Does the Residential Broadband Market Need Fixing

摘要

Households and small businesses have adopted high-speed Internet access, also known as broadband, at a rapid rate over the past three years. Data published by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) show that as of December 2002, 17.4 million households and small businesses subscribed to highspeed lines for Internet access, up from only 1.8 million in December 1999. A regional view of the data also indicates rapid growth. In 1999, more than 40 percent of the zip codes in the United States did not have even a single subscriber to a broadband service, according to the FCC. At the end of 2002, only 12 percent of zip codes had no such subscribers. Indeed, broadband's rapid rate of growth is rivaled only by that of the most successful of recently introduced consumer electronics products, such as cellular telephones. Yet some observers maintain that the market is expanding too slowly. This Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report analyzes the development of the residential broadband market (a category that covers both households and small businesses) to assess whether structural features or regulatory obstacles (or both) impede its further rapid growth.