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What's Holding Up Broadband in the U.S.?
ProfBooty writes "A recent opinion piece in the Washington Post discloses that the broadband could potentially aid in the economy's recovery (and that Canadians are 2x as likely to have it, South Koreans 4x), but it's not regulation that is the hold up, it's *surprise* content holders' fears of 'piracy' as well as unwillingness to adapt to new markets. Also discusses the governments of Canada and South Korea and how they were involved in bringing broadband to the people. In additon discusses how in the past, Congress would pass laws as to protect innovators as well as the old guard." The article's by Lawrence Lessig.
There are half a dozen choices for broadband here in Rochester, NY. My brother, in a little town in my home state of West Virginia, has broadband. Nearly ever connected person to whom I speak has broadband /available/, if not at the price they want.
What's holding it up? Nothing, cheap-ass. Call up your phone or cable company and get it.
#19845
Here in Cincinnati we've had several options for a couple years now:
1. Zoom Town (ADSL from Cincinnati Bell)
2. Road Runner from Time Warner
3. Whatever this new Delta-V thing is (can you really call that broadband?)
I Heart Sorting Networks
"What's holding up broadband in the world?"
Mostly last mile issues. Here in Germany DSL is available in larger cities, but little towns like mine will never get a taste for broadband since DSL is pretty much the only option for now.
Lets see ..
.. that is unless some person finds usenet / IRC for software / MP3s / video / anime / P2P usage.
1. The Drought of VC money of late.
2. ILEC's / MSO cable operators not opening access lines easily
3. Cost - for smaller operators, the mantra of "stick new headends on either end of the fiber" is true, except those digipeaters are $$$$.
4. Incremental need, People are not making quantum shifts in usage, it grows over time
5. Virus threats are contained quickly anymore by most people, so the network crawling to a halt because of traffic is a temporal thing.
Here in Kansas city we actually have a company called everest-kc.com that has done a full overbuild of some of the cable infrastructure in the area. phone, Long distance, cable modem & television on a competing / seperate wire. Imagine that. .
BTW: I know the blurb above says that regulatory issues aren't the problem, but I don't buy it - not while content-control interests can buy something like the DMCA.
And of course, I can't get to the article at the post - likely because they can't get enough cheap, high-bandwidth connections. Who says irony is dead?
OK,
- B
http://www.bradheintz.com/
- updated
Lessig is a very politic writer to give
Michael Powell the benefit of the
doubt by congratulating him for even thinking
about a "reexamination" of
copyright laws. It is in the hands of the
legislature. They should begin
by repealing Sony Bono's Copyright Extension
Act of 1998 then they should
move on to the DMCA but as lessig points out,
they have to somehow give a
nod to the old. Perhaps some new fangled sort
of license is called for.
At any rate the main point about government's
failure to participate in
the broadband arena is the exactly where the
finger should point. And it
should point there because they've been
accepting bribes from the
dinosaurs Lessig describes.
Quid, me anxius sum?
It doesn't help that AT&T gambled and lost hugely by jumping into cable broadband with both feet. As a result of that experience, most providers are probably wary of getting into the game, and most consumers probably think that broadband internet is slow and unreliable.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
I've been on waiting lists for DSL or cable service for about years now. First @HOME, then Earthlink, and now also Comcast Cable. I live in a relatively higher-income area and every neighbor I've spoken with says that he or she would be interested in this service too.
But it's useless. Despite repeated phone calls, Comcast and Earthlink still say service in my area is "a year or two out". This is pathetic, truly.
They say it's "too expensive" to branch out into new areas -- but surely it's less expensive then not reaching new customers! I wish there were a solution. Europe's way ahead in wireless technology, too.
I'm buying one of those new iMacs. They're amazing. But you know what? I'll still only have a 56k modem to use with it. Something's not right with that.
The next comment I write will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
Can't help but think that part of this is due to the LACK of regulation rather than regulatory delays. Thanks to careless deregulation (read Reaganomics), the telcos have merged with the content providers, and as a consequence the new behemoths are hedging, looking to provide a utility service at luxury-good prices.
In the Western suburbs of Philadelphia (mainly Chester County), unless you live near the center of town, DSL is nonexistant. As for cable modems, Comcast has been saying they will be ready "Real Soon Now" for the past 3 years.
As for the DSL, I claim that its mainly cheapness on the part of Verizon as for the reason we cannot get it. Verizon is a Fortune 10 company, and as a result, we could have DSL tomorrow if they were willing to set it up here. What surprises me is that this is a fairly rich part of Penna., meaning that any DSL upgrade for the phone company here would result in an immediate ROI. But oh well
As for the cable modems though, that is a different story, prior to Comcast's buying out of the previous mom and pop cable company, there was no hope of getting cable modems here (the original company was saying 2006). It seems though, based on more and more of my friends in the county who are getting cable modems, that their availability is slowly spreading. As for me, I am near the bottom of the list for it. Not much to complain about, just sitting here waiting for Comcast to get going and deliver it... real soon now... hehehe
In case of fire, do not use elevator. Use water!
That said, some telcos are making the investment, particularly in new neighborhoods.
Looks like it's already /.'ed, so I'll punt.
If what is described is the case, then why is AOLTW selling broadband? Why isn't TW's Road Runner shutting down instead of expanding?
The problem is that phone lines have never really been built to handle DSL and the phone companies don't want to spend a lot of money to upgrade (see Robert X. Cringley's comments). The cable companies have only so many houses hooked up, and satellite has too much lag and often requires a phone line anyway.
The demand is there, but I think there are people who would rather go through a root canal than put it with all the BS associated with getting DSL or cable installed.
DSL, with its ridiculously long install wait time, crappy PPPoE platform (In other words, shell out another $100 for a router that will do it for you so all your machines can have a 'normal' connection), and a general lack of value (+$15 for a static IP? Get real Ameritech)
On the other hand you have cable, which @home and all their partners managed to bumble enough to make people stay away from cable for a LONG time.
The content is THERE, these pundits are screaming that there is no killer app for broadband, as if having it will make things easier for users.
Do you actually think government-administered internet would be any more efficient? Or any more permissive as far as content protection goes?
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
I pay around $80 a month for 768 kb/s downstream, 384 kb/s upstream to Internet America. $15 of that is for a dedicated pair they lease from SW Bell because, at 15.6 kft from the CO, ADSL is not guaranteed to work piggybacked on a POTS line.
But even at $65 a month, that's way too expensive for most people.
Now, it is true, that I can get SW Bell's offering for around $50/month, but it is PPPoE hell with lousy TOS (in my opinion) -- my neighbor suffers with this.
Airmail.net (Internet America) has no problem with me running an "smtp" server to sink my email (of course, they appreciate that I do not relay) or any other server as long as I do not have "excessive" upstream bandwidth. Other ISPs freak at the mere suggestion of doing something like that. On the PPPoE issue, "we looked at that and held our noses" was their unoffocial comment. SOLD!
In short, I am a satisfied customer.
You could've hired me.
I predict that in the not-too-distant future, broadband Internet access will be considered a utility like power and water, and will be treated by most governments as such. Hell, I *already* find it indispensible; there's no way I could go back to using a dial-up connection now. There's nothing better than an always-on, FAST cable modem :)
:)
Man, I'm glad I'm Canadian
I agree that in the Canadian cities, they have a good number of high speed internet providers, and at amazingly cheap rates too (compared to what I was paying in Atlanta before I headed north for the winter).
Out here in rural Canada (North Gower/Kemptville, south of Ottawa), there are few options. There was a company called Look Communications, but they are no longer installing new sites - just making the most of their existing customer base. It kinda sucks.
But the scenery is great, and the air is clean!!
Straight up, when I saw "holding up", I read it as meaning "propping up".
When you look at the beatings that broadband providers are taking, it seems like the only thing keeping the whole broadband "revolution" going is the mindless optimism of marketing droids, based on the mythical "average user" spending all of their time (and disposable income) sucking down advert laden pay-per-stream postage stamp sized Britney Spears videos from the provider's portal. It's insane (gee, do I pay-per-view for a postage stamp, or do I pay-per-view to the same provider down the same cable, but have it go to the big widescreen TV on the other side of the splitter?) but it seems to be the only thing keeping the rollouts going.
