Today, Free Press released Dismantling Digital Deregulation: Toward a National Broadband Strategy, a comprehensive analysis of the failed policies at the root of America’s broadband decline.

The report comes at a time when the Internet has taken center stage in American politics. And it’s not because the new president used it so effectively to organize supporters during last year’s campaign, nor because Members of Congress have taken to tweeting like Trekkies to the latest installment of Star Trek.

The Free Press Summit

It’s because the Internet is now dead center in government plans to create new prosperity and participation in the 21st century.

The creation of good jobs, better education and health care and the building of a more open and robust democracy all depend upon making certain more Americans can get connected.

The Internet’s Day of Reckoning

That’s no just overstuffed rhetoric from the go-go days of the Dot.com era; it’s a reality. We need to have our day of reckoning with Internet policies to be sure that every American benefits from this groundbreaking and essential infrastructure.

The policy picture, however, is not altogether rosy. Dismantling Digital Deregulation: Toward a National Broadband Strategy measures the broadband policies of the past 13 years to find that the Federal Communications Commission ignored a 1996 congressional mandate to bring more people into the Internet age by opening legacy communications networks for use by competing providers.

This pro-competition structure was written into the DNA of the 1996 Communications Act. Unfortunately, the ideal of access, openness and competition embraced in the 1990s has been undercut or dismantled in this decade by a phone and cable industry – and a compliant FCC — bent on “promoting” competition by undermining it at every turn.

Painful Irony

“America’s broadband failures are the result of policy failures — and the blame falls squarely on the FCC’s shoulders,” said S. Derek Turner, Free Press research director and author of the report. “The FCC predicted a future of broadband competition, and then regulated as if it were already here. While promising consumer benefits, it tore down consumer protections. Digital deregulation reduced the broadband revolution to broadband mediocrity.”

In a painful irony, the regulatory structure we pioneered in legislation but abandoned in practice was adopted successfully by many of the countries that have now leapfrogged past the United States in technology innovation and broadband adoption.

The Free Press report found that countries with open access policies had nearly double the broadband penetration and faster speeds for lower prices than countries without such policies. Analysis of the impact of the FCC’s decisions demonstrates that eliminating open access did not accelerate U.S. broadband deployment, as industry proponents claimed it would, but it did virtually wipe out third-party broadband competition.

Their decisions consistently favored short-term industry interests over the long-term goal of universal broadband. As a result, consumers have been left with higher prices, slower speeds and a broadband market with few choices.

Charting a New Course

“Digital deregulation failed,” Turner said. “It’s time to chart a dramatically different course with a national broadband plan that is bold, comprehensive and ambitious. The new FCC should avoid the errors of the past and return to the broadband blueprint crafted by Congress.”

Earlier this year, Congress tasked the new FCC with a year-long effort to draft a national broadband plan. The plan will be delivered to Congress in February 2010 as a blueprint for future action. A top technical adviser to the new administration made it clear that the broadband stimulus is only one piece of the president’s larger plan to make high-speed Internet access an essential part of our 21st-century communications infrastructure.

This process is now open for public input. Through it, we have a profound opportunity to make the FCC – under the anticipated leadership of Julius Genachowski — correct past mistakes and help Congress guide Internet policymaking for the next generation. Free Press is also convening a policy summit on Thursday in Washington D.C., where FCC commissioners past and present will come together with activists, educators and interested citizens to craft a plan for the future of media policy,

We have the potential to build a future where a fast, open and accessible Internet is woven into the very fabric of American society. The decisions we make now couldn’t be more important.