There’s No Business with Slow Business

Back to my fascination with math scores among high schoolers and the prognosis for longer-term productivity. The December 6, 2010 Wall Street Journal reviewed the last PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) standardized test – in 2009 – of the top nations’ high school averages for 15-year-olds: “Mathematics was the category where the U.S. lagged most, performing below average compared with students in other nations. U.S. students had an average score of 487, while the OECD [Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the group that sponsors the PISA test] average score was 496. The U.S. math score in 2006 was 474 compared with an average that year of 498. Seventeen other industrialized countries performed better on average.” South Korea, with a math score of 546, sat atop the list. Don’t worry, we’re cutting school budgets, so we won’t have to be worried about being eighteenth anymore; we can have an even wider distance from the top next time around.

But South Korea, according to the CIA World Factbook for 2010,where the per capita income (the technical measurement is gross domestic product per capita) is a whopping $30,000 a year, is rising fast; the United States is still higher (at $47,200), but expect Korea to catch up and pass us in the not-too-distant future as their productivity is skyrocketing. There used to be more polarization of the rich and the rest in Korea that that in the U.S., but that statistic has reversed of late.

Economists have also discovered broadband Internet penetration as a new leading economic indicator. But what is broadband? “Broadband is often called ‘high-speed’ access to the Internet, because it usually has a high rate of data transmission. In general, any connection to the customer of 256 kbit/s or greater is more concisely considered broadband Internet access… The US Federal Communications Commission definition of broadband is 4.0 Mbit/s. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has defined broadband as 256 kbit/s in at least one direction and this bit rate is the most common baseline that is marketed as ‘broadband’ around the world.” Wikipedia.

We currently have about 1.9 billion Internet subscribers around the world, and about 37% of those have broadband by most definitions. But once again, Korea is kicking butt and leading the world in broadband access, according to Gartner, a leading research firm: “Korea topped the … study with 93% penetration in 2007, with this figure expected to hit 97 percent in 2012… Next on the list are the Netherlands and Hong Kong…” ZDNetAsia. It’s pretty clear that nations with small rural populations and tightly compacted massive urban centers (like Korea, Hong Kong, Netherlands and Singapore) have an easier time wiring for such access than countries with wide open spaces and large and scattered rural communities. The U.S. is stuck at 60%, a wall that seems difficult to climb because of our vast physical land mass. But the Obama administration has prioritized a change, and America’s farmers are high on the list of intended beneficiaries, so high in fact that it is the Department of Agriculture that has taken on the role of extending broadband access into our rural areas.

The August 22^nd Washington Post looks at the specifics of our problem: “As many as one in 10 Americans can’t get Internet connections fast enough to engage in such common online activities as watching video or teleconferencing, and two thirds of schools have broadband connections that are too slow to meet their needs, the Commerce Department reported earlier this year… Last year, the Federal Communications Commission released a national broadband plan that set a goal of hooking up 100 million U.S. households to broadband connections of 100 megabits per second by 2020. That’s at least 20 times faster than many existing home connections… About 28 percent of rural America, or nearly 19 million people, lack access to Internet with speeds of three megabits per second or faster, compared with only 3 percent, or 7.2 million people, in non-rural areas, according to an FCC report titled ‘Bringing Broadband to Rural America.’”

Well, help may be on the way, unless of course Congress kills this productivity-boosting initiative: “Telecommunications companies in 16 states [with vast territory to cover] will share more than $103 million in federal funding to help expand broadband Internet access to those areas of rural America that haven’t been reached by the high-speed service or are underserved, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced [August 22^nd]… Policymakers, public interest groups and telecom companies are seeking to bridge the digital divide by reaching even the most remote pockets of the U.S. with broadband internet, hoping to improve economic and educational opportunities there.

“‘There’s a big gap that remains between rural and urban areas because it’s just hard [for carriers] to make a business case in rural areas,’ said Jonathan Adelstein, the agriculture department’s rural utilities service administrator, in a conference call with reporters. ‘Rural areas’ future depends upon access to broadband and we’re not where we need to be today.’… Adlestein said there’s still a ‘long way to go’ in terms of bringing rural America in line with the rest of the country, and he added that one of the challenges is that young people won’t stay in communities without broadband Internet access… ‘There’s not a future there for them,’ he said. ‘Not only do they expect it, but they need it ... if young people want to stay rural areas where they grew up.’” The Post. And given global competition, we need every productivity boost we can get. Growing access to broadband is a fundamental part of that effort.

I’m Peter Dekom, and if we believe in America, we need to invest in America’s future… or write our future off and stop investing to save our governmental budgets.