The global broadband race is on, and the crowd has turned on Team USA. In 2004, President George W. Bush said, with characteristic rounding error: “Tenth is ten spots too low”. Things worsened. Last December, President Barack Obama warned that “It is unacceptable that the United States ranks 15th in the world in broadband adoption”. Things worsened more rapidly. In February 2009, Obama exclaimed: “To even say the words that the United States of America has now descended to 19th place in the world… is unconscionable”.

Code Blue. “Broadband Internet in the United States is a disaster,” wrote the Washington Monthly in May 2009. “It’s appalling. It’s embarrassing. It’s preposterous. Compared to the rest of the world, our connections are slow, balky, and expensive”.