Broadband — high-speed Internet access — is as important as waterways, railways and highways were in an earlier era.

The California Broadband Task Force, created by the governor two years ago, issued its report in January. It is sadly full of promise but — after almost two years of study — woefully short on action.

The presidential candidates all have a broadband plan.

But we need to act now.

California — which, if it were a country, would be the sixth largest economy in the world — should take the lead. America is sadly behind the curve in worldwide broadband development.

We’re 25th in the world in terms of deploying broadband communications. Smaller countries such as Korea, Singapore and Japan are leading the world by offering much faster broadband and at a fraction of the cost.

In the Middle East, tiny Dubai boasts the largest Internet facility in the world, which it practically gave away as incentive to lure global companies there.

Broken Up

In the early 1970s, the Bell system was broken up by a federal judge — not because it offered the finest telephone service in the world — but because the system had become an impediment to bringing about the knowledge-based economy.

Bell didn’t allow French phones to be connected to its network. Such attachments, they argued, would destroy the finest telephone system in the world.

It took many years of regulatory efforts — not to mention billions of dollars in litigation — to get those French phones attached; to create the first specialized common carrier, known as MCI; and to give birth to teleprocessing to connect computers to the network and help usher in the Internet.

The Baby Bells and cable companies are clearly fighting for leadership to dominate all telecommunications like the telephone company did 40 years ago.

The cable companies and telecos have joined forces and are blocking what may be the single largest user that must reinvent itself for the United States to succeed in the new global economy — our cities across America.