US Broadband Penetration Just Stinks

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development released its broadband penetration report for December 2006. This look at 30 countries and their number of broadband subscribers looks good for parts of Europe.

For the United States, it just stinks. The US growth rate for broadband penetration now rates 20th out of the 30 countries. In per capita broadband use, the US is very average, rating in 15th place.

The paltry speeds US providers deliver to customers come at a dear price. An article by Free Press noted an advance look at another OECD report; June’s "The Communications Outlook 2007" says the world’s broadband leaders pay less than $1 per Mbps of service.

Here, our telcos and other ISPs get away with rates of around $10 per Mbps.

"We are failing to bring the benefits of broadband to all our citizens, and the consequences will resonate for generations," said Ben Scott, policy of director of Free Press. "There is no justification for America’s declining status as a global Internet leader."

The Free Press analysis of the OECD report included this nugget:

If broadband penetration were 50 percent of all U.S. homes, economists estimate that consumers would realize a $38 billion annual surplus. If household broadband penetration were at 95 percent, the consumer surplus would be $350 billion.

Let’s go back to around this time last year, where telecom analyst Bruce Kushnick assessed the 1996 Telecom Act and found that its ten year timetable called for 45 Mbps to 86 million US households as of last year. Telecoms enjoyed over $200 billion in tax breaks and other benefits from the Telecom Act.

Now there are calls for fiber to the home by 2015. Om Malik cited a call from the Fiber to the Home Council for Congress and the President to push for 100Mbps connections to the home in eight years.

Considering the influence the telecom industry has with Congress, and President Bush’s lame-duck status, we are not optimistic about seeing 100Mbps to the home by 2015, or even 3015. Telcos make a tidy profit on minuscule bandwidth, and without a revolutionary way to deliver bandwidth that bypasses them, they have no real motivation to change the status quo.

The supporters list now shows the names of 32 people who have signed up to publicly support this grassroots campaign, intended to throw a spotlight on an insidious practice that is the opposite of transparency yet is dressed up as such.

Those 32 names are communicators who are bloggers, academics, practitioners and students. It includes two highly influential names – David Weinberger and Seth Godin.

The list also includes the names of four PR agencies who have publicly stated their commitment to the campaign statement – Altyris, Jackson Wells Morris, Flatiron Communications LLC, and Voce Communications.

Kudos to these four.

Conspicuously absent, however, is any of the big-name PR firms.

Perhaps Keith Jackson of Jackson Wells Morris may embarrass some of them into publicly stating their support for anti-astroturfing and this campaign.

He’s started spotlighting some of these firms by posting extracts from their vision/mission/here’s how we behave statements that convey those firms’ positions on ethics in PR, and issued a challenge to each of them to publicly support the anti-astroturfing campaign.

Keith has challenged two firms so far – Weber Shandwick Worldwide and Fleishman-Hillard Inc. More to come, he says.

One PR agency who might have a problem publicly supporting the campaign is DCI Group if reports on how they allegedly were behind the Al Gore’s Penguin Army (supposedly) viral video on YouTube turn out to be true.

Then again, here’s a great opportunity for DCI to set their ethics record straight.

I’d like to see our professional associations also getting openly involved with this. IABC, CIPR, PRSA, for example. Why wouldn’t they?

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Neville Hobson is the author of the popular NevilleHobson.com blog which focuses on business communication and technology.

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Now here’s the thing: While it’s smart to get behind something like this, the root issue with astroturfing is online disclosure — and disclosure is a complicated issue that communicators need to clearly define as they determine their own best practices for behavior and conduct online. Astroturfing is just one classic example of where disclosure issues surface, but I’ll give you another one, something new: pitching kid bloggers.

This one hasn’t blown up yet, not like astroturfing, but it will, especially as more companies use social media and conversational marketing tactics. My advice: start drawing some lines in the sand now.

This campaign is a great step in the fight against astroturfing, no question, but I think a greater responsibility sits with the companies and services firms to each determine their own best practices, their own policies, for what is — and is not — acceptable online behavior. And to not wait for a crisis to dictate otherwise.

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Mike Manuel is the founder of the award winning Media Guerrilla blog. Media Guerrilla is an insiders take on the practice of technology public relations with a focus on the issues, tactics and trends that are specific to the tech industry.

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Young has created a campaign home page on The New PR wiki, and he and Erin Caldwell have developed the logo you see here, and in the affiliations section of this blog’s left-hand column.

I’m more than happy to support this cause. Astroturfing is one of those behaviors employed by the bottom-feeders of the industry that paint the rest of us with their brush. When exposed (as it more and more frequently is), it only serves to damage the reputation of the company associated with the campaign. While a read of the code of ethics of the various communication associations makes it clear that astroturfing falls outside the bounds of ethical behavior, these same associations don’t talk about it much. I was perplexed, to say the least, to read Young’s account of a seminar hosted by the Public Relations Institute of Australia that seemed to give tacit approval to astroturfing in some instances.

Astroturfing has no place in any PR practitioner’s toolkit. It is deceptive, dishonest, unethical. If you’re unfamiliar with it, the concept is simple-employ people to submit letters to the editor, blog posts, or comments to blogs that make it appear that a grassroots effort is taking root. A good example of this unconscionable practice is the instance in which the president of Halliburton arm-twisted employees to send letters to editors of their local newspapers extolling the company’s virtues in the face of increasing criticism. (The term refers to the artificial grass used in sporting venues; it’s hard to tell the difference between the fake and the real.)

While Cook’s and Young’s blog posts both contain the list of actions you can take to support this campaign, I’ll reiterate them here:

• Join the conversation – write against astroturfing on your blog or comment on the blog posts listed on the Anti-Astroturfing page on the New PR Wiki
• Declare you and/or your agency astroturf free
• Expose possible examples of astroturfing
• Link to the Anti-Astroturfing page with the image provided and add your name to the list of supporters below
• Call on your politicians to take tougher legislative action against astroturfing
• Call on your industry / professional association to speak out against astroturfing
• Encourage friends and colleagues to get involved

As I have repeated so often, the vast majority of practitioners in our profession work hard every day without ever crossing an ethical line, producing solid results for their clients while displaying amazing levels of creativity and innovation. Yet all of us are viewed as lowlife purveyors of spin and propaganda thanks to the minority of lazy, dishonest, talentless hacks who employ tactics like astroturfing to compensate for their lack of skill, talent, or professionalism. If we want to change the public view of PR, we have to eradicate these kinds of practices.

Count me in, Paul and Trevor.

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Shel Holtz is principal of Holtz Communication + Technology which focuses on helping organizations apply online communication capabilities to their strategic organizational communications.

As a professional communicator, Shel also writes the blog a shel of my former self.