Evidently, the government has had a broadband strategy for the last four years, a report from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration says.
The report was released yesterday, almost as if to rebut Tuesday’s Educause event which lambasted the lack of government policy on broadband by lauding the efforts of the Bush Administration to proliferate broadband through deregulation.
“Networked Nation: Broadband in American, 2007” highlights the growth in the availability of broadband with large percentages (i.e., fiber-optic lines growing a whopping 789 percent from 2003 to 2006, or the number of “broadband lines” growing 1,100 percent from 2000 to 2006).
However, as Ars Technica points out, the report fails to broach the subject of lagging U.S. broadband rankings.
The general picture given in the National Telecommunications and Information Administration report is that the United States has improved broadband penetration and infrastructure since 2000 because of market competition. That doesn’t necessarily contradict Educause’s stance that the U.S. is far behind other countries that have adopted broadband regulation. —Hurley Goodall
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