Bad Storylines With a Long History

A well-known and frequent storyline is that the United States is lagging behind on some key measure of communications or computing infrastructure. That was said to be the case for mobile phone adoption, text messaging, home broadband speeds or coverage. 

Some still make that argument about U.S. home broadband, despite much data to the contrary. 

One frequently hears that U.S. home broadband is expensive or slow, for example. But in 2020, about 80 percent of U.S. households could buy gigabit per second service if they choose, looking only at coverage by cable TV networks. And speeds since then have started to ramp up into multi-gigabit ranges. 

By the end of 2025, for example, one major internet service provider, Comcast, will have enabled multi-gigabit speeds for 50 million homes, with plans to upgrade to symmetrical 10-Gbps service. Other ISPs likewise are boosting speeds into multi-gigabit ranges.  

"Compared to what?", one is tempted to ask. One frequently hears that home broadband also is expensive. Again, the question is “compared to what?”  Recent studies suggest that prices have been declining, even when not normalized for currency differences, inflation or cost of living differences between countries.  

That “lagging” storyline has been used about U.S. 5G. The point is that the storyline often is correct for a while, but never correct over the longer term. Just as important, any recitation of infrastructure performance is relatively non-correlated with the benefits such advanced platforms are always said to support: economic development; productivity growth; educational outcomes; innovation or jobs growth. 

We simply cannot measure the actual causal effects of better broadband. 

But the “U.S. is behind” storyline has been used often over the last several decades. Indeed, where it comes to plain old voice service, the U.S. is falling behind meme never went away.

In the past, it has been argued that the United States was behind, or falling behind, for use of mobile phones, smartphones, text messaging, broadband coverage, fiber to home, broadband speed or broadband price. 

In the case of mobile phone usage, smartphone usage, text message usage, broadband coverage or speed, as well as broadband prices, the “behind” storyline has proven incorrect, over time. 

Some even have argued the United States was falling behind in spectrum auctions. That clearly also has proven wrong. What such observations often miss is a highly dynamic environment, where apparently lagging U.S. metrics quickly are closed.