U.S. falling further behind in global broadband rankings
Sadly, the average person doesn't think that broadband is such a serious thing because, people only think of it as making web pages load fast or making music/video downloads faster. However, a good, healthy broadband infrastructure is needed for other important facets such as business or health care delivery.
However, because we don't think in these terms, we don't push to treat broadband as the important piece of our country's infrastructure that it truly is.
This is only more obvious when you compare the United States to various other industrialized nations around the world and realize that we are horribly behind.
In a study done by the Communications Workers of America, it was determined that the average broadband speed in this country is 5.1 megabits/second. That makes our average twice as slow as Sweden, three times slower than Japan and a whopping 4 times slower than South Korea. In fact, it is estimated that it will take the U.S. 15 years to get to the level South Korea is at today.
No, certainly, in some parts of the country, there are people with blazing fast broadband. But, in a lot of areas, the offerings are few and far between and connections are slow. What this means is that the connections we have are inadequate "for the needs of in-home medical monitoring, distance learning programs, or to run a modern business from home."
As you can see, this is not just about how fast you can "tweet" or leave a message on a friend's Faceboook wall, We are talking about negatively impacting important endeavors such as education and small business.
Again, I'll say it -- broadband is infrastructure. Let's focus on beefing it up and it will pay big dividends down the road.
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