USA - FCC Chairman calls for Gigabit communities

Julius Genachowski, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, writing in Forbes:

Making sure the U.S. has super-fast, high-capacity, ubiquitous broadband networks delivering speeds measured in gigabits, not megabits isn’t just a matter of consumer convenience, as important as that is. It’s essential to economic growth, job creation and U.S. competitiveness.

The good news is that there’s lots of good news. After falling behind Asia and Europe, we’ve regained global leadership in mobile.

The U.S. is the first country to deploy 4G wireless networks at scale and is home to most of the world’s LTE subscribers, making the United States the global test bed for LTE apps and services.

The mobile “apps economy,” which has already created hundreds of thousands of jobs, is a made-in-the-USA phenomenon.

On the wired side, broadband networks capable of 100 megabits per second speeds passed less that 20% of U.S. homes in 2009. That number is now more than 80%, which is near the world lead. By contrast, in Europe, networks capable of 30 megabits per second reach only 50% of households.