An excellent (and lengthy) InternetWeek article suggests that Americans are losing the race for Broadband Internet access, big time. Reporter Christopher T. Heun writes, "After ranking as high as third worldwide in 2000, the United States dropped to 16th last year for its number of high-speed Internet subscribers per capita."

With WiBro's arrival at the Winter Olympics in Turin, Heun suggests, it's all too clear that Korea's version of mobile WiMax has taken hold, while the U.S. has nothing to compete with it. "[The Koreans are] already on to the next generation," says USC professor Jonathan Taplin.

And it's not just wireless -- wired broadband adoption is slowing in the U.S. as well. Heun writes, "Between December 2004 and May 2005, the number of home Internet users with high-speed connections climbed from 50 percent to 53 percent, according to a study last fall by the Pew Internet Project, which called it a 'small and not statistically significant increase.'"

It gets worse. "Nearly one-third of American adults do not use the Internet at all, the study found; just 23 percent of those who came online in the previous year chose a high-speed connection," Heun writes.

Tamplin says it all comes down to government policy. "Instead of taking a 'we'll let the market figure it out' approach, the Koreans said this is a critical part of a competitive economy, we're going to make sure we get good cheap broadband in place quickly," he says. "And they did."

The Pew Internet Project's John Horrigan says, "At a very broad level, high-speed Internet is about an information society, which touches on social benefits, how business gets done, how people interact with others in their social networks -- both close to home and overseas. It's important to have the highest form of infrastructure in this area. We should worry about where we stand in relation to the rest of the world."