[Paleopsych] Foreign Affairs: Thomas Bleha: Down to the Wire
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Thomas Bleha: Down to the Wire
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20050501faessay84311/thomas-bleha/down-to-the-wire.html?mode=print
From Foreign Affairs, May/June 2005
_________________________________________________________________
Summary: Once a leader in Internet innovation, the United States has
fallen far behind Japan and other Asian states in deploying broadband
and the latest mobile-phone technology. This lag will cost it dearly.
By outdoing the United States, Japan and its neighbors are positioning
themselves to be the first states to reap the benefits of the
broadband era: economic growth, increased productivity, and a better
quality of life.
Thomas Bleha, the recipient of an Abe Fellowship, is completing a book
on the race for Internet leadership. Previously, he was a Foreign
Service officer in Japan for eight years.
BROADBAND NATION?
In the first three years of the Bush administration, the United States
dropped from 4th to 13th place in global rankings of broadband
Internet usage. Today, most U.S. homes can access only "basic"
broadband, among the slowest, most expensive, and least reliable in
the developed world, and the United States has fallen even further
behind in mobile-phone-based Internet access. The lag is arguably the
result of the Bush administration's failure to make a priority of
developing these networks. In fact, the United States is the only
industrialized state without an explicit national policy for promoting
broadband.
It did not have to be this way. Until recently, the United States led
the world in Internet development. In the late 1960s and 1970s, the
Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency conceived of
and then funded the Internet. In the 1980s, the National Science
Foundation partially underwrote the university and college networks --
and the high-speed lines supporting them -- that extended the Internet
across the nation. After the World Wide Web and mouse-driven browsers
were developed in the early 1990s, the Internet was ready to take off.
President Bill 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. Even though these policies had their share
of detractors -- who claimed that excessive hype was used to sell
wasteful projects and even blamed the Clinton administration for the
dot-com bust -- they kept the United States in the forefront of
Internet innovation and deployment through the 1990s.
Things changed when the Bush administration took over in 2001 and set
new priorities for the country: tax cuts, missile defense, and, months
later, the war on terrorism. In the administration's first three
years, President George W. Bush mentioned broadband just twice and
only in passing. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) showed
little interest in opening home telephone lines to outside competitors
to drive down broadband prices and increase demand.
When the United States dropped the Internet leadership baton, Japan
picked it up. In 2001, Japan was well behind the United States in the
broadband race. But thanks to top-level political leadership and
ambitious goals, it soon began to move ahead. By May 2003, a higher
percentage of homes in Japan than in the United States had broadband,
and Japan had moved well beyond the basic connections still in use in
the United States. Today, nearly all Japanese have access to
"high-speed" broadband, with an average connection speed 16 times
faster than in the United States -- for only about $22 a month. Even
faster "ultra-high-speed" broadband, which runs through fiber-optic
cable, is scheduled to be available throughout the country for $30 to
$40 a month by the end of 2005. And that is to say nothing of Internet
access through mobile phones, an area in which Japan is even further
ahead of the United States.
It is now clear that Japan and its neighbors will lead the charge in
high-speed broadband over the next several years. South Korea already
has the world's greatest percentage of broadband users, and last year
the absolute number of broadband users in urban China surpassed that
in the United States. These countries' progress will have serious
economic implications. By dislodging the United States from the lead
it commanded not so long ago, Japan and its neighbors have positioned
themselves to be the first states to reap the benefits of the
broadband era: economic growth, increased productivity, technological
innovation, and an improved quality of life.
JAPAN'S HIGH-WIRE ACT
In the late 1990s, after a decade in the economic doldrums, Japan
lagged well behind the United States in Internet access and broadband
usage. But in mid-2000, Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori appointed the
Information Technology Strategy Council, headed by Sony Chairman
Nobuyuki Idei, which put together a bold plan to make Japan the
"world's leading IT [Information Technology] nation" by 2005. Just as
President Bush was taking office, a new Japanese "IT strategic
headquarters," headed by the prime minister and including the entire
cabinet, launched an "e-Japan strategy."
