Susan Crawford posted a laundry list of countries that have an industrial policy (she prefers economic policy) involving the Internet:

• South Korea: “the government said where they wanted to go, invested in research and development, [and invested money and made micro loans], and they’re now seeing 70% of adults (not just kids) involved in online social networks. Very high speeds, very low cost.”
• Hong Kong: “also not embarrassed to talk about economic policy and telecom.”
• India: its “government ‘proposes to offer all citizens of India free, high-speed broadband connectivity by 2009.’”
• Japan: Have I mentioned lately that almost every Japanese can get broadband, and usually it’s ten times faster than what we can get stateside?

Now the point here isn’t whether the specific country government policies are good, bad, etc. Continue reading →