This is an interesting piece, but it doesn't address the basic problem of broadband. Those of us who already have it know exactly why we want it: we want a fat and unmetered pipe to go find and create our own content with. But the pricing is aimed at bringing in Ms Average User. Frankly, I just don't think that's going to happen, not until the price is way down (in which case you've got to gouge that bit deeper on the pay-pers), and sooner or later broadband providers are going to give up this nonsense about selling content, and are going to have to start charging a sustainable amount for a sustainable service. And those of us who have got used to (fairly) affordable broadband are going to catch it right in the shorts. Oops.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Consumers have been the victims of this unfortunate series of events. I don't know when things will change - we are looking at three companies - Verizon, Qwest, SBC, carving up most of the markets in the country in the next few years, and it seems they will be content to simply milk money from the services they currently offer instead of innovating.
I've been thinking about broadband (here in Canada - I'm Canadian). What most Americans don't know is that Canada's Confederation (in 1867) was based on the promise of a coast to coast railroad (that is, the Atlantic and Pacific coast).
In a country as large, unpopulated, and diverse (geographically, lingusitically, and culturally) that connection is very important. Recently, the Canadian government started rolling out a very fast fibre optic network that was put in the ground along the (surprise surprise) railroad.
Broadband is a tool to further our national identity.
In addition, thanks to near monopolies in telephone and cable, we have homogenous suppliers of DSL and Cable broadband. And, despite what most people think about monopolies, my DSL costs $25 US a month for 1.5 megabits, and my phone line costs $30 US a month for basic access and voice mail.
It almost seems that the extra competition in the US has ultimately led to the failure of broadband.
Here in the little town of Lakeville I can't get broadband. Not because of content holders, but because cable companies have 'protected' markets here. Therefore nobody is allowed to offer cable service on my road except for "Cross Country Cable Ltd" a little mom and pop cable company that hasn't heard of "the internet" yet.
Those dumb dot-com's have done a lot more damage than you might think, especially when it comes to financing new infrastructure (i.e. broadband).
One thing is certain, though. Once broadband reaches a certain penetration, the internet will become a lot more interesting, not to mention dangerous.
Just think of all them massively open boxen!
What's Holding Up Broadband in the U.S.?
In my neighborhood, the cable and DSL broadband connections are held up by utility poles. :-)
I hate to boast, but a broadband over cable only costs $CDN 29.95 per month up here in Frezzeyerassoffland. Since our dollar continues its slide against the mighty greenback, that works out to about $US 19.25 per month.
When you combine that with the fact that I don't have to put up with strip searches when I fly off to Moosejaw, it just proves the point that Canada is the best country in the world for high speed internet users that like to keep their clothes on in public places.
When I was moving, I made sure the place had broadband. Not everyone can do this of course. But if enough people ask/tell the realtor they will only consider areas with broadband, cities will push the carriers/provider to offer it, even if it means subsidizing the cost. As broadband and internet usage becomes more prevalent, houses/apartments without broadband will be less desireable and economics will force a change. Or atleast it has in the past.
Americans simply need to realize that the telcos have gotten away with murder and they are going to get screwed for a very very long time.
that most of the average users don't care. They are happy with their dial up AOL and don't see a reason to pay another $20 a month for broadband.
...and understanding comes before usability.
Most people really wouldn't know what to do
with broadband access once they have it.
Don't get me wrong. I love my cable modem. I use it to MUD, to e-mail, to browse, and the do the whole Evercrack thing every so often.(Not too often these days.) I consider myself an average user. No, I don't go crazy on the warez sites, and no, I don't frequent anything where the average download is on the order of meg's. Beyond bringing down large sites by being a zombie in a DDOS attack, the best thing about having cable modem is the quick download of high-content web sites.(flash, plug-in's, etc.)
Oh well. mod me down if you must.
There is plenty of content out there if you have broadband. Some of it is pirated, sure, but the fact that Napster is dead doesn't mean that we're all stuck in WMA-land. Last time I checked Gnutella worked just fine.
And don't forget that "content" doesn't mean jack shit to broadband users who use the internet for email, telecommuting, shopping, IRC, even fucking slashdot for god's sake - always-on, fast connections are always more useful than not.
And don't forget the cost. It costs money to provide this service, even in massive volume - as shown by the recent failure of Excite@Home, which simply spent too much and couldn't control its costs.
So though the RIAA and MPAA suck, and content control is evil, and all that, it's NOT why broadband isn't more widely available. Sorry Lawrence.
Sadly, the average person usually has to know a tech savvy person and hear the beenfits firsthand before honestly considering getting cable or DSL service. Sure the commercials are flashy, but consumers quickly do the math ($40 + 5 modem rental = $45 x 12 = too much $) and skip over it. They are paying AOL and they like it, and most don't know that AOL will still work over the cable modem.
It's too bad, really. Demand would be there if it was $20 a month, but until they get more subscribers there is little incentive to roll out the backbones quickly.
It will be a slow crawl until that magic $20 price point is hit and things start snowballing. Don't believe me? Think back to these devices and their magic price points. When these things got cheap enough, Joe Average ponyed up the cash:
CDR drives - $200
DVD Players - $125
------
Today's Top Deals
It's because of those horrible people who give away things that most people wouldn't pay for in the first place that we can't have nice things. Those pirates who "share" the quality musical works of "artists" like N(insert random punctuation here)Sync, Britney Spears, and whatever celebrity or his brother/sister/child/neighbor/dentist/etc. feels the need to shout at the general public... Pirates who have the nerve to try to watch movies from other parts of the world, use alternate DVD player software, or copy still images or audio or video clips from a movie... Pirates who can't be bothered to buy a new copy of a movie or audio CD in the event that the original is lost or damaged, or every time the version of the movie or CD won't work right with a player... Now it's their fault we can't get decent broadband access. The solution is clear - we can't allow the pirates to get access to this "broadband." We must thoroughly regulate it to make sure that no improper files are transferred and no protected materials are recorded, or even remembered. Only then will we be safe from overdue market corrections, um, I mean evil, naughty pirates.
Nearly ever connected person to whom I speak has broadband /available/, if not at the price they want.
Yeah, for $200,000 for moving to a different town or part of town, or $1000+ per month for a T1. Hardly reasonable for all but the richest folk.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Pretty sure our phone lines here are not that much better, and DSL is about a 2 hour operation to get installed (home installation and installation at the switch).
Broadband is exploding like crazy in Canada. I've had my DSL for almost 4 years now, and it's not the PPoE, and the cost is very cheap ($45 CDN, $25 US) and gives 1.5 megabits per second down, and 640 kilobits up.
Sounds more like a cop-out to say, "Phone lines are not up to it..." and that doesn't explain the death of @Home
It's not a problem of getting it right now. It seems to be a problem of getting ahold of the people that provide it. I've called @home from 4 different phone lines and I just get a prerecorded message saying @home isn't available at that location. Well I have it so it is granted it's no technically "@home" anymore. But my provider MediaComm I can't seem to reach either. So how can I get ahold of somebody to hook up new service or change my current service? Anybody?
They have far to many and too strict regulations. If they would loosen up a bit we all could have broadband.
If I understand correctly, broadband service is now a "commodity" - a product sold with faily low mark-up over cost.
Given that offering broadband services requires fairly substantial infrastructure upgrades (costing a pretty penny), why would any provider in their right minds jump into the market now?
I was part of a hole-in-the-wall company that was looking at getting into the ISP market shortly after it stabilized as a commodity (back in the days of 33.6 modems). Our conclusions were that we'd make very little money from offering Internet service, and that we'd only make money at all if the service we offered was lousy. And that was with our upstream connection mostly paid for by other means.
Could it be that there is no conspiracy?
[Disclaimer: I am not intimately familiar with the economics of offering broadband. If you have more detailed information, by all means post it.]
Who's Holding Back Broadband?
By Lawrence Lessig
Tuesday, January 8, 2002; Page A17
As the American economy struggles to get out of recession, an important part of the recovery will be the revival of the country's technology sector.
