Headline After Headline: Broadband Leaders Have Slower Economic Growth
Saturday, 20 June 2009 07:41
Digital Britain and infinite D.C. folk are making claims that broadband has an enormous effect on the economy, as much as 1/3rd of economic growth. Someone anthony_gormley_naked_statuehas to stand up and shout “The Emperor has no clothes.” More broadband is a good thing, but hooking up grandparents and the learning disabled is not going to create economic or regional growth. Politicians are swallowing whole the myth of broadband = growth, but it's empty. The only evidence is a few “studies” paid for by Verizon that are extremely dubious in the first place. The main author points out that his results are from years ago, when few business had broadband. He warns that shouldn't be projected to today, when nearly all businesses and most economically active homes are already connected.

I wish it weren't true, but broadband just doesn't seem to do much for the economy. Countries who led in broadband are also leading the economic crash. That would be very surprising if broadband had such a huge economic effect. This is not a scientific survey, but the many datapoints should point to a lie in many claims.

  • Japan reported that its economy contracted at a 15.2 percent annual pace in the first quarter Washington Post

  • South Korea's economy contracted 5.1 percent in the fourth quarter of last year Bloomberg

  • Taiwan economy contracts record 10.24% in Q1 Agence France Press

  • Iceland's economy will shrink 10.6 percent in 2009, the finance ministry said Tuesday, revising downwards an earlier forecast in January of a 9.6 percent contraction. AFP

  • California's unemployment unemployment rate reached a record 11.5%, far above the national average despite being a leader in broadband.

  • There's a wonderful myth that broadband is a shortcut to economic growth, but the data is unproven at best, totally bogus far too often, and probably even less true in 2009 than when collected years ago. Verizon and AT&T paid for “studies” that came to the conclusion that subsidizing VZ & T would be good for the economy. A outfit called Connect Kentucky made headlines with a claim that their “demand stimulus” program would have a $134B effect on jobs and the economy, but their own data “proves” the effort was less than useless if you read it carefully.