It would be easy to sit back and criticize a country that is a world leader in so many other respects for allowing itself to fall behind in such an important and modern development as broadband internet, but one first must remember that unlike South Korea or Japan the United States are, at least in certain legal terms dis-united. Whereas the relatively small (geographically) nations mentioned above can restructure their entire broadband networks from door-to-door nationwide with one all-encompassing initiative Americans have 50 states to negotiate changes through, not to mention a bunch of purple mountains standing majestically between the two shining seas it separates.

Well, GW, I guess I was off by about $130,000,000,000.00, I
expect there is no way to stop this except to just forgo the
internet and phones and need I say TV?

What is the cost, another $70,000,000,000.00 giveaway of
public property to the corporate thieves?

Just as it was with the projects to get electricity and phone to rural america, the US government is going to have to play a pivitol (and expensive) role in getting broadband speeds throughout the nation up to the levels of our other G-20 compadres.

The biggest problem is that the major cable companies in the US are sorley lacking in the fiber optic infrastructure that it will take to provide consistent broadband speeds. Comcast and time-warner use fiber primarily as a trunk system, but still use coax and digital compression as their primary delivery system. While that can provide space for extra channels, it does not provide the consistent speeds that an all fiber network (what verizon and at&t are building in major urban areas)can. But as verizon could tell you, replacing your system with fiber can be very expensive in any economy, but especially this one. And the american “haves” are going to get their broadband far ahead of the “have-nots”

Keep this in mind, as america continues to falter, the rest of the world passes us in communications technologies. Information is the gold of the 21st century, and we americans are sorley lacking in it.