Not long ago, in a speech at a summit on Internet development, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell gave the nation a glimpse of his vision of what might kindle such a revival. At least part of that vision was refreshingly new.The key is "broadband." Broadband is the next generation of Internet service, and it could fuel the next great wave of Internet innovation. Broadband access is fast, and always on. It could deliver music or video content as well as applications that have not yet been imagined. It could offer innovators and creators a whole new platform on which to build.
Surprisingly, however, consumers in the United States have been slow to adopt broadband. South Koreans are four times more likely to have broadband Internet access than Americans, Canadians twice as likely. After five years of push, the market has failed to pull Americans along.
Why? That's a hard question to answer fully. Both the Korean and Canadian governments have played a significant role in pushing broadband access; our government has been much more laissez-faire. If that is the reason for the difference in deployment, then the future here promises to be much like the past. Powell signaled in his speech that laissez faire was his policy too.
But the chairman did identify a kind of regulation that may well explain the slow adoption of broadband technologies by consumers in the United States: copyright. Consumers are slow to adopt broadband because, while there may be an infinite number of channels, there is still nothing on. "Broadband-intensive content," the chairman said, "is in the hands of major copyright holders." These copyright holders have been hesitant to free their content to the net. Their slowness, in turn, has slowed broadband technologies in general.
In part, the reason for this slowness has to do with fear of piracy. Under existing technologies, digital content is easily copied; given technologies such as Napster, it is also easily shared. So copyright holders rightly fear that until they can protect themselves against piracy, their profits will slip through the net.
But piracy is not the most important reason copyright holders have been slow to embrace the net. A bigger reason is the threat the Internet presents to their relatively comfortable ways of doing business. "Major copyright holders" have enjoyed the benefits of a relatively concentrated industry. The Internet threatens this comfortable existence. The low cost of digital production and distribution could mean much greater competition in the production of content.
Online music is the best example of this potential. Five years ago the market saw online music as the next great Internet application. A dozen companies competed to find new and innovative ways to deliver and produce music using the technologies of the Internet. Napster was the most famous of these companies, but it was not the only or even the most important example. A company called MP3.COM, for example, had not only developed new ways to deliver content but had also enabled new artists to develop and distribute their content outside the control of the existing labels.
These experiments in innovation are now over. They have been stopped by lawyers working for the recording industry. Every form of innovation that they disapproved of they sued. And every suit they brought, they won. Innovation outside the control of the "majors" has stopped.
Whether or not these courts were right as a matter of substantive copyright law, what is important is the consequence of this regulation: innovation and growth in broadband have been stifled as courts have given control over the future to the creators of the past. The only architecture for distribution that these creators will allow is one that preserves their power within a highly concentrated market.
The answer to this problem is the same one that Congress has given to similar changes in the past. When a new technology radically changes the opportunity for creation and distribution of content, Congress has legislated to ensure that old technologies don't veto the new.
For example, when the player piano made it possible for "recordings" of music to be made without payment to sheet music publishers, Congress changed the law to require that subsequent recordings compensate the original artist. Likewise, when cable TV started "stealing" over-the-air broadcasts, Congress passed a law to require that cable companies pay for the content they used.
But in both cases, the law Congress passed was importantly balanced. Copyright owners had a right to compensation, but innovators also had a right to get access to content. In both cases, Congress established what lawyers call a "compulsory license," to ensure that the right to compensation did not become the power to control innovation.
The same sort of change could unleash extraordinary innovation in the context of broadband service now, as Chairman Powell expressly suggested. "Stimulating content creation might involve a re-examination of the copyright laws," Powell argued. For as we've learned from the past, innovation is often the enemy of the old, and the old will do what they can to ensure that innovation doesn't innovate away their power.
This administration has been keen to warn of the harm that overregulation imposes on innovation and growth. It is a refreshing and promising development to see the chairman of the FCC include the regulation of copyright within that concern. Copyright laws should of course give artists and creators an adequate return for their creativity; but they should not become a tool for dinosaurs to protect themselves against evolution. Broadband will come when content can roam more freely. Congress should act now to ensure that it can.
The writer is a law professor at Stanford and author of "The Future of Ideas."
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
... will always exist.
The problem is, big companies should accept this internet as a new form of distribution.
Look at Napster, they had ~60 million users before they tanked. Now assume that even 70% of these users cancelled their memberships when introduced with a $10/month fee, there sill leaves 18 million people paying 10 bucks a month.
Meaning 180 million usd a month... meaning over 2 billion usd gross revenue per year.
All this just by making sure their hundreds of indexing servers were online.
Royalties? Sure! Just divide the 2 billion up based on the percentage of total downloads!
More people like/trade your music? Get a bigger cut of 2 billion/year.
Gnutella? BearShare? WinMX? Comp Sci teaches that indexing saves an order of magnitude on searching/traversing.
I don't think there's any other business model that can compete with the one that could have been if the RIAA had an open mind.
Movies can be distributed the same way.
If the 50+ year old managers would just even hint at an open mind and experiment with providing a service to download mpg movies from their servers at $7/download, I bet they'd be totally content with using the internet as a distribution medium.
History has shown that they had the same reluctance when VHS tapes were available to the average joe shmoe. And look what happens, we pay $5 just to rent a freak'n movie for 24 hours! And yet they aren't so concerned with VHS pirating when it takes an equal amount of time to copy and distribute as a 650MB mpeg/divx movie.
This piracy excuse comes from older people who are panicking, the same ones who panicked about VHS. They won't see the potential for distribution until they start initiating some pilot projects using the net as a distribution channel.
Broadband is not available everywhere in the US. I've noticed many people post stating that they have several broadband options available to them. I don't doubt that's the case, as where I currently live I have both cable and DSL options available for me. Of course, I also live in a major metropolitan area.
However, let's take the case of my parents that live in a small town in the Shenandoah Valley. They've been asking about broadband options for their house for several years now. They own a Bed and Breakfast, and a dedicated high-speed Internet connection would definitely be a benefit for them. Every time they inquire at the local Cable provider, they're told that "We're still testing it in the big town up north." Whenever they go to any DSL provider, they're told "We haven't upgraded the hardware in the area for that. However, we can offer this 64k ISDN line at 3x the going DSL price, or a fractional T-1 at 10x the going DSL price."
I doubt it has much to do with hardware or anything like that. It has more to do with the following lines of thought...
So long as the major broadband providers can get away with pushing around the local carriers, nothing's going to change. Even when the major broadband providers are responsible for delivering the product direct to the consumer, there's not much difference. Verizon has long waiting lists to get DSL in their service area's (Oh, and they don't allow smaller local carriers to gain access to their DSL lines. They pay the minor fines and screw the competition until it dies and Tauzin-Dingle passes/goes into effect.) Cox Communication is the monopoly Cable Internet provider for Fairfax County, VA. Their Road Runner service is notorious for outtages, high latency, dropped packets, etc. Do they care very much? Not really. So long as customers are willing to pay them $50/m for crappy service, they will continue to provide it and stuff their wallets with their massive profits.
When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.
Fear of adapting to new markets is no surprise.
.)
Ever been to Europe? Tele-text with flight times on television, radio clocks keep time without being manually set, car radio's provide all sorts of info.
Ever been to Japan? You can get a a full automated bath in a token operated walk in booth. (well, maybe some things. .
But it's the vacant want of hi-tech gadgetry that slows Aericans from all sorts of neat stuff.
And really, with thousands of square miles of rolling plain, in Wyoming, let's say, who needs a clock to update itself?
at least where i live its impossible to get dsl or cable unless you are right in town. until they bring the high speed services to people who arent within city limits, they will not capture most of the us population.
Tis better to be silent and thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt --Abraham Lincoln
If content were really the issue, and Canada had this amazing free flow of broadband material, where is it? This is the internet. I can hit Canadian servers as easily as American ones. Why isn't there this free flow of movies, TV, and music coming from the Great White North?
The reason is, this article is a bunch of crap. There is a huge Non Sequitor between Canada and Korea having better odds of broadband and lack of content.
There are other little reasons, like the fact we have a larger population and a smaller population density.