A central goal of that strategy was to bring better-than-basic
broadband to 40 million of Japan's 46 million households within five
years. The government hoped to make high-speed broadband available to
30 million households (through cable or digital subscriber lines
[DSL], which use phone wires) and ultra-high-speed broadband
connections to another 10 million (through fiber-optic cable). But
even Japanese officials were skeptical about reaching such ambitious
goals. And they understood that if they wanted even to come close,
they would have to enlist the private sector and create the proper
conditions.
The government quickly removed many regulatory obstacles. But because
cable providers were mostly mom-and-pop operations in rural areas,
officials realized that they would also have to create a highly
competitive private-sector environment. So the telecommunications
ministry came up with one of the most competitive regimes in the
world: it compelled regional telephone companies to grant outside
competitors access to all their residential telephone lines in
exchange for a modest fee (about $2 per line a month). The antitrust
authorities also ensured that these companies did not create obstacles
for their competitors, helping provide a level playing field.
The results were extraordinary. Yahoo! BB, created by Masayoshi Son's
venture-capital firm Softbank, and several other companies soon
entered the DSL market. Yahoo! BB began offering high-speed service
five times faster than current U.S. broadband for $22 a month. After
aggressive marketing forced its competitors to meet Yahoo! BB's price,
high-speed DSL subscriptions skyrocketed. By the end of 2002, such
access was available to many more than the 30 million Japanese
households the government had targeted. Within another five months, a
greater percentage of homes in Japan than in the United States had
access to broadband.
Thanks to the government's competitive framework, the speed of the DSL
service offered also rose dramatically, from 8 megabits per second in
2001 to 12, 26, and 40 megabits today. (The typical U.S. broadband
connection, whether DSL or cable, is still only 1.5 megabits per
second or slower.) Meanwhile, the price of monthly subscriptions
remained stable, even for 26-megabit access speeds, at about $22 per
month -- by far the lowest price in the world. By September 2004, 15.3
million Japanese subscribed to high-speed broadband. Moreover, for an
additional $5 per month, users of Yahoo! BB can also have Internet
telephone service. One in every 25 telephone calls in Japan is now
made over the Internet, and the number keeps growing.
Meeting the e-Japan strategy's second goal -- making ultra-high-speed
access (up to 100 megabits per second) available to ten million
Japanese households -- proved more difficult. Such connections permit
real-time video telephoning and video conferencing, telecommuting, and
rich multimedia options such as digital high-definition television,
interactive games, and five-minute movie downloads (instead of the
short, jerky video streaming that Americans are used to). But data
cannot be transmitted at such speeds through existing phone lines, and
new fiber-optic cable had to be laid throughout Japan. Having decided
that those lines, too, should be open to competition, the Japanese
authorities set out to devise significant incentives to persuade
Japanese companies to invest in new ultra-high-speed cable, especially
in rural areas.
The government used tax breaks, debt guaranties, and partial
subsidies. It allowed companies willing to lay fiber to depreciate
about one-third of the cost on first-year taxes, and it guaranteed
their debt liabilities. These measures were sufficient to ensure that
new fiber was laid in cities and large towns, but in rural areas,
municipal subsidies were also needed. Towns and villages willing to
set up their own ultra-high-speed fiber networks received a government
subsidy covering approximately one-third of their costs, so long as
those networks, too, were open to outside access.
These incentives created the right environment for the rapid
deployment of fiber networks. Again, other companies decided to
compete with regional telephone companies. The first, Usen, a
nationwide distributor of background music with its own fiber network,
was later joined by electric power companies. The resulting
competition quickly drove the price of an ultrafast fiber connection
down to $30 to $45 per month.
By the end of 2002, ultrafast fiber connections were available to more
than ten million households in Tokyo and Osaka; a primary goal of the
e-Japan strategy had been met. But the program -- and the government's
tax incentives - had also called for fiber lines to run directly to
homes and offices, and those connections proved economic only in
densely populated cities. In less settled areas, the government agreed
to provide tax incentives for fiber taken only as far as
neighborhoods, leaving it to individual users to decide how to
connect. Some have chosen -- and paid for -- a direct fiber
connection; others have opted for a cheaper but slower wireless
connection. By mid-2004, ultra-high-speed broadband was available to
more than 80 percent of Japan's citizens. With more than two million
subscribers, it can be said to have gone mainstream.
