Bandwidth Quotes
At the time, the few private companies that provided American Internet service did not want to increase the bandwidth speeds to homes. Those businesses who needed more bandwidth paid dearly for it, but consumers could not afford those rates. With fiber optics, it cost no more to provide higher bandwidth than lower. But then the Internet providers would not be able to make the huge profit margins on the corporate accounts. In much of Europe, however, the Government rules and regulations required a higher standard of performance for the public in general. In the US, the Government did not want to regulate the performance standards of the private sector with respect to the Internet. Clinton argued that the problem should be solved by the private sector, but if they could or did not, he argued that government should set the rules to solve the problem. The software and hardware companies were driving American digital technology forward, but the few communications company were working to maintain the status quo on bandwidth.
Korea, Finland and other nations which have faster Internet speeds at much less cost are those countries where there are many Internet Service Providers competing. In America there were generally three—the telephone company, the Cable TV, company and a wireless service. In Finland however, there are 15 who compete using the same lines to the home. They all made money, but a much lower profit percentage than in America.
This is a classic attempt to argue against a technical proposed policy that the Senator did not understand. While most of the new digital companies favored net neutrality, the telephone companies opposed it as they wanted to be able to discriminate among customers in providing Internet access. One of the telephone companies had obtained Steven’s support for the anti Net Neutrality position. They must have explained some technical reasons to him, and this speech was his understanding of the concept. To those who know something technical about the Internet and digital transmission, this is so crude and wrong that it is humorous.
