U.S. broadband certified second-rate, unless you?re a Comcast VP

Comcast Executive Vice President and top lobbyist David Cohen told the world that the U.S. is the world’s best in broadband – apparently thanks in no small part to Comcast. Cohen was sounding forth in an op-ed in Comcast’s hometown newspaper, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and helping to immunize Comcast from any meaningful regulation.

But a few days later, DSL Reports’ Karl Bode pointed out that Cohen was, not to put too fine a point on it, untruthful. “Fortunately,” wrote Bode, “if you're a lobbyist, you don't have to remain grounded in the reality you and I are forced to inhabit.”

As Bode said, “You can go to pretty much any broadband statistic warehouse (from Akamai and the FCC to the OECD and OOkla's Net Index) and find that the United States is indisputably and utterly mediocre in nearly every single meaningful broadband metric, whether it's price, availability or speed.”

Cohen, like his counterpart at Time Warner, is disparaging of any attempt to offer truly high-speed Internet, by saying that consumers don’t need it. But, of course, it doesn’t matter; if you’re like most Americans, you get whatever you get. “The ‘competitive marketplace’ Cohen is paid to hallucinate doesn't exist for most users who, if lucky, only have the choice of one or two costly broadband providers,” said Bode.

As Bode concludes, “You can legitimately argue that things are improving in many regions – but to insist the United States is the global broadband leader is an obnoxious level of hubris, even for Comcast.”

U.S. the leader on broadband (Philly.com, May 24, 2013)

Comcast: U.S. The Global Leader on Broadband: Everything's Great, And You Don't Need 1 Gbps (DSL Reports, May 31, 2013)