Vviewpoints
DOI: 10.1145/2018396.2018406
economic and
Business Dimensions
What Gets
measured Gets Done

U.S. BroADBAnD iS terrible” has become a familiar meme. An article in Scien- tific American last year fret- ted, “our creaky Internet makes it harder for U.S. entrepreneurs to compete in world markets.” 4 Given the growing importance of broadband Internet connections to our work, civil society, and entertainment, a poor broadband infrastructure would indeed be cause for concern.

As it turns out, however, much of this concern is misplaced. It arises from a combination of the focusing on the wrong metrics, a misguided interpretation of consumer preferences, and a popular obsession with rankings. These misperceptions translate into misdirected, if well-intentioned, public policies that waste scarce resources.

Even worse, we do face real problems and issues with respect to broadband—a significant income-based digital divide, for example, and inefficient use of spectrum—but our singular focus on almost meaningless metrics and rankings distracts from more important issues.

adoption and speed
The most commonly compared broad-
band metrics are adoption and speed.
Conventional wisdom holds that both
are too low in the U.S. While it is im-
possible to know what the right levels
are, more careful analysis suggests
that neither is a problem.

each wired connection and average household sizes differ across countries. Countries with relatively large households, like the U.S. and Japan, are doomed to low per capita rankings. Consider that if every household in every OECD country had a wired broadband connection the U.S. would rank 17th or 18th on a per capita basis due to household size alone.

Moreover, broadband is available in the U.S. almost everywhere. Accord-