South By North Strategies, Ltd.

A new report from the Brookings Institution compares broadband access in the United States to conditions found in other countries. The author also proposes several goals for the United States to adopt:

The United States should have three goals: 1) raising the household broadband adoption rate to 90 percent by 2020, 2) aiming for 100 Mbps of speed (similar to Australia and Finland) in order to facilitate new applications in education, health care, smart energy grids, public safety, video streaming and high definition television, games, video conferencing, civic engagement, and electronic government, and 3) improving data collection on broadband speeds and availability so consumers know what speeds they are paying for and policymakers have better adoption and availability information on which to base policy decisions.