Fiber deployment is still moving quickly, and by the end of the year,
ultra-high-speed access will be available to virtually all Japanese
either directly or in their neighborhood. The program has been so
successful that the Japanese government has already set its sights
higher: in mid-2003, it decided to move beyond promoting access to
ultra-high-speed broadband to encouraging its use.
ON THE FRITZ
So far, no one in the Bush administration has offered a vision nearly
as compelling as Japan's. Although Michael Powell, the former chairman
of the FCC, spoke eloquently about the benefits of the coming "digital
broadband migration," he suggested no date for arrival in the promised
land. Moreover, he measured U.S. broadband progress by the
exceptionally slow 200-kilobit-per-second standard -- about
one-hundredth of the speed of typical broadband in Japan today.
According to that minimal standard, the United States has made some
progress: by mid-2004, more than 30 million American homes and offices
had signed up for basic broadband. But the service is expensive, very
slow, and rather unreliable. And despite these limitations, the Bush
administration has made little effort to encourage cheaper and more
robust high-speed broadband or to promote what many agree should be
the model for the future: a vast network of ultrafast fiber connecting
homes, offices, and neighborhoods.
Without vision or leadership, U.S. broadband policy drifted during the
Bush administration's first two years. The FCC tended to other
matters. The Department of Commerce insisted that the market, not the
government, should drive the rollout of broadband. Meanwhile, regional
telephone companies relentlessly tried to reverse some of the
promising measures that had been taken under President Clinton.
Continuing efforts they had launched after the 1996 Telecommunications
Act was passed, they lobbied legislators and sought court decisions to
overturn regulations that had forced them to open their residential
telephone lines to competitors.
Powell seemed not to mind this challenge; he preferred a somewhat
different approach anyway. He backed promising new technologies and
appeared less interested in the idea of promoting DSL competition for
residential telephone lines, even though the strategy had quickly
boosted access speeds and lowered prices in Japan and elsewhere.
Instead, he favored pitting the cable television industry against the
regional telephone industry.
Although in theory the strategy was viable -- telephone and cable
lines run in front of more than 75 percent of U.S. homes, and with
some technical upgrading, both can provide basic or high-speed
broadband -- many opposed it. Among the critics of the multiplatform
approach were Powell's predecessors at the FCC, who had done their
utmost to open residential telephone lines; many economists, who were
distrustful of duopoly competition; and consumer groups. Firms that
were already competing or that wanted to compete with regional
telephone companies in providing DSL service disagreed, too, as did
those that coveted access to cable television lines. Some even claimed
that this approach violated the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which,
they argued, required the sharing of residential telephone wires.
Still, when the FCC got around to reviewing broadband policy in
February 2003, it made convoluted decisions that left only the
multiplatform approach. Firms that were competing with regional
telephone companies to offer high-speed DSL service over telephone
lines would have only three more years of access. More significant for
the long run, the regional telephone companies would not have to share
with outside competitors the ultra-high-speed fiber lines they laid.
The following year, moreover, at the urging of regional telephone
companies, a court reaffirmed an earlier ruling that these companies
need not share their residential lines with DSL competitors. Although
many expected an appeal, higher levels of the administration chose not
to challenge the decision. Thus, broadband competition over
residential telephone lines was effectively killed. A proven strategy
had been lost.
Unfortunately, vigorous multiplatform competition is unlikely to
emerge soon. True, there are signs of competition between the
cable-modem broadband offered by cable television companies and the
DSL service offered by telephone companies. Comcast plans to provide
reliable Internet-based telephone service by doubling the speed of its
broadband offerings from 1.5 megabits to 3 megabits per second over
the next three years. Verizon and SBC Communications have dropped the
cost of their broadband service to about $30 a month. And to compete
directly with cable, some phone companies have begun to talk of
developing their own Internet telephone service and providing higher
broadband speeds to deliver video.
But these new services will probably appear only slowly, and
competition between the telephone and cable companies will remain
limited. The reasons are simple: cheap, high-speed broadband would
lead to widespread use of Internet telephones and thus threaten the
phone companies' lucrative voice-telephone business, and more
inexpensive broadband would multiply outside video and movie offerings
and endanger the cable companies' profitability. So, although both the
telephone and cable companies could provide cheap, high-speed
broadband if they chose to, they are not rushing to develop it.
