JK op-ed: Taking the Lead on Broadband [View All]

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Taking the lead on broadband
Too few providers competing for consumers in Western Massachusetts results in weaker service and higher prices than necessary.
By John Kerry
Updated: 03/22/2010 09:50:45 AM EDT

Monday March 22, 2010

WASHINGTON

As a kid, we watched the news on a little black and white television and counted on a daily newspaper to deliver events around the world to our doorstep. Today millions of Americans have access to laptops, smart phones, and Wi- Fi broadband service that connect them to the Internet and to thousands of media outlets updated by the minute - even as they walk throughout their homes and streets. These advances are great, but they're incomplete. America invented the Internet, but we still haven't reached the goal of universal broadband service, and consumers here don't enjoy the prices or level of service common in many other advanced countries today. Experts debate where we rank in the world of broadband providers, but one fact is clear: we are nowhere near number one. And that is where the United States belongs. For a country as great as we are, in a global market growing more competitive by the minute, if you're not first, you're last. Falling behind means lost opportunities for job creation, innovation, and economic development in rural America and our cities. In Boston, the last time the data was collected in 2006, 80 percent of kids in our public schools did not have broadband Internet service at home and most of them still don't because their parents just can't afford it. In Western Massachusetts, towns like Monroe and Savoy have no broadband service and others, like West Stockbridge and Chesterfield have only one broadband provider.

Read more here: http://www.berkshireeagle.com/ci_14725748?source=most_emailed