Paul Krugman examines how far behind the U.S. is in every metric of Internet speed and broadband uptake, and why:

What happened to America’s Internet lead? Bad policy. Specifically, the United States made the same mistake in Internet policy that California made in energy policy: it forgot — or was persuaded by special interests to ignore — the reality that sometimes you can’t have effective market competition without effective regulation.

You see, the world may look flat once you’re in cyberspace — but to get there you need to go through a narrow passageway, down your phone line or down your TV cable. And if the companies controlling these passageways can behave like the robber barons of yore, levying whatever tolls they like on those who pass by, commerce suffers.

— The French Connections, Paul Krugman, New York Times, 22 July 2007

Krugman reminds us that as recently as 2001 the U.S. was far ahead. And then he gets specific. Continue reading →