A study of national efforts to improve broadband coverage requested by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission finds that the United States is a “middle-of-the-pack performer” on first-generation broadband and lags on advanced developments. It finds that “open access” policies are a key driver of successful broadband development, and that public investment over the long term can be a key driver.

The study, produced by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University under principal investigator Yochai Benkler, analyzed market-oriented democracies and their efforts to expand broadband, aiming to inform U.S. efforts. Broadband is conceptualized here as having two key components: high download speeds and ubiquitous, seamless access.

Open access accompanies advanced access

Our most surprising and significant finding is that “open access” policies—unbundling, bitstream access, collocation requirements, wholesaling, and/or functional separation—are almost universally understood as having played a core role in the first generation transition to broadband in most of the high performing countries; that they now play a core role in planning for the next generation transition; and that the positive impact of such policies is strongly supported by the evidence of the first generation broadband transition.

It may not be surprising that Benkler and a Berkman team would come out in favor of open access, but there is no reason to assume anything other than a good-faith inquiry. Based on case studies of half of the OECD countries, the researchers found that the countries with stronger open access provisions are out-performing others. In the advanced broadband markets of Japan and South Korea, open access “has taken the form of opening up not only the fiber infrastructure (Japan) but also requiring mobile broadband access providers to open up their networks to competitors.”

I have not read the full report, but it contains a chapter that covers the existing literature in econometrics and qualitative studies on open access. In the report, open access is touted as driving innovation by allowing new entrants to the market to lease or otherwise use infrastructure built by established firms.

Open access may drive prices down

The highest prices for the lowest speeds are mostly offered by firms in the United States and Canada, all of which inhabit markets structured around “inter-modal” competition—that is, competition between one incumbent owning a telephone system, and one incumbent owning a cable system, where the price of entry into the market is the ability to build your own infrastructure. The lowest prices and highest speeds are almost all offered by firms in markets where, in addition to an incumbent telephone company and a cable company, there are also competitors who entered the market, and built their presence, through use of open access facilities.

Though the study does not appear to be designed to show causation or even rigorous correlation between lower prices and open access, the researchers suggest that this is a key factor.

State investment has been present in better-developed broadband

Noting that the U.S. recovery funding for broadband is strong per capita at more than 7 billion, the researchers suggest that experiences in other OECD countries show that public investment has been a part of successful development.

I have lost track of the state of broadband projects, but I know the FCC is actively working on it and the recovery funds, which were reportedly to be focused on rural and under-served areas, need to be spent. It will be interesting to see whether these principles make it into U.S. broadband policy.

Tim Hwang has a remarkable essay looking at what he’s provisionally calling “The Berkman School of Thought” based loosely upon the community surrounding the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard. The original post is a must-read. He proposes four pillars of Berkman School thought:

• Faith in users and emergent collaboration
• Civics as the center of attention
• “The Internet” as a specific configuration of features
• Faith in Internet as revolution

I started writing a comment on his post, but it got lengthy, so here we are.

There is probably a lot that can be said on the topic of a “Berkman School” and its relationship to cyberoptimism. Hwang notes that many Berkmanites tend to be optimistic about the Internet’s transformative potential, but that notes of caution sometimes emerge, as from Ethan Zuckerman and Eszter Hargittai. I might add Rebecca MacKinnon to that list.

I’m curious about two things.

One is how we might understand other “schools” of thought on Internet and society. Certainly many others could be suggested. There is a problem, however, in looking for groups of thought on the Internet in that many of the non-Berkman-type perspectives are rooted not in discourse directly about the Internet but rather in academic disciplines, policy communities, or business communities.

When political scientists, sociologists, or policy scholars take to understanding the Internet and society, they bring their communities’ theoretical contexts into play. Carving out schools might be easiest if the criteria for delineation are assumption-based rather than content-based. I think this is what Hwang is on to when he talks about “faith” in various principles. But if those are the principles, MacKinnon’s work on “cybertarianism” and Hargittai’s work on web-use divides and socioeconomic status, for example, might tend to put them farther from the Berkmanite epistemic community, despite their personal affiliations with the center.

Moreover, Benkler’s work reaches out toward social and economic theory while also engaging with the particular story of the Internet.

Two is how US- or democracy-specific are these assumptions, and to what extent the center’s physical home at Harvard Law School affects some of these assumptions. Many participants in this line of thought are not American, but that doesn’t remove the fact that freedoms, free speech, and liberal democracy seem to be key motivating factors. I think this is similar to what commenter Jillian C. York mentions at Hwang’s post.

This is important because many Berkmanites are activists as well as thinkers. In political terms, many of these projects, their coordinated action, and their claims making vis à vis various business and government bodies could mean it’s most reasonable to think of a Berkman School as more of a Berkman-like movement. Without rambling on about the ties between schools of thought and political movements, I just thought that would be an interesting thing to point out.

I hope this discussion continues.