Financial Times has an article called The broadband numbers racket, by former FCC chief economist Thomas Hazlett, now a professor of law and economics at George Mason University.
Hazlett points out that too many people use superficial selection of statistics to bolster questionable policy positions.
Cherry picking broadband penetration numbers to imply the US is slipping into Third World status is fine for a quickie term paper, at least if Wikipedia goes down. But adults ought sort through the multi-dimensional complexity of the real world –
The article refers to a paper published in the Review of Network Economics [
pdf, 138KB]. The paper looks at different models of regulation on broadband networks and among the findings, it states
incentives for network investment decline when network owners lose a set of valuable property rights.
Both articles – from Financial Times and Network Economics – make an interesting read.