Is the United States lagging behind other countries in broadband deployment? Are we making progress or losing ground in the effort to ensure every American has access to high-speed Internet?

The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation’s conference tomorrow will focus on these questions during a discussion on world broadband rankings.

It’s hard to know whether the recent OECD or FCC rankings are reflective of the global broadband landscape. But what’s more important is that these statistics highlight a tremendous opportunity for us to make great progress in the next few years. And what matters most in this debate is what the United States is doing to speed the deployment of high-speed Internet to all Americans.

Broadband has moved far beyond a luxury. It’s the foundation for future economic growth and advances in education, health care and entertainment. Broadband service providers see the tremendous potential in this medium and are spending billions of dollars to upgrade the nation’s infrastructure, creating the capacity that new, bandwidth hungry applications will demand.

We need to back up this private sector effort by developing a national broadband policy that encourages public-private partnerships and gives companies an incentive to invest in broadband deployment. Minimal government regulation and letting the free market and consumer demand guide the Internet’s development has worked up to now to bring us today’s competitive, innovative communications marketplace. We should let those strategies keep working.

Arguing about where America truly ranks in global broadband deployment accomplishes little. Let’s focus our energy on getting everyone connected to the communications technology of the 21st century.

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