Yahoo finance’s Alexis Christoforous, Brian Sozzi, and Andy Serwer discuss the current state of America’s broadband connection.

Video Transcript

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: High-speed internet, it is nowhere near the fast lane on the information superhighway. At a time when a lot more Americans like all of us here are working from home, we need faster and more reliable internet now more than ever. Our Editor in Chief Andy Serwer wrote about this very subject over the weekend. Good morning, Andy.

I was reading your article over the weekend titled, "Why the Founding Fathers Would Want Us All to Have Fast Internet." I'd say it was an awesome headline. It definitely made me click.

Tell us about-- you went on to opine about your own situation up there in Maine. Tell us what you're experiencing.

ANDY SERWER: Yeah, first of all, how's my shot? I've got to be close to the camera. I've got to make sure that I don't have any other applications open. And then most importantly, I've got to check on my kids and see if they're not on at the same time. And, of course, they take priority. Dad, I'm on a call, right, like it's their world, not mine.

So in any event, I was talking to a friend of my daughter's about this. And she's in a home in Rhode Island, grown kids with parents both working, and she said it best. She said the internet at my house is like a war, right, and it shouldn't be that way, Alexis. That's the point of my article. It shouldn't be that way. There's not enough broadband to go around for Americans.

And this has always been the case, but pre-COVID it was just about, oh, someone's doing Netflix and someone's playing a video game. Big deal. Now we're talking about people's jobs, we're talking about people's schooling, and we're talking about telemedicine. So it's mission critical, and we are behind, and COVID has now exposed it for what it is.

BRIAN SOZZI: Andy, is there a solution here?

ANDY SERWER: Public-private partnerships. That's the only way we're going to get this done right now. I mean, we can talk about Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and their satellite systems in a minute, but right now-- you know, I understand where the ISPs, the Internet Service Providers, are coming from. They're saying there's no ROI. In other words, there's two major underserved communities here. We're talking about-- let's be honest here-- low-income neighborhoods in urban areas, people of color primarily, and then also people in very rural areas. And when you're looking to set up in these areas, the economics just don't work for these companies.