About a week ago, U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) released a new broadband report, Networked Nation: Broadband in America, 2007. According to U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez, “Today’s report shows the nation’s broadband success story. The President’s policies have made a significant impact on the availability and affordability of broadband in the United State.”
Woo hoo! I didn’t know it could be so easy.
My Take on the Report
When the news of success broke I was working on our monthly newsletter and I just knew I couldn’t take this in fairly. So I waited and today’s the day I can really dig into the report and the commentary from others on the report.
There were a few things that struck me with the report.
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Broadband isn’t defined.
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Defining broadband coverage by zip code is not very effective. It allows for a lot of uncovered area to get swept under the rug. (These are both topics that have come up before with the FCC research but the cynic’s reason for the methodology comes to light in the report like this.)
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There is very little discussion about how the US compares with the rest of the world. Here are the two mentions I saw of anything international:
Relative to other countries, the United States has experienced superior productivity over the past several years.
Internationally, the Administration has expressed great concern whenever countries prescribe a standard for technology that impedes competition, obstructs investment, or hampers the creation of competitive markets…
[Note: I think this hubris is going to hurt the US in the end. We can’t just compare ourselves with ourselves – as we’re not competing against us 4 years ago. We’re competing with other countries that have better broadband strategies.]
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Finally this report read like a state of the state of any industry. The focus was on number of vendors in the industry, revenue generated, market potential, investment and policy that encourages investment. We could be looking at anything here – dress making, party supplies, restaurants. Broadband is a different animal. Broadband is a means towards industry, not just an industry.
What Others Think
I looked for articles that concurred with the NTIA report, but didn’t find any. I would love to get opinions from readers too.
I think Jim Baller put it best when he quoted Abraham Lincoln:
“If you call a dog’s tail a leg, how many legs does the dog have? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it one.”
Some of the FCC Commissioners have taken issue with the report:
Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein responded to the report with the following statement: “With only half of adult Americans participating in the broadband age and U.S. consumers paying far more than citizens in other countries for less bandwidth, this report appears to be missing some key chapters. Noticeably absent is any coherent strategy going forward.
Commissioner Michael Copps had this to say about the report: “Networked Nation? If the United States were a networked nation consumers would be paying half as much for broadband connections 20 times as fast. That’s what many consumers around the globe get. Instead, NTIA slices and dices bad data (full disclosure: much of it from the FCC) in ever more outlandish ways to reach the conclusion that all is well – don’t worry, be happy. If we spent more time developing strategies for truly ubiquitous and affordable broadband rather than watching our international competitors lap us at every turn, we actually might have something to crow about,” Copps said.
From Ars Technica:
… What’s shocking about the report isn’t what it covers (or that Ars is cited in footnotes 126 and 211), but what it leaves out: it doesn’t contain a single extended discussion of the fact that the US has been slipping in a worldwide broadband rankings throughout the decade… They offer EDUCAUSE’s new national broadband strategy as a good alternative.
ARRL (The National Association for Amateur Radio) offered an interesting perspective on the BPL (broadband over power lines). The NTIA boasts how well it’s going. AARL has a different opinion:
I have followed the ups and downs of the BPL industry very closely for more than five years. There are very few commercial deployments of BPL, and examination of the FCC data state by state shows all of the significant ones are included. The idea that there could be another 195,000 customers out there, happily connected to the Internet by BPL — yet unreported by their service providers — is utterly ludicrous.
(I don’t know much about BPL; this article was enlightening!)
From the Capital Times:
“Declaring mission accomplished won’t reverse America’s rapid disappearance from the ranks of world broadband leaders. Just ask the tens of millions of Americans still stranded on the wrong side of the digital divide,” says Derek Turner, who has authored several reports criticizing failed U.S. broadband policies.
I would expect nothing less than a glowing report from this administration (or any department working under it). Remember they have put pressure on scientists and changed reports to minimize the nation’s concerns about habitat destruction and global warming as well.
They also don’t like comparisons with other countries when the other countries may be doing a better job than the good ol’ USA.
Political soapboxing aside, I think you may have nailed it when you said “Broadband is a different animal.” I think it may be difficult for any government agency as a whole to fully “get it”. I am sure there are individuals that worked on the report that fully comprehend the impact that broadband will have on our society and the world, but it is a difficult animal to wrap your head around.