Brian Ellenberger
If the local Bells didn't have a monopoly on the last mile of copper and cable companies didn't have monopolies on the last mile of, er, twisted copper, all of LL's concerns would be dealt with.
But the simple matter is that the Bells were allowed to drive out 3rd party DSL, Congress regulated internet service on cable INTO bigger monopolies (at least local cable companies had to compete with DSL).
Of all the reasons I've heard for people not going with "broadband" (and little since my inital experience on a cable modem has truly been "broadband"), I have never, not once, heard anything about content. In fact, I've wanted to do things for people with dialup access that I couldn't do because downloading that nifty new 13.4 MB program was just too long to tie up the phone line.
Lessig is an interesting writer, but he really pushes his arguments into places they just don't work.
Because many, many people who use AOL also have a second phone line to support their AOL connection so the phone doesn't get tied up. At something like $15/month (YMMV) for the phone line too, you're actually talking about $23/month for AOL (correct?) + $15/month for the phone line = $38/month for just AOL. If broadband is $46 month for them, like it is for me, then that's just another $8/month.
Hell, that $8 will be more than made up for in the sheer number of other things I *don't* spend money on because I'm too busy online.
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
These experiments in innovation [refering to Napster and MP3.com] are now over. They have been stopped by lawyers working for the recording industry. Every form of innovation that they disapproved of they sued. And every suit they brought, they won. Innovation outside the control of the "majors" has stopped.
This is a subtle clue as to why broadband isn't being bought. Broadband is all about my having the resources to run my own web pages or FTP site or MP3 stream. If I can't do that without the fear of the RIAA (gotta pay royalties!), FBI (think Linux is warez) or whoever patented hyperlinks (whatever happened to "non-obvious"?)breaking down my bedroom door, then I sure don't have any reason to invest in that big a connection.
Come on, broadband isn't about how much I can suck down at once, it's about being able to produce my own content.
Do you like Japanese imports?
The site's not responding for me (Slashdotted? big site for that), so I'm going by the summary, which *completely* misses the mark with broadband's failures. Broadband in the U.S. is failing for two reasons: the infrastructure is owned by companies who are neither competent to nor motivated to provide broadband, and population densities are such that updating antiquated infrastructure is expensive.
Consider the telcos, who are responsible for providing DSL. They want DSL dead, because it cuts into their massive-profit sales of T1s. They're also big, lumbering bureaucracies, which deal badly with change. I won't recount my own DSL horror stories, but there are plenty to be had at DSL Reports. Technically DSL is functional and capable, but the businesses behind it, and the support bureaucracies, are not.
Cable has different problems. First, there's the cable companies; in my area, and in others, cable Internet is simply not an option because the local providers don't offer it. There's also the problem of bandwidth sharing. It's true that DSL bandwidth is also shared, but it's shared at a central point, which is easily upgraded; with cable, mis-estimation of demand or usage can leave people drastically short on bandwidth. (DSLReports again for horror stories).
Finally, consider the population layout in the US, as compared to elsewhere. If you have population-dense cities, surrounded by low-density farmland, you can provide access to most of the population simply by providing short-range access in the cities. In the US, most of the demand is in the suburbs, which involve much longer distances and are, therefore, much harder to provide for. (This is especially true in my home state of Massachusetts, where economics are such that the demand and the money is all in the suburbs).
What's Holding Up Broadband in the U.S.?
I don't know...
[he says as downloading a Darwin ISO at ~250K/second]
SIGFEH
Sounds more like a cop-out to say, "Phone lines are not up to it..." and that doesn't explain the death of @Home
Not really. If you're more than 3 mi from the CO (or other box with DSL equipment in it) you're stuck. I'm 10 mi outside Boston, but 3.5 mi from the CO. Thus, the only option for me is cable modem, which is going through the whole @Home problems. Given that this area already has cable service, will the phone company upgrade their local service to offer DSL and offer competition? Doubt it.
Speaking of @Home, companies fail. It happens. The idea was pretty stupid to begin with.
I think Broadband hasn't caught on because it's the fact that the U.S. has too many toys right now to pay for. Something's got to be cut out.
1. Cable TV $40
2. Car Note $250
3. Car Insurance $100
4. Regular Phone $30
5. Cell Phone $45
6. Tivo $10
7. Cable Modem $40
That's $515 a month and it's missing the cost of 2 little of things:
1. FOOD
2. SHELTER
It's easy to say something like:
"Well, I could get AOL for 20 bucks less, I don't use the internet that much anyway." --Quote from my Mother.
Well, if broadband is widely available and not many people are using it, it stands to reason that people do not consider the service to be worth what is currently being charged for it (which is my contention), or that it is simply not a good service (and to say this would be both bogus and sad).
:)
Nothing is holding back broadband; the value of broadband compared to its price is holding people back, from getting broadband. Several people have told me this.
Ah, but once you get it, there's no going back.
Having been a cable modem customer, and now a DSL customer, I've had mixed experiences.
With cable, until the @Home debacle, I had 3 static IPs and ran my domain off the cable modem. I had decent performance, but the it was expensive, not as highly available as I would have liked, and I knew that I could lose access at any time for running a server.
Now I have DSL, albeit the consumer service. Soon, it will be set up with static IPs and my domain will be back up (grumble). It will be even more expensive, for probably less performance, but is supposed to be more reliable (certainly has been so far), and I won't have to worry about running the domain (plus I'll get another pair of static IPs).
Both cable and DSL share a common downfall, and it is the reason that most dial up customers I've talked to are slow to switch: no choice of ISPs. With a phone line, I can sign up for any ISP, and can leave for another if I don't like the service I'm getting. With DSL or cable modem, I get one ISP, and cannot switch providers and keep my connection otherwise. There is therefore no price or service incentive for the vendor to improve.
For me, I'd select no ISP. My wife would use AOL. My father-in-law would use his current local provider, and my Dad would be happy just to get broadband at all. The imposition of service has nothing to do with the architecture, and everything to do with decisions made by the broadband access providers. However, as a consumer, I am forced to pay for services I do not want and will never use.
Certainly, content should not be a problem: every web designer out there seems to assume that you are plugged into the server room judging by the amount of bloated Flash and Java pages out there.
-jeff
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
Verizon wants $80 or $85 for a static IP, per month. Wish I had another choice, but it's either Verizon, my previous ISP (Davesworld.net, now RMI.net, who continued to bill me for 9 months after I cancelled, and read my email, and all sorts of nonsense), or an ISP that's being sued by a local school district.
Reading some posts from people in the states made me think of how cheap broadband in Canada is.
Here in Toronto, cable (300KB/s max downstream, ~45KB/s max upstream) is only $40.00cdn a month.
That comes out to $25usd a month (assuming 1.6 exchange rate).
Maybe us canadian's are more likely to switch because it's so cheap. As for americans, is there a reason why you guys are paying 2-3 times what we pay?
I would just like to say I am very happy with the broadband services provided in Canada. I am in Vancouver, where I can get Cable or (A)DSL. Both services have become very stable over the last year, and their availabilities are almost limitless. A very affordable $40CDN a month is pretty cheap for 400kps cable service that I get now.
The Cable companies Shaw and Rogers support internet basically everywhere you can get regular cable tv. It is fast, and they have scaled reasonaby to meet customer demand. I used to find rogers (when they were in vancouver) a little flaky, but that has all gone away now..
I think adoption of canadian broadband has been sucessful because:
a: Cheap
b: Reasonable to Excellent Quality
c: Availability
Keep up the good work guys!
Bye!
I think the real reason broadband is being held up are called, uhm... "bankrupcy proceedings?"
:)
post has been /.ed
They're not going to fix it. Taco wants reading at -1 to be as unpleasant as possible. That way you'll give up and read at +1 and be assimilated by the slashbots.
i've watched a few interviews with lawrence lessig (stanford law professor) and have come away with mixed feelings. on the one hand, sometimes he seems to 'get it' as far as what open source and free software are about (the former about the business model, the latter about the freedom). on the other hand he seems (at least to me) to misrepresent the importance of napster at any opportunity (but then again, that is the only topic i've seen an interviewer ask him a question about).
all in all he actually does good things, and i like the thought of someone like him teaching at the best law school in the country. maybe the next generation of IP lawyers will know which side of the fence to stand on.
but then again, with stanford tuition being what it is, and the MPAA/RIAA paying what they do, don't count on it, i guess.