The lack of strong incentives to encourage competition has, in other
words, doomed broadband in the United States to remain much slower and
more expensive than in Japan. Over the next five years, service is
likely to get only marginally faster and cheaper. Meanwhile, at
current transmission speeds, the next "killer" application -- Internet
telephone service -- will remain shaky and unreliable.
The development of ultra-high-speed fiber broadband service, which is
just beginning to appear in the United States, will also lag. Barely
more than 600,000 U.S. offices and homes had fiber connections at the
end of 2003. Verizon plans to bring fiber to 3 million of the United
States' 115 million households by the end of this year, with speeds
ranging from 5 to 30 megabits per second. SBC Communications, which
dominates the Midwest and Southwest markets, and BellSouth, the leader
in the Southeast, are also laying fiber, although at a much slower
rate. But they plan to stop the work after spending about $10 billion
(the estimated cost of bringing fiber close to about 10 million U.S.
homes and offices) and then examine whether further investment is
justified. As a result, the pace of rollout will be slow. And the
emergence of the substantial market needed to inspire innovative new
products and services for those with fiber Internet access remains
years away.
PLAYING PHONE LAG
The United States is even further behind Japan in wireless,
mobile-phone-based Internet access, even though that platform is
increasingly versatile and valuable. More and more, mobile phones can
be used for tasks traditionally performed on computers. Except for the
most office-oriented applications, such as word processing,
spreadsheets, and presentation software, mobile phones will soon be
used for nearly everything. In fact, many, including the Japanese, are
already planning for a convergence of wireline and wireless
technologies. By 2010, it is expected that such "ubiquitous networks"
will permit Japanese to access the Internet at high speeds from a
desktop, a laptop, a hand-held personal digital assistant, or a mobile
phone.
Japan now has a commanding lead in mobile-phone Internet technologies
and usage. With a nationwide cell-phone infrastructure in place by the
mid-1990s, Japan began the shift away from voice services to Internet
data services in early 1999. Then NTT DoCoMo introduced the "i-mode"
service, providing e-mail and customer access to over 60 Web sites
especially created for mobile-phone use. These sites offer news,
financial services, weather, personal ads, games, and much more. (This
service was recently introduced as "m-mode" in the United States.)
Competitors soon emerged, and customer response was stunning. By
December 2004, total mobile-phone subscriptions had reached 83.5
million in Japan (representing more than 60 percent of the
population), of which more than 72 million included Internet services.
The lesson the NTT DoCoMo leadership took from this experience was
that if you develop a new technology and market it, consumers will buy
it.
Following this philosophy, in October 2001, NTT DoCoMo launched a
third-generation videophone service. By December 2004, thanks to
thriving competition, Japanese videophone subscriptions had reached
nearly 26 million and were growing by nearly 190 percent a year. As
expected, this new market prompted notable mobile-phone innovation
such as global-positioning-linked advertising, television reception,
and music videos. Now Japan is testing fourth-generation, high-speed
broadband phones that can support high-definition-television
reception, movie downloads, more sophisticated games, and other
multimedia applications.
The Japanese government played a critical part in these developments.
It made well-considered and timely decisions to allot cost-free
spectrum for each new mobile-phone generation. In so doing, it gave up
badly needed revenue, but it retained full control over the terms of
licensing and the flexibility to reassign spectrum according to future
technological developments. In 2007, the government is expected to
announce new spectrum allocations for the fourth-generation broadband
mobile phones planned for 2010. Meanwhile, to protect consumers, the
government has set important conditions before granting a service
license, insisting that a carrier's network cover a certain area of
the country and guarantee a certain level of service (with minimal
dropped calls or interference, for example).
By contrast, U.S. mobile-phone policy was born of a colossal blunder
from which the industry has yet to recover fully. In the early 1980s,
after the management consultancy McKinsey estimated that there would
be little demand for mobile phones and a small prospect of
profitability, the FCC carved the United States into 734 tiny
mobile-phone districts. It handed out two provider licenses in each
district: one automatically went to the regional telephone company,
and the other was drawn by lottery. The resulting infrastructure was
cripplingly fragmented. It could not support nationwide calls, and
inefficiencies and expensive connection rates translated into sky-high
charges for customers.
