A recent letter to the editor [1] of the New York Times from Verizon Chairman Ivan Seidenberg had me scratching my head, says Timothy Karr, campaign director of Free Press and SavetheInternet.com. Seidenberg wrote to rebut a Times Op-Ed [2] by former White House technology adviser Susan Crawford, in which she argues that the United States’ high-speed internet marketplace suffers from a lack of competition, a problem that drives broadband prices up and services down for American internet users.
“Over the last 10 years, we have deregulated high-speed internet access in the hope that competition among providers would protect consumers,” Crawford wrote. “The result? We now have neither a functioning competitive market for high-speed wired internet access nor government oversight.”