DC think tank tells Americans that their broadband is really great

Despite the fact that Americans are paying more per megabit than their counterparts in many European and Asian cities—a new report published by a Washington DC-based think tank says that broadband policy in America is totally acceptable.

The 76-page report (PDF) released Tuesday says that people who disagree with these findings “are holders of a particular ideology or economic doctrine, which is Neo-Keynesian, populist economic thinking in this instance.” Sure, the authors of this report—researchers at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF)—say that there’s “room for improvement in selected areas,” but they affirm that the “state of American broadband is good and getting better.”

Why would they come to that conclusion? After all, the ITIF’s conclusions are in contrast to previous findings published not just on Ars, but also by tech policy luminaries including, as the ITIF's report admits, “Susan Crawford, David Cay Johnston, Nicholas Economides, and Tim Wu and by think tanks and advocacy groups such as Free Press, the Open Technology Institute at New America Foundation, Harvard’s Berkman Center, and Public Knowledge.”

Those individuals and groups definitely have something to say in response.

“The ITIF report turns our national broadband policy into a self-esteem exercise, on par with one of those contests where everyone wins an award,” Harold Feld, of Public Knowledge, said in an e-mail to Ars. “'Hooray! We tried real hard and we're not so bad after all.' But this isn't summer camp. This is our digital future. If we want a world-class broadband infrastructure, we need to stop coming up with explanations for why things aren't really so bad after all and start dealing with the real problems right in front of our eyes.”


http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/02/dc-think-tank-says-state-of-us-broadband-is-good-and-getting-better/