Discourse.net: US Falling Behind, Doesn't Even Know It

Michael at Discourse.net notes:

Susan Crawford had a visit from a Taiwanese legislator:

In Taiwan, internet access is virtually free.

At one point, he noted that Taiwan watches Japan and Korea very closely and tries to compete with them in making low-cost broadband access available. They're going great guns, so Taiwan is too.

He asked me whether the US was watching Europe closely to see what they were doing -- we talked about northern Europe, and the UK, and I told him about the European Commission's rejection of Deutsche Telekom's plans. "Aren't they your competitors?" he said.

I said that as far as I could tell the US doesn't care what Europe is doing with broadband access policy. We don't feel that they're competitors of ours. We're content to slide farther and farther behind, while feeling confident that we're leading the world.

Actually, this could be said about a lot more than just DSL and telecommunications policy....