Cohen: Broadband Act First Step for Internet for All

Stating "the United States is stuck with a 20th century Internet in the 21st century," CWA President Larry Cohen urged Congress this week to establish a national Internet policy that will improve the quality, availability, and affordability of broadband service to every community.

In testimony before the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, Cohen spoke in support of a discussion draft of the Broadband Census of America Act and called the legislation a significant first step in bringing high speed Internet access to every American.

"We desperately need a national Internet policy to reverse the fact that our nation, the country that invented the Internet, has fallen to 16th in the world in high-speed Internet penetration," he said.

"Unfortunately, we don't know the full extent of our problem because our data is so poor. We don't know where high-speed networks are deployed, how many households and small businesses connect to the Internet, at what speed, and how much they pay. Without this information, we can't craft good policy solutions. So we continue to fall farther behind," he told the subcommittee.

Cohen urged lawmakers to require the FCC to conduct a national survey of broadband service in the U.S. to determine the price, speed, and availability of broadband services for customers in urban, rural, and suburban areas. "This information will help policymakers determine whether Internet services are affordable, which communities are being left behind, and where to target policy solutions."

Average download speeds in the United States – 1.9 megabits per second according to a recent survey by CWA – are dwarfed by speeds available to Internet users in virtually every other industrialized country. In Japan, average download speeds are 61 megabits per second, in South Korea, 45 megabits per second, and in Sweden, 18 megabits per second.

Cohen urged lawmakers not to overlook the importance of setting reasonable standards for upload speeds. "Consumers' ability to be able to quickly transmit important medical, educational and financial information will become more essential in the future," he said.

He also called on lawmakers to adopt five principles that underscore CWA's "Speed Matters" policy. These call for establishing a national high-speed Internet policy, affordable and universal service accessible to every community, raising the FCC's definition of "high-speed" Internet to 2 megabits per second downstream and 1 megabit per second upstream, guaranteeing an open non-discriminatory Internet for all, and public Internet policies that protect the interests of consumers and workers.