We’re number…25? Why the U.S. internet ranking stinks

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Did deregulation kill the Internet star? That appears to be the case for the U.S., who now trails behind Romania thanks to the lifting of regulations in 2006 that would have encouraged competition and instead handed over the reigns to big companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast who have faithfully delivered worse service at higher prices.

Derek Turner of the Free Press explained that,

"By turning its back on the 1996 Act, the FCC ordered up a future of digital mediocrity and stuck American consumers with the bill. Americans pay more per month for broadband than consumers in all but seven of the 30 nations in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development ... When price and speed are considered together as a measure of value, we see that Americans pay more per megabit per second than consumers in many other countries. The value of U.S. connections is some four times less than that of countries like France, and is only slightly better than the value of connections in Hungary, a country with a per capita GDP nearly two-and-a-half times lower than the United States."

Jonathan Adelstein of the Rural Utilities Service stresses that the lack of broadband service in rural areas across the country is dealing a serious blow to the chances that America can effectively compete in a global setting in the future and hurting our economic growth today.

Full story at Common Dreams via Boing Boing.

Bad for business.

Photo credit: Fotolia

Did deregulation kill the Internet star? That appears to be the case for the U.S., who now trails behind Romania thanks to the lifting of regulations in 2006 that would have encouraged competition and instead handed over the reins to big companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast who have faithfully delivered worse service at higher prices.

Derek Turner of the Free Press explained that,

"By turning its back on the 1996 Act, the FCC ordered up a future of digital mediocrity and stuck American consumers with the bill. Americans pay more per month for broadband than consumers in all but seven of the 30 nations in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development ... When price and speed are considered together as a measure of value, we see that Americans pay more per megabit per second than consumers in many other countries. The value of U.S. connections is some four times less than that of countries like France, and is only slightly better than the value of connections in Hungary, a country with a per capita GDP nearly two-and-a-half times lower than the United States."

Jonathan Adelstein of the Rural Utilities Service stresses that the lack of broadband service in rural areas across the country is dealing a serious blow to the chances that America can effectively compete in a global setting in the future and hurting our economic growth today.