broadband

Content, some say, is king. Well, I am discontent. At the moment, struggling with RealPlayer and RealOne, I conclude that streaming video does not work. What passes for broadband in the United States — 200 to 800 kilobits per second — simply cannot handle video. The paucity of video education and entertainment on the Net thwarts the “life after television” Read More ›

Internet search firm Google can do no wrong. It is Amazon, eBay, Reuters, and Britannica all in one. It has low-end disruptive technology, a popular primary-color brand, an advertising model that works, and profits — nine quarters in a row. It entered a cluttered space late and still cleaned up. It even writes better modern poetry than humans. For these Read More ›

At the Federal Communications Commission these days, Commissioner Michael Powell and his one-time protege Kevin Martin have introduced a new slogan: “What, me worry?” While the communications sector suffers though a crisis of stifling overregulation, the commission seems ready to accept an outbreak of litigious new rules at the state and local levels. As the FCC prepares to meet again Read More ›

Original article While the U.S. has supplied a meager form of broadband to 20 million households (20% of the total), Korea has connected some 11 million households (73% of the Korean total) with real multimegabit pipes. While the U.S. pretends that the Internet boom was a scam and a delusion, the Koreans now run one-third of their economic transactions through Read More ›

With deflation under control, the case for a U.S. economic comeback gets stronger every day. But the conventional wisdom is that two of our most important and hardest hit sectors, technology and telecom, have so much capacity and so little confidence that it will be many years before they return to health. Telecom investment is down 75% since 2000, there Read More ›

The latest numbers show U.S. economic growth at 1.7 percent in 2001, about the same as during former President Clinton’s first three years in office and half the rate during the tech boom of the late 1990s. That sure beats recession, but today’s pace is well under the growth rate needed to fully fund Social Security, Medicare and other obligations Read More ›

From the Bandwith online newsletter of Discovery Institute: Defenders of current broadband regulatory policy note that broadband deployment to date tops the pace of key consumer technologies of recent decades. Read the rest of the online newsletter here.

From the “Other Comments” section The most severe burden on the economy right now is the depression in high technology and telecommunications–our two biggest drivers of productivity growth and most important sources of national wealth and security. The Clinton-Gore telecommunications policy, which is still in effect, has been an unmitigated disaster. The Clinton FCC’s heavy-handed re-regulation of the industry is Read More ›