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Snipped from the HuffingtonPost.com.
Well, here we go again. Japan is surpassing us and this time it’s in broadband access. Compared to the U.S. Japan has access that is 30 times faster than the U.S. As a result, we are being left in the dust when it comes to “experiencing innovation and enjoying applications that Americans simply don’t have access to.” In Japan, you can watch broadcast-quality, full-screen television over the internet. All we have is grainy, wallet-sized images. With Japan’s ultra-high-speed applications, they are introducing into the market low-cost, high-definition teleconferencing and telemedicine which allows doctors to diagnose diseases remotely. And, their advanced telecommuting is helping Japan reach their target of doubling the number of people who work from home by 2010. So, what happened to the U.S.?
Unfortunately what has happened is more of corporate protectionism at work in the Bush administration. For all their talk of free trade and less regulation, the Republican administration, in effect, reduced competition. They did this by caving into huge corporate interests from the wireless and telecommunications industry. Apparently they just didn’t want to compete, so laws were enacted that kept innovation under wraps which stifled progress and better products.
What Japan did was the opposite. They opened up broadband access by mandating that phone and cable lines be available to whoever wanted access. What is interesting about this turn of events is that America invented “open access” but then abandoned it when big corporate interests didn’t like the competition.
Here’s what the article had to say about it.
If this quaint idea of “competition” seems familiar, that’s because America invented “open access” policies in the first place. And open access worked for decades to bring lower prices and more choices in long-distance phone service and dial-up Internet access.
The Japanese first adopted open access because they were worried about falling behind us. But under pressure from our own phone and cable monopolists, the Bush administration abandoned open access — and the fundamental protections for Net Neutrality along with it.
Now they’re standing idly by as America drops further and further behind the rest of the world in every measure of broadband progress.
If you would like to read the full article click the image below.
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