US Internet speeds lag their international peers, but some cities are taking action

Science Friday
Fiber optic cables

In the US, the median price for an internet connection is about $55 a month. The median speed for downloads is about 18 megabits per second (MBps) and a paltry 4 MBps for uploading.

In Hong Kong, Paris, Seoul or Tokyo, consumers can get speeds up to 1000 MBps — both download and upload — for less than $40 a month.

“It is astounding,” says Susan Crawford, the author of Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age. “We should be looking at the rest of the world in the rearview mirror, but we’re not.”

This is not accidental, Crawford says. It is a direct result of policy: 10 years ago, the US deregulated the communications sector in the belief that competition would protect American consumers; no oversight or any other type of rule was needed.

Fast forward to 2014, Crawford says, and we find the big companies have divided up the markets such that “for about 80 percent of Americans their only choice for a high-capacity internet connection is their local cable monopoly. A lot of Americans are left out and we’re all paying much more than we should be for speeds and capacity that are much less than the global standard.”

On November 4, high-speed internet was on the ballot in some areas of the country. In Colorado, for example, seven communities passed resolutions saying they want to be allowed to provide Internet service on their own.

“Just as electrification was the big policy issue back on the ballot back in the 1930s, today high-speed Internet access is key,” Crawford says. “It’s crucial. It’s a utility — and a bunch of towns all across America are fighting for the right to make the choice themselves whether to have very high speed Internet access that’s provided or organized by the city.”

It is likely to be tough going: 20 states in the US have passed laws, under pressure from Internet providers, that make it either impossible or very difficult for cities to make this decision for themselves. “That’s what happened in Colorado, and now cities are fighting back,” Crawford says.

The Open Technology Institute recently released a report called the Cost of Connectivity. Surprisingly, small cities like Chattanooga and Kansas City have the fastest, cheapest internet. None of our so-called global cities — Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Chicago — have comparable speed and value.

“Instead,” Crawford says, “it’s cities where the mayor and the town have decided to either use their electrical utility and put fiber on top of it — which is what Chattanooga did — or to build an altogether new fiber network, which is what Lafayette, Louisiana did.”

Strong leadership is the only thing that will break the power of the monopolies, Crawford insists, because companies like Comcast, AT&T and Verizon will “throw all kinds of resources at making change impossible.” In fact, mayors from cities across the US are now joining together in a group called Next Century Cities to push for high-speed, gigabit-level fiber-optic networks.

These leaders will need political cover and strong citizen support, because they are going to be tearing up the streets and putting in fiber, Crawford says. Cities in Asia and Europe did this decades ago, but the US is falling farther and farther behind.

Take a look at Sweden, Crawford says. It is just as thinly populated as the big expanses of the United States, but hundreds of small towns have put in fiber. “It turns out the economics really work. As long as there is someone there to pick up the wire at the end, in their home, it pays for itself in a few years,” she adds.

In the US, however, there are four or five big companies that don’t see it that way, Crawford says. “The big companies who are reaping the rewards in America have no interest in further extending their networks and are just making huge profits. This is not evil; it’s just how a private company does its business.”

And their political sway is such that they make it difficult for any other argument to even be made. “I’ve given up on the federal level at this point,” Crawford says, “But cities are able to see the effect on their citizens and can use their local businesses to gather political cover to make that argument.”

Mayors are starting to pay more attention to the issue — and, as Crawford points out, “mayors get jealous.”

“This is a truly bipartisan issue,” she insists. “You look at Colorado — all over the country — it doesn’t matter if you’re left or right. The private market needs this infrastructure in order to operate. Mayors are fed up and their citizens are fed up. So this issue is really catching fire right now.”

A previous version of this story incorrectly referred to Megabytes per second, when the unit of Internet speed measurement is actualy Megabits per second.

This story is based on an interview that aired on PRI's Science Friday with Ira Flatow

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