14 DAY TRIAL // Considerably lagging behind in broadband adoption, the US fails to provide cheap and freely accessible broadband connections to the majority of its citizens. Trying to fix this issue, the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) announced that its National Broadband Plan would be submitted to the US Congress on March 17.
US providers also released to the press a working draft of the plan and its main proposals aiming to expand and modernize access to broadband connections across the country.
While nobody would guess that states like Romania, Latvia, South Korea or Switzerland top the United States in broadband speed and connectivity (according to Akamai), US regulators and providers want to quickly change all of this by putting in place a joint plan to level broadband access and dependability in the USA.
John Horrigan, Director of Consumer Research for the FCC, said for Reuters that “The gap in broadband adoption is a problem with many different dimensions that will require many different solutions," talking about some of the main barriers that might influence the success of this national plan.
These barriers are based on a study conducted on over 5,000 US citizens and include cost, digital literacy and service relevance. The first of them is easy to understand. Costs vary from averages of $40.68 a month for general broadband subscribers, to $37.70 for those who bundle the Internet connection with other services and to $46.25 for standalone broadband users. Considering that many European and Asian sub-developed countries offer the same services at incredible lower prices, the costs need to go down for the user base to grow considerably in US.
While 22 percent of those study responders answered that they don't know how to use the Internet connection, this rate will surely change in the future due to the bigger exposure kids and teens are getting at very young ages to the Internet and broadband mobile networks.
Service relevancy was also cited as a main reason for not adopting a broadband connection of their own by 19 percent of study responders, just because they already have one at school, work or just don't need one, being content with their slower Internet service.
More to come on this subject after March 17, when the FCC will submit its final plan to the US Congress, in which providers are reported to mainly target a lower delivery cost for broadband connections as the primary solution for improving the conditions in which Americans can “participate in the digital economy.”