American Internet Concerns

Today I read the following post: It's Time to Break Up AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Time Warner and the Rest of the Telecoms | | AlterNet and it got me to thinking about a subject that I've often thought about quite a bit because it's important to me. In case you can't tell from the link, the subject has to do with home internet from the telecom providers in the US that provide broadband internet. According to that report, America is 15th in broadband speed in the world behind countries like Hong Kong and South Korea. It's sad to me to find out that the average service in America is only 5 Mbps.

Obviously, the current average is better than it was in the 90's, but we shouldn't settle for what we have when we know that better things exist. Another problem with the service has to do with the prices we pay for broadband internet. A very small number of companies, usually as high as 2 in a given area, own all of the infrastructure and can set high rates because consumers don't really have a choice of anything else. Ideally, there would be more than a couple service providers competing for our business, which would help reduce the cost of service for consumers, and encourage service providers to invest in infrastructure to keep up with their competition. The end result would be faster internet at lower prices, making it possible for the United States to catch up with other countries. If we don't keep our abilities in this area, the US is likely to fall behind other countries in innovation and eventually lose our position as a world power.