Comparative broadband ideas

Susan Crawford stirs the pot, asking "How do you increase competition in the U.S. for broadband access? " She points out that:

The primary reason that Japan and Korea do so much better than the U.S. on any measurement of broadband (availability, penetration, price, speed) is that there is fierce competition in the market...

She goes on to identify three routes to broadband competion -- briefly facilities based competition, wholesale access, and local loop unbundling (go read her post). David Isenberg weighs in with two additional options:

4) Trust the incumbents. That's the current strategy. No further dignification needed.

5) Find new network architectures that do not have the barrier of high fixed costs. Mesh networks.

And Paul Kapustka adds some thoughts, "How much for the 'third pipe' for broadband?" asking the question "How much will it really cost to build the so-called "third pipe" of broadband? And might it just be cheaper to pay the telcos off, and buy their local network elements?" He points out Reed Hundt's guess that "it would cost $20 billion to bring fiber to all homes in America." So why not pay them off asks Paul...

Read Susan's post

Read David's post

Read Paul's post