Twenty years later, the Clinton administration made a belated effort
to encourage nationwide cellular networks. The government opened up
enough spectrum for six nationwide networks and invited bids. Thanks
to an imaginative on-line auction, it had sold off the spectrum for
$7.7 billion by early 1995. Although the networks that entered the
market still struggle to offer consistent quality, competition among
them sharply reduced the price of mobile-phone service and spawned
millions of new customers.
Since the Bush administration took office, however, the FCC has only
tinkered with spectrum policy around the edges. It has allowed
companies to trade bits of spectrum to round out their infrastructure
and opened modest amounts of spectrum to new wireless technologies
such as WiFi and WiMax. Meanwhile, although the number of would-be
national carriers dwindled from six to four and they expanded their
infrastructure, U.S. mobile-phone service remains awful by European,
let alone Japanese, standards. U.S. mobile phones can take digital
pictures and connect to the Internet, but the cellular infrastructure
is so spotty that even in large cities calls from an ordinary wireless
phone may not go through. Sadly, U.S. mobile-phone competition is
still based on price and the extent of a company's coverage rather
than the kind of advanced data services available in Japan and
elsewhere.
In 2004, third-generation mobile service came on the market in
selected U.S. cities. As in Japan, two somewhat different technologies
are being used, both of which require upgrading the existing
infrastructure. For the time being, third-generation mobile-phone
service is available in only eight cities. (The much slower, older
service can be had in several others.) Although the FCC has provided
some additional badly needed spectrum, the third-generation cellular
infrastructure remains painfully inadequate: most of the country has
no service at all. Meanwhile, the FCC has announced that it will
auction third-generation spectrum "as early as June 2006." Plans for
fourth-generation mobile service in the United States are well beyond
the horizon.
GETTING BACK ON-LINE
The United States is losing considerable ground to Japan and its
neighbors, and they will be the first to reap the economic benefits of
these technologies. It is these countries, rather than the United
States, that will benefit from the enhanced productivity, economic
growth, and new jobs that high-speed broadband will bring. In 2001,
Robert Crandall, an economist at the Brookings Institution, and
Charles Jackson, a telecommunications consultant, estimated that
"widespread" adoption of basic broadband in the United States could
add $500 billion to the U.S. economy and produce 1.2 million new jobs.
But Washington never promoted such a policy. Last year, another
Brookings economist, Charles Ferguson, argued that perhaps as much as
$1 trillion might be lost over the next decade due to present
constraints on broadband development. These losses, moreover, are only
the economic costs of the United States' indirection. They do not take
into account the work that could have been done through telecommuting,
the medical care or interactive long-distance education that might
have been provided in remote areas, and unexploited entertainment
possibilities.
The large broadband-user markets of Northeast Asia will attract the
innovation the United States once enjoyed. Asians will have the first
crack at developing the new commercial applications, products,
services, and content of the high-speed-broadband era. Although many
large U.S. firms, such as Cisco, IBM, and Microsoft, are closely
following developments overseas and are unlikely to be left behind,
the United States' medium-sized and smaller firms, which tend to
foster the most innovation, may well be.
The Japanese and the South Koreans will also be the first to enjoy the
quality-of-life benefits that the high-speed-broadband era will bring.
These will include not only Internet telephones and videophones, but
also easy teleconferencing, practical telecommuting, remote diagnosis
and medical services, interactive distance education, rich multimedia
entertainment, digitally controlled home appliances, and much more.
Given these costs and losses, it is clear that broadband is critically
important to the U.S. economy and the United States' international
competitiveness and that it must become a national priority. In the
run-up to the election in November, President Bush finally addressed
the issue, promising the electorate "universal, affordable access" to
broadband technology by 2007 and "plenty" of carriers to choose from
"as soon as possible thereafter." To reach these goals, he expressed
confidence in new broadband service over power lines, promising
wireless technologies, such as WiFi hotspots and longer-distance
WiMax, and unspecified tax credits.
But real progress will require more than these measures. To move
forward, the administration should quickly take two steps. First, it
should explain clearly the profound ways in which broadband will
change work, learning, and leisure in the United States. Identifying
such substantial benefits would energize providers and encourage
potential users to get the most from the Internet. It would also give
the private sector confidence in the nation's direction and a degree
of business certainty.
