American Cities in The Global Knowledge Economy: the Role of Broadband

What happened to the urgent call for" broadband" — the new information infrastructure that is vital to success and survival in the global knowledge economy — President Bush promised he would push in his second term?

According to the O.E.C.D., a Paris-based governmental research organization, the U.S. now ranks 11th in the world in broadband communications behind Korea, Singapore, Japan, Canada, and Norway to name but a few. Yet broadband — or as some call it, broadband Internet — today is as important as waterways, railroads and interstate highways of an earlier era.

In less than a decade, the great global network of computer networks called the Internet has blossomed from an arcane tool used by academics and government researchers into a worldwide mass communications medium, now poised to become the leading carrier of all communications and financial transactions affecting life and work in the 21st Century

Cisco Systems, a leader in the telecom field has said: "Broadband infrastructure is critical" to survival in the wake of a basic shift taking pace in the structure of the world’s economy. "Its deployment is a key measure of success in the information economy and is crucial to the future growth of productivity."

By John Eger

Full Story: http://www.govtech.net/magazine/channel_story.php?channel=24&id=94066