I am guessing they analyzed it a bit like phone service. Even though folks in rural areas may have had more interference on their lines and paid more for them, especially since many of their calls would be long distance, a phone line is a phone line. When the nation was first being connected by copper, there was really only one question to analyze. A community (or a zip code) either had phone service or they didn’t. If they had to pay a little more for it, that was alright because everyone paid more for long distance back then and it didn’t impact the usefulness of the telephone.
Broadband can be analyzed on so many more levels, upload speed, download speed, latency, cost, competition etc. Then add in the different needs of businesses vs. individuals, the global marketplace, global networking and competition and it gets much harder for a government agency to understand.
If a report from the front is useful…I have just been trying to go mobile, spending time in rural Minnesota with elderly parents. When I asked at a great local computer store, they said it all, “the operative word is FARM.” It works, but has only appeared in the last year and in relatively populated, flat and affluent south central Minnesota. All of the users I talked to are business users since the service costs more and is slower than my cable service in Minneapolis. The closest Internet Cafe is 22 miles. It doesn’t seem to me that “All is well.”
Thanks for your take. I couldn’t agree more. I’ve been very disappointed with the progress in this area and would hardly declare this a success story.
My father lives in rural MN and after waiting until 2006-7 to get wireless at slow speeds and at a high cost it is still not dependable. I don’t think he is alone and I am not sure what the “strategy” in all this has been.
I am frustrated to hear the administration talk about the bandwidth itself, but not how people are using it. Declaring mission accomplished on the bandwidth front is a specious claim, but let’s not get distracted from the real issues that are bigger than just bandwidth. A true strategy would not only encompass the hardware, software and access but would also take into account training.
I also believe any strategy should also include some discussion of “customer service.” It is a real problem right now and has been, especially for users that are non-technical, don’t speak English as their first language, and those who don’t have personal and/or professional networks to draw on for trusted technical advice.
I am often asked to advise small organizations and occasionally individuals on how much bandwidth is sufficient. I have been a proponent for 56kbps being okay, even for small groups of light-duty users. Upload speeds of any faster than that were a luxury for most users just sending email and the occasional picture. I think the key has been to have broadband that is “always on.” I’ve had some challenges to that view in the last couple weeks, including a WW2 veteran looking to watch videos on his unit and participate online in that community. I’m really beginning to think that for perhaps a majority of users 1.5 MBps may be necessary for them to be able to do what they need to be able to do online, and also that slow upload speeds are no longer acceptable.. Having broadband that is “always on” is still a very big deal, and it can be nearly impossible to work when latency is high. We certainly don’t have that kind of bandwidth in the US and I don’t see it on the near horizon.
Thanks for the comments folks.
Aileen – I think you’re right. Broadband is too complex for the government to track easily. I’m trying to think of something equally complex that they do track well. Health care is all I’m coming up with. It’s complex but I don’t know that I want to use that as a model for broadband.
Denise – it’s nice to get a view from the frontline. I wish the news were better but it is super helpful to talk to someone who knows the situation firsthand.
Rick – I couldn’t agree more – I think training is the hidden aspect of access. If you don’t know how to use it, it isn’t accessible. And part of that is providing the training to help people become good consumers so that recognize sometimes it’s not them – the problem is the service. Heck, I used to work for an Internet service provider and there are times I don’t understand the techno-speak.
The report’s take on cost of service is a joke:
“Escalating competition among broadband platforms
and service providers has yielded both a
proliferation of new communications and entertainment
services and affordable broadband
pricing for American consumers.”
With at most two providers, there really is no price competition. What we have is an oligopoly–a market that is controlled by a very few providers. With so little competition, the providers are making huge profits and we are paying more than we should for the relatively slow service we in the US call “broadband.”
Sheldon,
I think many readers would agree with you. Through the Baller Herbst e-list I just ran into the frsit report that I have seen that praises the NTIA report:
http://www.precursorblog.com/node/652
…Third, while broadband critics may have made assertions that the U.S. Government did not have an official national broadband strategy, those assertions are now either untrue or moot, because the official U.S. Government “National Broadband Strategy” is in this January 2008 report for anyone to see.
It reminds me of a friend’s business plan. His plan was to make $8,000 a month. He didn’t have a list of products, services or clients but that was his goal.
Thanks! Ann