As you can see in the Telecommunications Industry Association's (TIA) charts, all the growth in telecom centers on broadband. As I wrote in IBD last November, even with this growth, the US is lagging far behind other countries in broadband access.

Today, distance to the customer is measured in seconds, not in miles. High speed access is necessary to allow US companies to compete for business against companies in places like China , Korea and Japan .

My worry is that the TIA's projections in these charts won't happen without significant change in FCC policy. The FCC must remove the regulatory barriers that have sidelined new telecom investment. Deregulation of telecom should be a top priority for the administration.