's FIOS (when are you coming to Silicon Valley, by the way!!) U.S. broadband is still measured by the FCC as 256kbps.

So, when we are compared to other countries in terms of broadband deployment, we are wayyy low in our broadband speeds. While other countries are measuring and getting 10Mbps to 100Mbps as broadband and we're measuring 256k (again, FCC definition) to 1Mbps to 6Mpbs.

As video becomes more and more important to the Internet and bandwidth requirements are increasing by households, we need to be real about measurement and redefine what basic broadband means in this country (say, 5Mbps?) and then RE-measure where we are against the world...I think that would give a much better snapshot of how we are doing against the world...imho...

Thanks for your comment. Denny of all people would hardly argue that we don’t need to do more on broadband. Verizon is deploying the highest speed data services in the country, so we’re sure not talking about 256K, as I’m sure you know. Maybe you saw our announcement the other day that we are making 50 mbps speeds available to all our FiOS customers. No one is doing more to deploy fast broadband in the US than Verizon.

On the other hand, there are clearly a lot of apples to oranges comparisons being made between broadband deployment in the US and elsewhere. Give me a country with three major cities like Korea, and I’d have broadband to most everybody in a few years. That was Denny’s point, and a valid one, I believe.

Eric

I'd like to take exception to a few of the points.

First, geography has absolutely nothing to do with the statistics. Is it harder to deploy broadband over a much larger region, with greatly varied topology? Definitely. But it has no bearing on whether or not a certain percentage has or doesn't have broadband, however that is defined.

Second, choice and competition are also irrelevant, or possibly so. As Shakespeare said, “There's small choice in rotten apples.” Choice and competition is only a good thing when the choices are good and the competition active. There's not a lot of competition I see to offer broadband to rural America; for me, there's no choice but one (is that a choice?) - satellite, which is by no means a good choice.

Third, speed of fiber's deployment should be measured in percentage of the population receiving it versus those without, not the physical length of the cable, nor in the percentage of what it used to be (2 is twice 1 after all), nor the percentage of some other country.

I don't think I care about having “vibrant” wireless market. I'm really not quite sure what that means. Wouldn't steady growth be preferred to vibrancy? Seriously, though, even if Americans use more minutes, it doesn't mean that the use is evenly distributed; that there isn't a caste of haves and have nots – just that the haves are really really using it. By the way, is that usage only for data? Or is it also including talking on cell phones. If it isn't data only, again, the argument has no relevance to broadband.

I'm not familiar with the World Economic Forum's arguments on this so can't really respond to that one except to say that although it may cost us a lot more to distribute broadband nationally, still, economic factors have little to do with whether it is actually deployed.

Finally, the mention of “rapidly growing services like FiOS and wireless broadband” is something I find particularly nettlesome. FiOS is great, no question. But isn't it available only to those who already have broadband available? It's not actually increasing the area of broadband's reach, right? It's more about giving the haves even more.

As to wireless broadband – it's hardly broadband if you can download only 5GB a month, or if you can't hook your router up to it. At best it too is then only supplemental. I mean – that's maybe 2 movies from Amazon Unbox – 2 standard def movies. The future is broadband – education, communication, entertainment, news, working from home will rely on it; wireless broadband doesn't even come close to offering enough bandwidth for Windows Media Center, Apple TV, online classes, VOIP, streaming news, and the like which should be the future, but for now is only for the select who live close enough for it to be of economic benefit to those who provide it.

Thanks for listening.

Well, from my perspective the US is still way behind. We have been trying to get high speed internet service to our community for years. While we are only 1 mile from the closest cable trunk line we still cannot get them to bring it to us. With teachers, business people, scientists and school age children in our community we are very much in need of the service. There are no choices when it comes to providers here. You use satellite internet or dial up - period. Satellite is a joke. It is way too expensive for the very poor service that it delivers. Downloads test out to 1.5Mbps but the tremendously long lag time before anything really starts to happen would change the calculation to less that half that speed. Uploads are miserable! If you have serious work to do maintaining web sites or sending real data to someone it takes for ever if it actually completes the task.
There is only ONE local provider of cable internet and they are also claiming they are out of money and therefore cannot extend their service or add new customers - what?! It would seem to me that new customers is exactly what they need.
Short of legal action we are still in the dark ages of the internet age. This just 80 miles from our nations capital.