When it comes to reporting global broadband rankings, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has become to Bush administration telecom officials what Al Jezeera’s coverage of the war on terrorism is to the White House.
Indeed, it has not been unusual for Bush’s telecom triumvirate-Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin, National Telecommunications and Information Administration head John Kneuer and State Department communications policy czar David Gross-to find themselves on the defensive where OECD’s broadband statistics are concerned. It is a constant, frustrating public-relations battle and a seemingly endless cause of embarrassment for the administration.
Back in July 2005, Martin took issue with the United States’ then-No. 12 ranking by OECD in a Wall Street Journal column. Martin said broadband deployment was his highest priority and proclaimed “we are well on our way to accomplishing the president’s goal of universal, affordable access to broadband by 2007.”
Then, as now, Bush telecom policy-makers maintain the U.S. is the global broadband leader. They point out the U.S. is tops in broadband connections, despite having a far greater population with more densely urban and widely dispersed rural areas than countries ahead of it on the OECD list. That hasn’t stopped Democrats at the FCC or in Congress from pointing to the OECD list or the even lower U.S. placement on the International Telecommunication Union’s digital opportunity index in decrying America’s technological fall from grace and the country’s lack of a national broadband policy. In addition, Democrats counter that Bush administration broadband statistics are artificially bolstered by outdated and skewed data collection criteria.
Drop in rank
When the OECD’s latest broadband report dropped the U.S. from 12th to 15th on the world stage, it opened the Bush administration to more of the same.
Michael Copps, one of the two Democrats on the GOP-led FCC and a vocal critic of America’s broadband stature, did not let the opportunity slip by when commenting on the agency’s recent 700 MHz action and the prospect for a hybrid national public-safety/commercial wireless license in the band.
“Certain it is that we desperately need a third broadband pipe to challenge the current telco-cable duopoly in our metropolitan areas, as well as a first broadband pipe in many rural areas. It is this duopoly and lack of rural availability that have caused the United States to continue its slide in the world when it comes to broadband-witness the OECD ranking that came out just the other day taking the United States from 12th to 15th among the nations,” Copps said. “And as I have noted before, I don’t think any of us should be relying on wireless companies owned by wireline broadband providers to provide this much-needed competition. So coming up with a good, progressive auction strategy is a good step forward-maybe one that can actually produce a new entrant into the broadband market-but don’t mistake what we are talking about today for anything like the sort of comprehensive broadband strategy that our country so desperately needs. I guess that will await another day.”
This time around, the Bush administration decided to go right to the source to try to set the record straight in diplomatic-like terms.
The State Department’s Gross wrote Angel Gurria, secretary general of the OECD in Paris, to suggest the organization would be well served by rethinking its methodology in compiling broadband penetration statistics-particularly the omission of non-subscribers. The letter was posted on NTIA’s Web site, accompanied by an NTIA fact sheet on U.S. broadband.
“The United States has more Internet and broadband users and more Wi-Fi hot spots than any other country in the world despite larger land mass and more rural areas than most,” Gross stated. “The total number of Wi-Fi hot spots in the United States, for example, is estimated to be about 50,000, many on college campuses, reflecting the fact college communities around the United States are enjoying unbounded and unprecedented access to broadband services. As a result, the OECD analysis would seem to exclude literally millions of student-age users of broadband services in the United States and presumably elsewhere because they are not ‘subscribers’ under OECD terms.”
Gross also said OECD does not account for millions of government workers and employees at large corporations who have broadband access.
Likewise, Gross said the organization’s figures do not reflect the growth of municipal Wi-Fi networks and their beneficiaries.
