There's a good discussion going on at Dave Farber's list today, following a Declan McCullagh article that claims the U.S. is doing fine in broadband. (Image from Mystro Satellite of Canada.)

Declan's point is that it's available. Critics point out that it's slow, expensive, and more people have it in other countries than here.

The question they're all asking is, how can the situation be improved.

The correct answer is one word.

Competition.

Phone companies respond to competition. Where they don't find any, they raise prices like good monopolists, Where they sense real competition, they will act.

But that competition must exist across-the-board. If monopolists can kill competition with lobbyists or lawyers, they will, and the only people making money at that point are lobbyists and lawyers.

Only where the Bells face opponents with equal strength, and equal access to lobbyists and lawyers, will they respond in the marketplace.

Once upon a time there was something called the "public interest," under which private interests would be resisted before the government so as to force them back to the marketplace.

That died with the last election. So absent balance between private interests, you're screwed. When capitalism becomes an ideology, it becomes as lazy and insular as communism, fascism, or any other -ism you can name.

Competition must not just exist between companies. It must also compete between private and public interests. In nations like Korea or Japan, where the idea of the "public interest," exercised by a strong government interested in economic development, is made paramount, you're getting this as fast as you can read it.

Here, you'll have to wait awhile, or at least until you become mad enough to do something about it.