Much is made these days about America’s fall from grace in broadband deployment, having supposedly dropped from fourth to 13th place on the Bit Parade.
Worse yet, note the hand-wringers, is the steady decline in U.S. undergraduate engineering and science degrees relative to the rest of the world. And so, we are doomed as a great nation, unless we can regain our technological supremacy.
The constant refrain has since evolved into a mantra. You hear it everywhere. It is regular fare on Capitol Hill, at think thanks and on editorial pages. There is, in fact, truth to these trends and even legitimacy to concerns they arouse.
In the May/June issue of Foreign Affairs, Thomas Bleha, a former foreign service officer in Japan, asserts the “[broadband] lag is arguably the result of the Bush administration’s failure to make a priority of developing these networks. In contrast, writes Bleha, “President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore showed the way by promoting the Internet’s commercialization, the National Infrastructure Initiative, the Telecommunications Act of 1996, and remarkable e-commerce, e-government and e-education programs. The private sector did the work, but the government offered a clear vision and strong leadership that created a competitive playing field for early broadband providers.”
The result, laments Bleha, is the loss of benefits such as productivity, innovation and improved quality of life.
What about all this?
It is undeniable the Bush crowd is not nearly as animated about telecom and high-tech as the previous administration. Of course, no amount of White House cheerleading or policy-wonking could have changed the ugly scene after the over-speculated, dot-com bubble burst.
Some nations that have jumped ahead of us in broadband and wireless deployment/innovation happen to pursue industrial policy. That’s really not our style. Strong, free democracies with free markets tend to be the best breeding grounds for innovation. Broadband deployment is only one benchmark-albeit an important one-of progress. Other aspects of broadband-leading countries leave much to be desired.
There are a couple of practical points to consider as well. If we support enlightened political and economic reform around an increasingly connected, information-rich world, doesn’t it stand to reason that beneficiaries of this paradigm shift might eventually do things and think things as well as-or even better-than us. Isn’t that the point?
Lastly, in a sad ironic twist, one might argue the United States is sputtering in broadband and wireless precisely because we’ve had it so good for so long with a world-class landline telephone network that is aging fast-too fast for policy-makers. Still, the sky has yet to fall.
