He said he has been advising the U.S. Federal Communications Commission chairman Michael Powell that ``government regulation is quite important when technology changes.''
Idei suggested that the United States needed rules to force cable companies, which control the last mile of line linking households with communications networks, to share their pipelines with competitors
Uh huh... that's why NTT still rules the telephone lines in Japan. Maybe this should have read:
Idei suggested that the United States needed rules to force American cable companies, which control the last mile of line linking households with communications networks, to share their pipelines with their Japanese competitors, who profit in Japan from protectionism from the State.
Another moronic quote:
``American broadband connectivity is falling down,'' Idei said, while connectivity in Japan is exploding
Okay, again, people who should know better are making a false assumption: growth rates = good.
Let's see here... 12% of American households have broadband access. Let's place the number of households around 75,000,000 (I don't have Census figures handy). That means the number of broadband customers in the U.S. is 9,000,000 households. That's a lot of people surfing the net...