A recent letter to the editor 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 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.”