In the USA, plans are afoot to turn Amtrak Broadband into Bulletfast

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clipped from www.wired.com In February, Congress gave the FCC a big homework assignment — create a national broadband plan that the government can use as a diagram to turn the country into a paradise of universal, cheap and productive broadband. This week, telecoms, interest groups, internet companies and citizens (Wired.com readers included) filed thousands of pages of comments in an attempt to help the FCC write its report. The deluge is understandable. Big money is at stake. So too might be the future of the economy. But while the internet’s backbone started in the United States and still carries a huge chunk of the world’s IP traffic, consumers are stuck with expensive and slow connections to that backbone, at least when compared to other developed countries like Japan, Sweden and Korea. In other words, U.S. net users are riding Amtrak, while across the ocean, they are zipping around the net on 300 mph bullet trains that cost less than a ticket on a diesel-powered train in the States.