Because broadband connections are the railroads of the 21st century—essential infrastructure required to transmit products (these days, in the form of information) from seller to buyer—our creaky Internet makes it harder for U.S. entrepreneurs to compete in global markets. As evidence, consider that the U.S. came in dead last in another recent study that compared how quickly 40 countries and regions have been progressing toward a knowledge-based economy over the past 10 years. “We are at risk in the global race for leadership in innovation,” FCC chairman Julius Genachowski said recently. “Consumers in Japan and France are paying less for broadband and getting faster connections. We’ve got work to do.”

It was not always like this. A decade ago the U.S. ranked at or near the top of most studies of broadband price and performance. But that was before the FCC made a terrible mistake. In 2002 it reclassified broadband Internet service as an “information service” rather than a “telecommunications service.” In theory, this step implied that broadband was equivalent to a content provider (such as AOL or Yahoo!) and was not a means to communicate, such as a telephone line. In practice, it has stifled competition.

Phone companies have to compete for your business. Even though there may be just one telephone jack in your home, you can purchase service from any one of a number of different long-distance providers. Not so for broadband Internet. Here consumers generally have just two choices: the cable company, which sends data through the same lines used to deliver television signals, and the phone company, which uses older telephone lines and hence can only offer slower service.

The same is not true in Japan, Britain and the rest of the rich world. In such countries, the company that owns the physical infrastructure must sell access to independent providers on a wholesale market. Want high-speed Internet? You can choose from multiple companies, each of which has to compete on price and service. The only exceptions to this policy in the whole of the 32-nation Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development are the U.S., Mexico and the Slovak Republic, although the Slovaks have recently begun to open up their lines.

billb wrote:
The innefective FTC under Bush/Cheney/Rove will be completely revamped and revised under Obama /Biden by 2009.