-sam
burn the computers. go back to the abacus.
First, as an AT&T Cable Internet subscriber, I don't see a holdup. Okay, I'm a "have" and you're a "have-not" so that twists my view on this a little. But only a LITTLE.
I'd rather have DSL service here. I liked it better. It was more reliable and I like the company who provided the service better. But when I moved a mere 3 miles from where I was, DSL was no longer available to me. Thankfully, however, Cable internet (which wasn't available to be at the previous location) was available when I moved. (Side note: "The grass is always greener...until you've visited both sides and you can tell the difference first-hand." I like DSL.)
Okay, that said, it SEEMS like the problem is area availability unless I am misunderstanding the article. The article does seem to confuse the matter by discussing "many channels with nothing on them." So are they talking about broadband cable TV or broadband internet? Or maybe I'm stupid enough not to realize they are one in the same..?
Now as far as that goes, I can MAYBE so some reason for the slowdown of progress and availability being made, but I don't believe it yet. I see matters progressing as the various providers have mapped them out. I once followed cable internet deployment in my local area when I didn't have it and now I follow DSL deployment. So far, both have remained adherant to their schedules.
Where is the PROOF or any indication that it's copyright holder issues slowing down the installation of DSL/Cable or other broadband internet technologies? I have read nothing about that... maybe I'm a bad reader.
Simply put, I don't see the connection between the slow-growth of broadband internet technologies available to consumers and copyright holder interests. What's the connection? Where are the stops being put into place? How are they being put into place?
Perhaps I am biased through my involvement in the I/T industry, but I find figures such as the one quoting Koreans having 4X greater access to broadband than Americans simply appalling...if not completely unbelievable!!!
Not that I have anything against the Korean citizens or believe that they are any less entitled to fast internet access (as are we all...). I am simply in utter disbelief that a once war-ravaged, divided country whose population indulges primarily in farming is in such a position of dominance over the United States in this respective area. For all intents and purposes, any comparison in terms of technological and/or economical dynamics would be heavily weighed in the favor of the United States. And yet, the Korean government and industries have been able to provide this amazing level of availability of the Internet to it's citizenry.
IMHO, anyone whom can be presented this fact and not arrive at the simple conclusion that there are evil corporate powers at work hindering the acceptance of broadband within the U.S. is simply not trying to see the truth or being paid off by big corporate money!!!
-n2q
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. -- Benjamin Franklin
...who the hell came up with PPPoE? It's the one reason a lot of people I know don't have broadband. Let me explain:
1. DSL install is complete, but PPPoE software doesn't work, or error reporting is terrible so while the tech claims the line is good at the MPOE, the PPPoE still fails. Thanks to PPPoE, there is no means to test the line beyond trusting what the tech says.
2. Customer has a Mac, and techs don't know anything about Macs. PPPoE software doesn't work.
3. PPPoE software is incredibly unstable, even on Windows 2000.
Why do we even have PPPoE? I just don't see the point. Why cause your customers (and your bottom line) endless hours of pain and suffering calling your tech support lines? No wonder they're busy all the time and reps are run ragged.
DHCP works great. So do static IPs. Just give out a private range. There's no reason home users need a public IP, and as a ISP you can sell that as "firewalled" if you want. Connections can still be logged where necessary. Since you can make up all of the non-public IPs you want (essentially) there's no problem of IPs being "overused." Those who have a real need for a static, public IP can pay for one (complain if you want, I know I would... but that's called the market system -- if you don't pay, you don't play).
So here I am sitting at the end of my PacBell DSL, with static IP, which I've had for three years. My cost is $40 a month. Maybe I was just lucky I got in at the get-go and PacBell can't change my service now. But frankly, I don't see what the big deal is. I'm one of the few people who has had a PacBell DSL line and thought it was great.
In fact, I can't remember there being a single time where I needed to call PacBell support and speak to a rep. I've called at most five times over the past three years to check the system status when my line was down. Only once was it down for more than two hours.
Maybe I'm just lucky. Maybe my phone lines are higher quality (I'm 12,000 feet or so from the nearest CO). Maybe it's because I have a static IP so it just works like it should.
Broadband in many cases is both Cable TV and internet, as well as Voice over IP (telephone) and other services. Most of the time when people are talking about data and broadband, they mean internet service.
~ now you know
Its a nice leather belt!! *ba-dum-dum*
Thank you ladies and gentleman, I'm here all week.
Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I'll never know.
I think Broadband companies may be waiting for the government to subsidize the cost of rolling out the infrastructure needed for service. The risk is too high for many of these companies right now especially, with people cutting back on spending across the board.
I Heart Sorting Networks
In my opinion, the reason why is the telecom act of 1996, which prevents national long distance operators from offering broadband data service in markets where they haven't opened their systems to competitors.
The result is that long distance operators have been slow to make the necessary network upgrades because they know that if they do, they'll need to let everyone else have access.
The analogy is: "Would you buy yourself a new Porsche if you knew that you had to give a set of keys to everyone on your block".
In the markets where they have upgraded infrastructure, they are doing everything they can to keep competitors off the system. Those things include everything from unfair pricing (E.G. You can rent access to our system for $30/customer per month and resell it, but our price is $19.95 so good luck) to simply denying access.
There is a bill before congress called the Tauzin / Dingel bill which would let long distance companies sell high speed data without having to open their systems. Depending on your perspective, this is either a godsend or a disaster. On the one hand, it should definately speed up the network upgrades, but on the other hand, it won't be nearly as compeitive a market...
-rg
Whats holding up broadband in the US? If you have SWBell or IPC they probibly have a strip of duct tape keeping your DSLAM to the rack and bubble gun at the splice.
--
Power to the Peaceful
...I know whats holing it up in New England, its spelled V-e-r-i-z-o-n...
Amoung other interested companies, why provide high speed service to the customer, and better infrastructure, when you can turn enormous profit and treat the customer like shit,because well where else they gonna go. Even Broadband modem is just plain stupid, they can go much faster, and this game playing with TOS contracts, and you can do this but not that is rediculous. Stop protecting the entrenched old guard, give us high speed connections(fiber, they can do it they just don't want to) to the home, let us buy IP6 Schemes(more than enough space there) to put on them, nd get out of the way. I should be able to get 100mps to the home, cram all the data I want down that pipe, and support everything I want to do(Telephone, Servers, Video, etc) off the one line or a 39.95 flat rate. If the local Telco won't do it the Cable-Co should, hell they are putting fiber on the Poles to support Digital cable, just tkae it to the next step. 'nuff said.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
The reason Canadians are so likely to have it is the price! I used to pay CDN$40 (ca. USD$25) for a 1mbs connection. It's so cheap here, if want the internet, you might as well have broadband! For people who have dial-up and a dedicated phone line: it's a no-brainer!
Right now, I'm with IStop.com. If you own your own modem, they offer a 1184/160kbs DSL connection for CDN$30 (ca. USD$19). To put it into perspective, that's less than the price I payed for dial-up when I lived in the US! This company also offers 3mbs/800kbs (CDN$99), and if you have a business line, 6/1mbs (CDN$195).
For myself, I have their 1.2mbs service + ethernet modem rental + static IP, all for ca. CDN$40. I can run any server I like - it's unrestricted access. The HTTP proxy is optional. If I exceed their 20GB monthly limit, I get charged $3/GB for excess (apparently this will be dropping in the future to $2/GB). THE PRICE IS RIGHT!
I have clients I would love to get DSL, or faster DSL pipes (read businesses) There isn't the cost benefit to go to frame ($500/mo+), but a $200/ month connection will suffice.
In these cases, Verizon and Qwest (also known as US Worst) almost uniformly refuse to help get DSL. Right now, (as in today) I am working on getting a DSL line setup for internet access and VPN to a main office for one of my clients. The remote office is less than 6000 feet from the CO, and the main is probably half that. The telco tells me that the remote can only get 384/128, and the maximum I can get for the main office is 384/384! I have asked about getting a new pots line with bridge-tap removal, but everyone claims that this can't be done. (It can, as I can order an alarm circut, and they are obligated to remove the taps and coils) But since Verizon and Qwest both basically design the tarrifs, they put in restrictions that prevent them from doing much that they don't want to.
