Are Internet providers trying to fool Americans into believing broadband is readily available?

Internet providers claim broadband service is readily available across America, when many rural areas still lack access to high-speed Internet, Susan Crawford writes for Salon. "There is a divide between Americans who have a wire at home and those that don’t, a divide between affluent Americans who will be able to pay for cable’s high-capacity (yet still second-class) high-speed connections and those who won’t, and a divide between America as a nation and those countries that have prioritized symmetric fiber access as a widely-available, reasonably-priced utility. All of these divides cast shadows over our nation’s future."

Many companies have switched exclusively to wireless, and have no desire to change anything, she writes. "Because the existing incumbents (i.e., Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Verizon, AT&T) are doing very well in their separate worlds, they have no incentive to allow for any loose talk about changing the status quo. Hence, op-eds in mainstream media claiming that the U.S. is doing much better than everybody thinks. America has a series of regional cable monopolies controlling the pricing and capacity of fixed high-speed Internet access (and every other form of data reaching Americans)."

Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam wrote in an op-ed piece in The New York Times: "More than 80 percent of American households live in areas that offer access to broadband networks capable of delivering data with speeds in excess of 100 megabits per second. Almost everyone in the country has several competitive choices for high-speed broadband service (with wireline, satellite and wireless options)."

Crawford said McAdam missed the point. "Northern European and Asian countries are upgrading to advanced fiber Internet access connections to homes and businesses," she writes. "The availability of very-high-capacity, inexpensive communications facilities in those countries will trigger direct and indirect economic and social benefits for their citizens, in the form of increased productivity and new ways of making a living. Here in America, we have no national plans for such an upgrade."

She concludes, "If we had a stagnant market in the U.S. we would be seeing high margins for leading companies that are not losing market share to competitors—and we are. We would be seeing that we are paying more for the same product than people in other countries are—and we are seeing that." (Read more)