Want Your City to Thrive? Get More Bandwidth

Friedman asserts that the revolution of information technology combined with globalization is leading to greater innovation and creativity across the globe: "The best of these ecosystems will be cities and towns that combine a university, an educated populace, a dynamic business community and the fastest broadband connections on earth. These will be the job factories of the future."

"Therefore, the critical questions for America today have to be how we deploy more ultra-high-speed networks and applications in university towns to invent more high-value-added services and manufactured goods and how we educate more workers to do these jobs - the only way we can maintain a middle class."

However, the United States remains focused on "Getting 'average' bandwidth to the last 5 percent of the country in rural areas, rather than getting 'ultra-high-speed' bandwidth to the top 5 percent, in university towns, who will invent the future. By the end of 2012, he adds, South Korea intends to connect every home in the country to the Internet at one gigabit per second. 'That would be a tenfold increase from the already blazing national standard, and more than 200 times as fast as the average household setup in the United States.'", writes

Thanks to Cathie Pagano