Basically, the telco's want you to use frame at exorbatant costs - they'll just put a HDSL box at both ends anyway, and "emulate" frame, but they will charge you big time. They then do everything possible to prevent you from getting what you need. They control the physical lines, and don't you forget it!
I don't know what requirements there are for CLEC's, when there are some, but I still bet that the telco provisions the worst lines for them. In my particular case, there is no CLEC to go to anyway. So I _FIGHT_ and _FIGHT_ to get the telco do to what they need to do, and that's a pain.
Here's a solution. For any connection that is less than 25,000 feet from the CO, the telco must provide a DSL pipe of at least 256/256. If they claim it can't be done, they have to provide a frame pipe for the equivalent costs ($50/month). Then the telco will get off of it's butt, and actually deliver. Until it costs the telco not to deliver, rather than pays (ie frame makes us more money than DSL) they don't do jack!
And it will probably fly well here. But if we're going to point fingers, personally I'd like to point one at Verizon. I live in the D.C. area, the Washington Post is my newspaper, Comcast cable is my cable company and Verizon is my phone monopoly. And not one of the three can deliver broadband. The cable modems here are all telephone return (ever tried it? not worth $60 a month) and the DSL service has a 9 month queue time, at which point the Verizon tech can't figure out how to install it. I watched them try futilely in my house for weeks. Hell, I watched them put my company on a 4 month long waiting list to get a T1.
The argument WP is giving is that consumer demand isn't there because there's nothing on the Net. I say baloney; the Korean broadband boom has been driven mainly by online gaming, which we have plenty of here as well. I say the demand exists and the problem is that the monopolies are busy strangling upstart competition to death (Covad) using incompetence as a weapon, and then catering to demand at their leisure, the same way they've treated phone customers for years. The only place they haven't successfully strangled the competition to death is the wireless arena, because they can't buy up all the airwaves. And they're getting slaughtered in that marketplace, surprise surprise.
Until you can circumvent the monopolies with cheap wireless broadband, they will continue to screw everybody.
I live in a town in Norway with approximately 30000 people, and here most people got 3 alternatives (Telenor ADSL (the former state telephone company), Nextgentel ADSL and a company called sdsl.no).
The Telenor ADSL is shitty PPPoE for about $50/month for 704k downstream/128k upstream with no possibility for static IP.
Nextgentel ADSL is plain ADSL with a NAT'ing router at about the same price as Telenor but with 704k downstream/384k upstream. Static IP is available for about $11/month.
sdsl.no on the other hand is a bit more expensive but is the solution I chose. They target "high-end users", and 1Mbit up and down (at the same time, not asynchronous as ADSL) costs about $110/month. What you get is an sdsl<->ethernet converter, and you have to plug it into a pc/router and configure the pc/router yourself. No DHCP at all, no mandatory NAT. They are not trying to sell you other stuff such as video-on-demand and other things, they just give you a kick-ass connection to the internet and that's it. Do you want to run a server? No problem, just don't run a commercial web server. I wanted to change the reverse dns entry, and mailed them (at 8PM). It was fixed in 30 minutes. In the last months there have been some problems with DOS'ing, but they've sent mails telling us that. This is the ultimate ISP for (wealthy) geeks.
I just don't get it. What does lukewarm reception from content-owners have to do with slow rollout of broadband?
Is it so much different i Canada or Europe in those departments?
I don't live in the US, but I'd rather guess at some alternate reasons:
- Poor availability of broadband service, confusing potential buyers
- Poor customer service when ordering
- Long waits to get service
- Poor marketing of service availability
- Word of initial failures spreads, and delays the entire market until public perceives the technology is ready for market
- Stories of changing contracts and fee structures (like bandwith limitations) confuse potential customers
I've had DSL for a year here in Oslo, Norway. I ordered from one of three major, near nationwide broadband competitors. I had service installed within 10-14 days, just as the provider had informed me. The DSL-provider I use is profitable, and seems unlikely to go bankrupt, just like its two-three main competitiors. It's very easy to check for service availability. Companies charge realistic, sustainable prices which aren't likely to force any of the largest providers into bankruptcy. People who get broadband here are generally positive, don't feel screwed by their provider, and tell friends and family about the great new service they've gotten installed, which entices more people to get connected properly.
Verizon.net does not use PPPoE. My $49 a month connection and my $69 router work great for my mixed network (Linux, OS X, Win 2k, and Win 98.
for $69 I can get a 384/384 synchronous ADSL, and it gets installed in less than ten days...
I will admit things sucked a few months ago, but we are getting better!
"If I were important, I would have a sig file..."
... I can support the fact that broadband here is very available and fairly cheap. And it's been this way for about 3 years at least.
:)
I've had a broadband connection with Rogers Cable since early 1998. Granted, my neighbourhood was one of the test zones, and I was one of the first people who got it in my area. At that time it was not available in the entire Greater Toronto Area. But for quite a while it's been available pretty much anywhere Rogers has TV cables installed. The service is pretty good, although I've had more than my share of problems, it's fast but most of all, it's cheap.
The other alternative in Toronto (and I guess the rest of Canada) is DSL. Bell Sympatico is the widest spread one, since they have the phone line monopoly. But they do lease the lines at decent prices, since there are at least 4 other companies offering DSL in my city. Again, a few years back DSL was not available everywhere, but now it is.
The funniest thing is that when I have on-going problems with my cable, I can threaten Rogers that I will move to DSL, and magically these problems get fixed. For example, I used to have a LanCity modem, which is very old and very sensitive to cable noise. I called them a couple of times, asking for a replacement from another manufacturer, but nothing happened. As soon as I mentioned Sympatico DSL, I had a Terayon modem installed by the next day.
I also mentioned the fact that broadband here is cheap. Well, on average it's about $60/month including the modem rental. That's Canadian funds, or about $40 USD. There are occasional promos, price wars, etc so you can get even better deals (sympatico had/has an offer for CAD$20/month for the first 6 months).
My point is that I enjoy my broadband connection.
I don't know where you are but I know I was surprised when I checked out dslreports.com and found that there are a lot more DSL providers out there. That's how I found speakeasy. Maybe you already checked but if not maybe this will help.
The article brings up an important point: compulsory licencing truly could revolutionize the internet while fairly compensating artists and financial backers without granting them control over the future of this medium. Many people found the cost / value ratio of broadband sufficient only when Napster started to absorb all available bandwidth. Willingness to pay for the experiences is obviously there, as people paid an extra 20+ per month just to Napster, but without fair, even handed, and content-agnostic services available, why bother?
This reminds me of Texting. Text messaging is such a pervasive thing throughout the rest of the world, yet the US doesn't have it. Companies decided that control of the standard was so lucrative that no standard has evolved, no messages are sent, and no money is being made.
There is so many potential uses for fat pipes that everyone at the service end is trying to block everyone else from crawling in. Compulsory licensing is a standard like texting, html, and phone jacks. It would allow entertainment and money to flow around the internet without either being leveraged towards a monopoly situation. Mediums were meant to be a free highway between people and companies, not a strategic bottleneck to exploit.
This Sig is a mnemonic device designed to allow you to recognize this author in the future.
I haven't even had broadband for a week. Can't get DSL, and the cable company lied to me for a year. But they finally got it to me.
Who says that it's available everywhere? It's not. Try moving to a place with fiber optic telephone lines. Good friggin' luck getting DSL or Cable.
Here in Rochester NY (near Buffalo) we have RoadRunner/TimeWarner cable and Telco DSL available, so the competition helps prices and access speeds.
On DSL, I have 600Kbps down/128Kbps up. Friends with cable have between 500 and 1000 Kbps up and down. The service is good with both systems, defined as few outages and proper operation once the initial installation headaches are over.
ACHTUNG! Das computermachine ist nicht fuer gefingerpoken und mittengrabben. Ist nicht fuer gewerken bei das dumpkopfen.
