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Marine Lance Cpl. Michael Cintron was in Iraq when his wife went into labor this summer at a Brooklyn hospital. But he got to see every minute of the birth, and even saw his son before his wife did – via a high-speed webcast.

That was one of the stories CWA President Larry Cohen shared with lawmakers as he testified about the real possibilities for education, innovation, jobs, medicine and personal connections worldwide where high-speech broadband service is available. L. Cohen told the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee that the United States is falling far behind many other industrial countries in broadband penetration and speed. He urged a national policy on broadband expansion and described how CWA's "Speed Matters" campaign has been leading the way.

"Over the past 24 months, we've helped move state broadband initiatives to bring the benefits of this technology to every household, business and community," he said. Cohen called on senators to pass the Broadband Data Improvement Act (S.1492), a critical step in moving toward a national broadband policy. The measure would enable the U.S. to gather more information about where high-speed broadband is available and whether rural areas and inner cities continue to be poorly served. It also would make grants available to states for broadband mapping and for public-private partnerships to spur new build out of broadband networks and services.

"High-speed broadband is the critical infrastructure for the 21st century," Cohen said. "They are the platform on which we will grow jobs and our economy in the coming years," he said.

Broadband networks also must be truly high-speed, Cohen said, pointing out that CWA's latest survey of Internet speeds in all 50 states showed how much slower download and upload speeds are in the United States, compared to Europe, Canada and, especially, Japan.