Next generation connectivity: a review of broadband internet transitions and policy from around the world

This report documents a study by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University to review international experiences with broadband and plans for next generation connectivity. The most prominent initial findings were that U.S. broadband performance in the past decade has declined relative to other countries and is no better than middling. The study expanded the well known observation with regard to penetration per 100 inhabitants, and examined and found the same to be true of penetration per household; subscriptions for mobile broadband; availability of nomadic access; as well as advertised speeds and actually measured speeds; and pricing at most tiers of service. The study further identified the great extent to which open access policies played a role in establishing competitive broadband markets during the first-generation broadband transition in Europe and Japan, and the large degree to which contemporary transpositions of that experience were being integrated into current plans to preserve and assure competitive markets during the next generation transition. The basic large economies of scale of communications networks have not been repealed by the transition to digital communications networks. The failure of twentieth-century natural monopoly regulation pushed advanced economies everywhere to experiment with different models of achieving competition. The two primary methods have been an effort to leverage cable and telephone convergence: fostering competition between these two platforms in the broadband market; and using new regulatory techniques to enable competition over shared or partially shared infrastructure. These have been complemented in a few places by public investment in the public-utility-like facilities. Many countries with roughly similar, market-based, democratic societies are facing these great challenges of transitioning to next generation connectivity. There is much to learn from the approaches and experiences of other countries facing this common challenge.