Surrounded by next generation flexible displays and the next big tech toys at the 2013 International Consumer Electronics Show, former President Bill Clinton made this observation: South Korea is now number one in the world for computer download speeds, and the U.S. has fallen to number 15. “Our speeds are one-fourth of theirs, and we have fallen off the map,” Clinton said.
For the uninitiated, the former president is referring to the fact that there are few to no American communities that are hubs of the kind of world-leading bandwidth sufficient to drive next-generation innovation in our economy. He’s referring to the fact that, though international studies differ, the United States does not enjoy bandwidth that is nearly as fast as our peer countries. He’s referring to the fact that, for the first time since American ingenuity birthed the commercial Internet, we do not have a single national wireline provider with plans to deploy a better, faster and bigger network. For most Americans, five years from now, the best network available to them will be the same network they have today. As a result, the best networks — along with the innovations and economic power they enable — will live in other countries as well.
To read the original article: America in Need of National and Local Bandwidth Initiatives - Blair Levin and Ellen Satterwhite - Voices - AllThingsD
