ITIF Report Calls for Honest Assessment of American Broadband

A new ITIF report authored by Richard Bennett, Robert Atkinson, and Luke Stewart argues that the current negative perception of America's broadband network is inaccurate and that our national position is strong relative to other developed countries. In, “The Whole Picture: Where America's Broadband Networks Really Stand,” the authors argue that negative critics of U.S. broadband strength use skewed data that pulls exclusively from high-density European and Asian cities to portray inaccurate inequalities in broadband distribution.

Bennett, Atkinson, and Stewart contend that the United States has achieved rapid progress in the speed and distribution of broadband networks across the country relative to our physical size and the low density of population. They note that infrastructure improvements in the United States often are hindered by the high cost of maintaining vast areas of low-density, suburban settlement. Considering the large distances that American broadband has to cover to reach consumers, the authors argue that the prices we pay for Internet access are reasonable; a fact they attribute to high levels of commercial competition between broadband providers in high-density population centers and government subsidization of Internet service in rural areas. U.S. market competition between providers is listed as the third-highest in the developed world behind the Netherlands and Belgium, and the entry-level pricing for U.S. broadband access is the second-lowest in the OECD behind Israel.

To promote the continued advancement of U.S. broadband network distribution, Bennett, Atkinson, and Stewart argue for continuing policies that support competition between service providers in densely populated areas, while stressing the importance of increasing targeted government subsidies to deliver service to rural regions of the country. They point out that the prices for television sets and TV services are higher than those of broadband and computers, and yet Internet consumption relative to television is much lower in the U.S. To address this disparity the authors recommend that the federal government actively pursue policies to encourage more residents to come online, which would disperse the costs of network investments and enhance the economic and social benefits of the Internet for American citizens.