Walt Mossberg, a columnist for the Wall Street Journal, delivered some stinging remarks about how large telecom and media companies deliver broadband services and programming to North Americans.
“We really suck at broadband,” Mossberg complained during opening remarks at Beet.TV’s first executive summit held at the Embassy of Finland in Washington. “We have terrible, terrible broadband.”
“The typical consumer either has been lured into broadband by a DSL service that in Finland would not count as broadband — 768kbps is not broadband,” Mossberg said. “If [the government] adopted a regulation not allowing Verizon to call that crap broadband, it would help.”
Mossberg added that cable modem service in the US and Canada is so slow, it is the object of pity and pathos in countries like Japan and Korea, and we’re overcharged for it.
[flv width=”480″ height=”388″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Verizon Should Stop Calling DSL Broadband 2-17-11.flv[/flv]
Mossberg’s comments come as part of a discussion about the online video revolution, which he says is being hampered by copyright controls, outdated advertising models, and broadband providers delivering sub-standard service. (8 minutes)