Second, the administration should push the President's Information
Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC), a group of private-sector IT
leaders and academics, to play a key leadership role in advancing
broadband deployment. Involving the private sector and prominent
academics in broadband leadership is essential given the pace of
technological advance and today's dynamic business environment.
One of the PITAC's first tasks should be to set out bold long-term
goals for the deployment of broadband in the United States, carefully
distinguishing three different levels of service: basic broadband (at
1.5 to 3 megabits per second), for slow downloads from and uploads to
the Internet and Internet telephones; high-speed broadband (at 10 to
30 megabits per second), for Internet reception of digital
high-definition television and other video uses; and ultra-high-speed
fiber broadband (at 100 megabits per second), for the highest-end
applications.
The PITAC should consider how to redeem President Bush's pledge to
provide, by 2007 (or 2010, at the latest), basic broadband access to
all Americans at an affordable price ($20 to $25 per month should be
the goal). To reach everyone, the effort would require developing a
combination of technologies: wireline, wireless, and satellite. The
United States' vastness no doubt complicates the task, but it is no
excuse for not undertaking the job. (Canada, the world's
second-largest state, also ranks second in global broadband
connectivity.) If necessary, tax credits should be granted to
companies that help reach rural and underserved areas.
By 2010, the PITAC should also aim to make available high-speed
broadband access to two-thirds of all U.S. households for $30 to $35
per month. The key to reaching this goal is the government's taking
the lead in creating a strongly competitive environment for DSL,
cable, power line, and newer wireless broadband technologies. The more
these technologies compete among themselves, the sooner Americans will
have access to faster, cheaper broadband service. And with enough
competition, there should be no need for government financial
incentives.
The PITAC should also do its best to promote ultra-high-speed fiber
access for one-third of all U.S. households at $40 to $45 per month by
2010. It should use its convening power to bring to the table all the
stakeholders in the millions of miles of unused fiber that run below
U.S. city streets. The purpose of such discussions would be to
encourage the widespread use of existing fiber by analyzing the
reasons for its current disuse and seeking ways to make it viable. The
PITAC might also recommend legislation to permit the National Science
Foundation to provide matching grants to bring fiber to the campuses
of colleges and universities across the country. This program could be
modeled on the highly successful National Science Foundation Network
(NSFnet) project that brought the Internet to campuses in the 1980s.
Finally, by 2010, the PITAC should suggest ways to create a
comprehensive, nationwide, third-generation cellular infrastructure.
With such mobile phones Americans would, at long last, be able to talk
with one another regardless of where they are. A first step might be
for the PITAC to bring stakeholders together to sift through the many
economic, legal, regulatory, community, and environmental issues that
currently stand in the way. Another would be for the government to
begin considering now the requirements of fourth-generation wireless
technologies. The new policy would also anticipate the likely
convergence of wireline and wireless that will provide the anytime,
anywhere, any-device connections to the Internet that have long been
predicted. For starters, however, the government should take steps to
ensure that by 2007 the hundred largest cities in the United States
will no longer be riddled with dead spots and that third-generation
mobile phones will be available in select rural areas as well.
Reaching these goals will require top political leadership and
consistent, purposeful government policies, as well as private-sector
action. It will be the Bush administration's task to tell Americans
how broadband could change their lives, provide the leadership needed
to set out and reach specific goals, and fashion the competitive
market framework that will foster fast progress. Another four years of
drifting would likely leave less than one-half of the nation with
somewhat cheaper but slow broadband service, a substantial portion
preferring to stick with dial-up, and a significant share with no
affordable access to broadband at all.
Unfortunately, it could take half a dozen years (or more) to reach
these goals, and meeting even that timetable would take commitment,
resourcefulness -- and luck. In the meantime, the world leaders in
broadband and mobile-phone service will continue to move ahead: Japan
is already expected to have a comprehensive nationwide
ultra-high-speed fiber infrastructure, as well as an entirely new
third-generation mobile-phone infrastructure, in place by the end of
the year. As usage grows, Japan and its neighbors will be the first to
reap the substantial economic, innovative, and quality-of-life
benefits of their enlightened leadership. It is now time for the
United States to summon the will to catch up with them, so that
Americans, too, can look forward to the rewards of the broadband
economy.
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