Why Net Neutrality Is So Important: The Telecom Industry And Monopoly Power

Yale Law Professor, Susan Crawford on Why U.S. Internet Access is Slow, Costly, and Unfair

If you think that the U.S. and Canada are global leaders in Internet broadband development, think again.  Despite recent improvements in broadband connectivity, the US and Canada still lag behind when compared to other developed nations. To quote FCC chairman Julius Genachowski, “We are at risk in the global race for economic leadership …curtailing Canada and the US from earning top positions in the global bandwidth race.”   Many other countries, notably South Korea and in Europe, France, Finland and the Netherlands are far ahead of us in terms of providing World Class Internet connectivity.  Genachowski has declared a Gigabit to the City campaign to dramatically upgrade domestic connectivity by 2015.  Regrettably, this is similar to Genachowski’s pronouncements on what he has termed, “Super-Wifi“, which I have explored in my earlier post on this blog.   It is the enormous monopoly political power of the telecommunication industry that is blocking the public interest and U.S. global economic leadership. Read more: http://mayo615.com/2013/02/08/urban-legend-of-free-wi-fi-for-the-masses-devil-in-the-details/ 

In the video interview with Bill Moyers, Ms. Crawford graphically makes the point that in Hong Kong and Seoul it is possible to get 500Mbit Internet connectivity via fiber link for $25 per month. Competition is so fierce that it is normally installed in one day.  By contrast, I ordered 100Mbit service from Shaw Cable here, which was priced at $100 per month.  Despite adding the charge to my monthly bill, Shaw was unable to demonstrate that they could deliver anything greater than 53Mbits, for which I now pay $50 per month.  Hong Kong offers 10 times the bandwidth at half the price.

Susan Crawford, former special assistant to President Obama for science, technology and innovation, and author of Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age, joins Bill Moyers to discuss how our government has allowed a few powerful media conglomerates to put profit ahead of the public interest — rigging the rules, raising prices, and stifling competition. As a result, Crawford says, all of us are at the mercy of the biggest business monopoly since Standard Oil in the first Gilded Age a hundred years ago.