The $200 Billion Rip-Off
This is part three of my explanation of how America went from having the fastest and cheapest Internet service in the world to what we have today — not very fast, not very cheap Internet service that is hurting our ability to compete economically with the rest of the world.
Context & Ripple Effects
Bob Cringely's third installment in his PBS series on American broadband argues the country traded away its position as having the world's fastest and cheapest Internet access, and attaches a number to it: a $200 billion alleged rip-off of American telecom customers. The claim arrives six weeks after USA Today reported that U.S. Net access is not all that speedy, converting a nagging speed-gap story into an accounting grievance with a headline figure.
What makes the piece more than a rant is its framing: deteriorating service is presented as an economic-competitiveness problem, not a consumer nuisance — an argument aimed at whoever sets telecom policy, and one that gives municipal and alternative network advocates a ready-made talking point.
First-order effects
- American broadband subscribers are cast as the injured party — paying, by the column's account, some $200 billion above fair value for service that has slipped from world-leading to middling.
- Incumbent telephone and cable operators now face a popular, quantified narrative that they collected for infrastructure that never materialized at promised speeds or prices.
Second-order effects
- The competitiveness framing raises the stakes for policymakers: a connectivity gap becomes grounds for regulatory scrutiny or for cities and regions to weigh building their own networks rather than waiting on the incumbents.
- Any operator marketing faster tiers gains a wedge against rivals stuck defending the status quo, since the column's argument makes 'not very fast, not very cheap' a shared indictment of the whole market rather than one carrier.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, US broadband drifts toward a structural fight over who builds access networks — incumbents, cities, or new entrants — with the $200-billion-style audit becoming the standard rhetorical weapon in that fight.
- Persistent international speed-and-price comparisons threaten to turn broadband from a market question into a standing national industrial-policy question, with the burden of proof shifting onto carriers.
The trend: US broadband is moving from a consumer-gripe story to a national competitiveness issue, as quantified overpayment claims give critics of the incumbent telco-cable model a concrete rallying figure.