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US telecom lobbying hinders broadband deployment |
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Written by Leon D. Zetekoff, NCE
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Friday, 24 June 2005 |
From Muniwireless:
This should be titled "Greedy US politicians listening to telecom
lobbyists hinder broadband deployment" in honor of Representative Pete
Sessions who introduced a bill banning municipal broadband services
while holding SBC stock options. James Carlini writes on how millions of telecom lobbying dollars are spent keeping competition out of the broadband sector. The article
also mentions that Americans pay between $40 and $60 for broadband
versus $20 to $35 in South Korea. This is just part of the story. I am
certain that the $20 in Korea buys more bandwidth than the $40 in the
US.
I just attended an excellent seminar in Brussels on municipal
broadband in Sweden. Fiber to the home is being deployed at an amazing
speed in Sweden especially in more sparsely populated areas. The
government provides subsidies for laying down broadband infrastructure
on the condition that the network is open to all service providers on a
non-discriminatory basis. The result: ISPs enter the market and compete
on price and service.
The Swedish seminar participants also told us that everywhere
the local authority announces the rollout of fiber, the Swedish
incumbent operator, Telia, rushes in to announce that they will be
delivering broadband even though for many years, Telia has been saying
there were not interested or it was not profitable for them to do so.
Several participants also told me that they were paying 20 EUR per
month for 10 Mbps (symmetrical). The Swedish government's goal is to
give 99% of Swedes access to broadband by the end of 2006. Apparently,
the rollout has been proceeding much more quickly than the government
even imagined. And this is in a large, sparsely populated country!
I will post a long report on the seminar, complete with
statistics and summaries of the case studies presented there. Check
Muniwireless regularly for my report. |
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