Is there a lefty POV on connectivity

This started on the Snelling Center Estate Blog http://snelling-e-state.blogspot.com/

After following the link in Mr. Wood-Lewis's comment, I'd like to suggest that the use of "people in "People are calling this study into question" might be a bit broad. Let's look at the claim made by the author Eric Krangel, on (http://www.alleyinsider.com/Eric_Krangel). His headlines are typically inflammatory but his central point is…

<i>But read the fine print: The report, produced by something called Speed Matters, is at best a half-hearted guess at figuring out broadband rates. And at worse, it's something else: An attempt by the Communications Workers of America, which bankrolled the study, to lobby for a "National High-Speed Internet Policy" -- which would presumably include all kinds of work for unionized labor.* […*]We're not reflexively anti-government policy, by the way, nor do we have a problem with unions -- at least not across the board. And like we said, we'd certainly like to hop on the Net at the same speeds they do in, say, Korea. We just appreciate truth in advertising.</i>

The original Bradbury article (http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/blog/vttech/2008/08/vermont-falling-further-behind-can-you.html) didn't expose the union connection, it's true, although the link to the report has CW appended to the file name. In retrospect, I'm not sure that is at all intuitive. I suspect it's a sin of omission, rather that the sin of commission you seem to be suggesting.

There are three kinds of statistics; lies, damn lies and Internet Stats. Take a look at http://www.upsdell.com/BrowserNews/stat.htm, I've been sending Web students there for years. The stats here are "collected" by widgets on high-traffic web pages. On the Internet, most samples are self-selected. There is a ton of conventional market research (http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/Intc0203.pdf, http://www.newmedia.org/articles/9/1/Home-Broadband-Penetration-up-40-in-Past-Year/Page1.html ) but this begs the question.

Did the corporate-centric Reagan era telcom deregulation environment inhibit the build-out of high-speed? Is the (lack of) competition for wireless and backbone dollars responsibility for the appearance that we lag so far behind the EU, Pacific Rim and (even) the developed African continents. That we allow the very concept of a locked handset and Cable construction pass-alongs to residential customers stuns many? Do the communications workers have a point (separate from Marxism 101) that, without collective outrage, we are destined to check our local population density to see if we are worthy of the network providers' attention?

.dw