You just know this position (The old guard of content owners is stifling innovation/solution is compulsory licensing of content) is gonna offend some of W Bush's owners. Michael Brown will be forced to retract ("clarify") his statements, just like Gale Norton did when she espoused a compromise position that would have required some cleanup by western mining companies.
Remain calm! All is well!
I enjoy reading about how spoiled stupid Americans complain on the lack of broadband in their area. You all sound pathetic. By reading all posts so far it seems like brodband is very much available, just a tad expensive one might think. So, get off your lazy ass and get a part-time job, or, even better, move to a decent (and by decent, I mean any other country than USA) country.
On a second thought, don't do that. We don't want you fat fast-food-asses here.
I live about 30 miles from Nashville (In Tennessee, US in a county called, hickman county) and we have NO broadband options here. Comcast has been claiming "it's coming" but with the recent troubles regarding @home they've been silent. Satellite is overpriced/has gay ping times(important since I'm a gamer) and dsl is not and will never be an option.
The U.S. has traditionally been behind in adopting new technlolgies. ISDN is the perfect example. ISDN was widely available in Europe in the early 1980's but it took another 10 years for it to arrive in the U.S. Why? simple. Big corporations are very slow to upgrade anything. The telcos squeezed every last hour they could out of the old mechanical central offices until they literally were falling apart. Only then did they upgrade to ESS CO's. In Europe, ESS came many years earlier. All of corporate America is this way! Just look at how many 300 Mhz (36 channel) cable systems are still out there. Corporate America will only spend $$ on infrastructure when they absolutely have to - kicking and screaming all the way......
Come to Canada. My Cable account never ceases to amaze me. I'm easlily getting speads that beat out a T1, and rival that of a T2.
There's a pretty easy answer to the "piracy threat" -- Dynamic IPs.. all the American cable companies have to do is institute DHCP that expires every day or two.
I keep reading posts about lack of DSL in areas and slow-moving Cable companies. Most of these problems are infrastructure. A long time ago, I remember something called PAN (Power Area Network), which was supposed to have some ungodly speeds, but nothing ever materialized.
Here's a link to some companies looking into the technology
It seems like if something like this ever got off the ground, everyone would have access, and at very high speeds. IIRC, the only equipment needed was a unit at the power company to modulate the signal over the power lines, and a receiver at home, with converters for wall plugs. You could litterallty have your broadband connection anywhere there's an electrical outlet.
The (Hopefully) Great Slashdot Blackout
Australian internet users have it FAR worse. They pay astronimical prices for almost no bandwidth and almost no data transfer.
It is quite annoying to see Aussies paying $80~ per month for 3GB transfer at 512k or less, but it is all that is available.
That and the fact that broadband isn't available in MANY MANY areas of the country. For example less that 40 minutes out of Brisbane.
I'd consider myself lucky if I could get DSL/Cable at a decent speed for $50 per month.
Whats holding up broadband in Australia?
i hate pansy republicans
DSL and cable TV Internet services are not worthy of the name "broadband". They are more aptly described as modem++.
Real broadband would be fast enough to bring in at least two stream of decent quality video (which I define as being at least 4:3 DVD quality and really ought to be 16:9 HDTV quality at full frame rates and resolutions - I'm talking rates on the order of 6 to 20+ megabits/second per stream.)
And a real "broadband" service, even if it has asymetrical bandwidth, ought to be at least capable of supporting things like servers for small businesses. The "mostly-in" paradigm of most of today's DSL and cable services just creates a caste system.
We really need fiber optics to every home and business. At a minimum cities ought to require that every time a trench is dug in a roadway or to a house, that an empty conduit be installed and connected. That way, over time, a conduit system would be created so that the conduit system would be there when we are ready to install the glass itself (after we've figured out the patching and packet routing mechanisms that need to go along with the actual fiber.)
I'm not sure that people are aware of the efforts of the Cable TV and telco industries to prevent the installation of municipial fiber optic utilities. There are efforts underway at the State level to enact laws to prevent cities from installing city-owned fiber optic cable plants because that would cut into the near-monopoly services of the phone and cable TV companies.
I can imagine you, being ass raped by a Beowulf cluster of flatulent trolls.
Also to blame are the stupid idiots who have no business using computers in the first place. Nimda, CodeRed, CodeRed II, Melissa, I_LOVE_YOU, Gone.scr and that one that sends out your My Documents files are a few other reasons.
Do we really want these people to have big connections?
Technology can be dangerous. Those with the ability to widely distribute broadband should be wary of putting it in the hands of irresponsible people. Perhaps there should be a clause in the service agreement that they protect their systems from trojans and such or else face losing their connection. Maybe there should even be a credit-report style tracking system in place to enable ISPs to know who is a menace and charge them more money for a connection.
At this point, i think that neither broadband nor end users are mature enough to cooperate. Slow connections for Joe Sixpack, fast connections for Joe Sysadmin.
Sorry about my vulgarity and intensity, but i just got the butt end of a DDoS attack. Someone did a big DDoS attack using my ip address as the spoofed source for all the packets. Not only did it flood my feeble 1.5 Mb/s connection with SYN/ACK packets, but it got my ISP really pissed off. They were getting all kinds of threats of legal action. There was nothing anyone could do.
Oh shit! I forgot to click "Post Anonymously"...
We oppose so called "campaign finance reform" since all proposals for far rip the very heart out of the First Amendment by outright censorship of political speech, or silly restrictions on money contributions with the goal of censoring the speech that certain contributors tend to find.
Not only this, the "campaign finance reform" is bizarre in its selectivity: it does not hinder campaign activity by incumbents, and "media" are excempt from being censored for participating in partisan campaigns.
There are better ways to take care of this corruption besides tossing the 1st Amendment out the window. Such as limiting the ability of the legislators to act to pay back "bribes". Make sure we get. Try ethics laws as well.
How do you like the Nader campaign reform ideas, for example? With his ideas, the government gets total control over who even gets to run for office. This fell out of favor in Moscow in 1989, so I guess it is time for this great idea to take root in Washington? It is no wonder that Nader's Green Party favors all decisions being made in Washington: they are poised to be the first political party entirely paid for and controlled by the government. Of course the government party" would want more government power.
It's around 18,000' like he said.
Cable companies don't want to merely be the last mile for unconstrained flat-rate video streams. They want to be in the pay-per-view business. Telcos don't want to be merely the last mile for third-party DSL providers. And content owners are terrified of systems that let anyone pass video around.
The game industry wants a general-purpose wire with low latency and high bandwidth, but doesn't have the clout to get cable and telco plants rebuilt to support it. Web advertisers play a lesser role than they did two years ago, and the pressure for high bandwidth ad delivery is down. So the pure-Internet mass market applications don't really need much beyond minimal DSL bandwidths.
And finally, if a new infrastructure is to be deployed, it should have the capacity for real HDTV, or it will be obsolete by 2006.
That's closer to the real problem than what Lessig says.
Establishes a direct connection from your wallet to our bank account!
I Trust Lessig and the WP About as far as I can throw them. Larry writing for the WP? That's like putting a red star on a red flag, if you catch my drift.
I live in NoVA. The reasons we don't have broadband are simple. We got analog cable before internet. Cox is struggling to upgrade all the analog stuff. Then of course DSL just sucks, but it sucks everywhere.
Wanna lay fiber in DC? The city slapped a moratorium on digging because they couldn't coordinate digs properly. Before, company A would lay fiber, then a week later company B would tear up the same street that was just patched. Residents and businesses said "enough is enough" and justifiable so. Now they have to coordinate through the city, but that takes time. DC has some infrastructure that dates back to the Civil War, and a government that is just beginning to recover from being run by a mayor who smoked crack. Literally.
If you want to look for reasons why broadband isn't making it in the US I'm sure there are plenty of them, but this business of suggesting that "content providers" are totally to blame, or even partially to blame seems like a stretch. This just smacks of political posturing and disinformation from the radical Leftist AIP movement, of which Lessig is a leader.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Hmm, DSL and cable doesn't even seem like broadband compared to my fiber-to-house connection. Sacramento is finally in the front on something...
