Technology Gap 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.
