I first heard the news on KYW1060 AM this morning.  Then my boss forwarded me a link to the full report from the Communication Workers of America.  (She’s prodding me to blog more.)  The verdict: Internet access in Japan is about 30 times faster, on average, than access in the U.S.  Cheaper, too.

The report features “Eight Steps to Affordable, High Speed Internet for All.”  As I read ‘em, it dawned on me that this report is simply a propaganda piece for the phone and cable companies who have a stranglehold on our broadband Internet access.  For example, step number 4 states:

“Today, universal service subsidies support voice telephony service.  We should reform the universal service program to support affordable, high-speed Internet for all.”

In other words, we’d like you to support higher taxes on your phone bill.

Here’s number 6:

“Other countries, including Japan, South Korea, and Sweden, have spurred the deployment of faster networks through direct subsidies, low interest loans, and tax incentives.  The United States should adopt similar policies.”

And we’d also like some bucks from the government, while we’re at it.

And step 7:

“We must protect free speech on the Internet so that people are able to go to the websites they want and download or upload what they want when they want on the Internet.  There should be no degradation of service or censoring any lawful content on the Internet.”

Translation: Net neutrality is OK, unless you’re using BitTorrent.  Then we want to throttle you down, even though the government says we can’t.

For a clearer picture of why Japan’s net access is so fast and cheap, check out this article from the Washington Post:

“Perhaps more important, competition in Japan gave a kick in the pants to Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. (NTT), once a government-controlled enterprise and still Japan’s largest phone company.  With the help of government subsidies and tax breaks, NTT launched a nationwide build-out of fiber-optic lines to homes, making the lower-capacity copper wires obsolete. ‘Obviously, without the competition, we would not have done all this at this pace,’ said Hideki Ohmichi, NTT’s senior manager for public relations.”

I’m thinking there wasn’t a snowball’s chance of “competition” ever making the list of Eight Steps to Affordable, High Speed Internet for All.  What do you think?

Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Internet Librarian
on August 18, 2008 - 3:18 pm

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