Peter Orne Broadband Wireless Communities Blog

FCC Commissioners Battle Over US Broadband Ranking

In a memorable op-ed piece in The Washington Post (November 8, 2006 ), FCC Commissioner Michael Copps wrote: "America's record in expanding broadband communication is so poor that it should be viewed as an outrage by every consumer and businessperson in the country." Copps cites numbers from the ITU that place the U.S. at 15th in the world in broadband penetration, and calls for "a broadband strategy for America....In the United States we have a campaign promise of universal broadband access by 2007, but no strategy for getting there."

Nine months later, in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal (July 24, 2007), FCC Commissioner Robert M. McDowell responds: "American consumers are poised to reap a windfall of benefits from a new wave of broadband deployment. But you would never know it by the rhetoric of those who would have us believe that the nation is falling behind, indeed in free fall." He calls the methodology behind the No. 15 ranking flawed and says the "data do not include all of the ways Americans can make high-speed connections to the Internet."

While Commissioner McDowell's free-market optimism is noteworthy, and certainly integral to the solution, the sense of urgency around government's role in ensuring quality broadband connectivity to all Americans has by no means abated. W2i is in the initial stages of forming the Program Committee for the the 16th Digital Cities Convention — to be held in Washington, D.C., this December 11-12. This national momentum-building event will showcase:

• the broadband policy efforts of key politicians in Washington, D.C.,
  
• numerous emerging state broadband-penetration initiatives,
• national-policy initiatives ignited by the National League of Cities, among other associations.

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