.sig? Get your own damn
Since AT&T took over my MediaOne, our price of cable has gone up, our price of broadband has gone up, the service has gotten worse, digital cable has many problems (our audio being a major one), when I do my traceroutes, there's always some router performing poorly if at all.
I'm a hardcore cable modem user and I even wonder if it's worth the $110.00 cable bill per month. bout $55 for modem and the rest for basic and HBO. I have no other choice as I can't get a dish (condo rules, nothing can be put outside) and DSL sucks in our area, I haven't talked to a satisfied DSL customer yet.
If I want local or long distance for my phone, I got more choices then fingers, for my cable, I have one choice and they charge ridiculous amounts. The get more and more customers and I pay more and more money for less and less bandwith. I haven't seen over 100kbps in months...
Gee, I wonder what the problem is...
Hmm... Speaking as someone who had DSL before Northpoint went belly up and who now lives in an appartment, in the middle of the city, 3.01 cable miles away from a USWorst office, I think it's availability. If your mom had broadband in the past, she wouldn't go back. (you quit watching the news on TV, shopping changes, you don't read the newspaper anymore, drivers get real easy to download... etc)
Next house I buy I'll be considering whether it has broadband before I check for running water...
When Covad was still going strong, I nearly signed up to pay $80/mo for 128k access. I just couldn't conscience it after having real 200k SDSL for $50.
Most Canadians are in 3 or 4 cities, which would make broadband a cinch... for most canadians. However, what is broadband access in Canada like if you are away from these few cities?
Someone already has. Qwest was founded to take advantage of this opportunity. The funny thing is that no one bothered to take note that the railroads only had the surface rights to the land- which means that all those lines are running through land that Qwest doesn't own. Now there's a liability that I bet they don't put on their balance sheet... I wonder if buying US West with their over-inflated stock gave them the assets needed to survive such a fiasco.
It's telcos, stupid!
All the Qwest and Verizons are neither skilled nor motivated enough to change the situation.
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
Before the investment bubble burst last year, an unbelievable amount of fiber optic telco cable was laid, and IIRC, a lot of these lines have not even been activated, and won't be. Company after company has gone bankrupt trying to provide broadband and make money, even though most of us want the service.
Trouble is the damn RBOCs have managed to not only keep their local service monopolies pretty much intact but to strangle the up-and-comers at the connection point --- which was supposed to have been opened up by the 1996 telecommunications reform bill. Some legislators at the time grumbled that they had been sold a lie by the big telcos about the reforms, and promised to revisit the issue in the very next Congress... So here we are five years later... these same politicians continue to feed on the lobbyist cash cow, the RBOCS continue to rake in the profits on their existing poor service, and we wonder why nothing changes?
While some of Mr. Lessig's points strike true, in my view more of the problem has to do with big money corrupting the U.S. political process than any stranglehold on content because many of us would provide the content if we could get fairly priced access through-out the whole telco system.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
I seriously doubt Mediacom or @home's cable system could ever be slow as dialup. I guarantee people claiming this are either hitting sites with less than 10kB downstream (ie. wouldn't make a difference if you were on a pair of t3s) or people are using those crappy USB ethernet adapters that @home is pushing, while running 3 other USB peripherals that are seriously taxing the 12mbit USB cap.
$50 a month too much for Internet? Bah, give me a break.
To see a 2.5hr feature movie is at least $12.50 Canadian, $7.50 for short Go Kart ride, $50 for a day of Skiing, $120+ for a good night drinking with a few drinks for that special someone.
You get what you pay for. Sure it's great paying $9 a month if you're only using email (watch those 5 meg attachments!), and don't really like full screen porn movies.....
The fact is that most dial up people don't even realize that they're missing! They can't and don't ever bother with 60meg Pr0N clips, cueing 30 mp3s in Morpheus or dling the latest 80meg software "demos".
But once they sit on a fat DSL or Cable pipe, and begin to dabble in these high bandwidth delights, they will quickly realize that $50 is squat, ziltch, nada, for the millions options a Broadband solution will open up.
Now open up that wallet you cheap bastard, pay for one month of cable, DSL, satellite and tell me its not worth it. Don't forget to get some decent file sharing software, I suggest Morpheus, Kazza, Gnotella and if youre *nix enabled, theres a shitload of open source options.
Now hurry up, you're meter is running and you know you only put 15c in, cheapo.
I lived in an apartment in town. Was not capable of having either Cable Internet Nor DSL due to where it sat on the road and how it obtained its cable feed. The only other option I had was Satellite, however I had no clear line of sight. I bought a house 3 miles from where the apartment sat, and now have the option of DSL (which I chose based on a past cable experience UGH) and Cable (via Excite at first, now AT&T and soon to be something else) and Satellite (Cost prohibitive at the moment). The DSL is not too bad, however I am a bit further from the drop than I would care to be. Cost is a major factor, as when I lived in California it was $40 a month for either. Here (Oregon) it is $70+ to start. If I did not need it for what I do, I would not have it. When it comes to the point of where it becomes cost prohibitive, I will cancel it and go to Dial up due to the sole factor of COST>
You keep going until you die..."Me".
I must be missing something, why in the world would anyone want to run AOhelL over a cable modem? Please don't tell me that you know this works from personal experience!!! :-)
Murphy was an optimist.
I'm cancelling mine....Since @Home went under. Charter Communications has decided this:
I'm getting 256/128 service now...instead of 1.5mbs/384
$10 more a month, since I don't get cable TV.
$7.95 Cable modem rental!?
$4.53 in misc tax FCC etc franchise fees
On top of that, it hardly works!
Taking away static IP's!
They filter all the good ports...which is a main reason to have it...
I've went from $49.95 to nearly $70!
Even at $49.95, it's still pretty expensive. DSL in my area costs more! Slower! More restrictions! $100 setup fee!
Working in an ISP in Southeastern Oklahoma I can comment on the situation firsthand...The overall availability of broadband sucks. One one side we have the phone company trying to roll out DSL in a town where most of the people are out of range, the local cable company has been in the cable ISP business for a few years now and as time goes on they get more and more restrictive (blocked ports,monthly bandwidth caps and other such nonsense). At work we are busy trying to sell 802.11b wireless> I might be biased, but we have a superior service(better overall bandwidth, no port filtering, competive rates, friendly tech support). The problem in rual areas is that the population density isn't really high enough in this area to roll out high speed access quickly. Granted we are a mom and pop shop, and don't have the corporate resources to just throw towers out at our whims, but each one has to at least show some chance of profits before we move into a new area. And thats the problem...high population density=high profits per tower....The End
All these ideas about cheap broadband for the entire country are great. I love them. Heck, I'd *love* to have inexpensive ($30/mo) broadband where I live (rural WI)...but I don't see it happening soon, unless a lot of unavailable tax dollars are thrown at it.
It's the same basic reason that broadband came to metro areas first: they can afford it and most of the neccesary infrastructure is already there. Now take an area like a town in the midwest with a population of around 15,000. Even better, a town that used to have a thriving industry at some point (be it a steel or paper mill or whatever). What reason does a cable company (or phone company to get the people just outside of town) have to offer broadband? The meager monthly charges coupled with the lower population density just cannot justify the huge costs of implementation.
Well, maybe it *could* justify the cost, if utility companies were willing to look 5 or 10 years ahead. Over that stretch of time, the costs could be recovered, but that's a *very* long term investment, especially with the bad case of the flu dealt to the US economy of late.
Again, I'd love to have cheap broadband everywhere, but let's get serious. It ain't gonna happen by some altruistic whim. Somebody in DC is going to have to get it into thier head that this is a Good Thing and push to see it happen. But then again, the FCC has been trying to get HDTV adopted as well for 5 years now, and it'll be surprising if we make *that* deadline 5 years from now.
I keep trying to pick fights, but I can't shake this Excellent karma.
If you could pay just a little extra for broadband over telephone, is there any reason why NOT to pay that little extra for faster downloads / etc..?
Sure. And I'll explain it clearly. I don't get faster downloads when using broadband. Sure, I have a 300 Kbps pipe (optimal as it's the shared cable deal) but there's no chance at all that I'll fill that pipe just downloading web pages, no matter how Flash/Shockwave/Java intensive they are.
You see, the really big web page sites have a D/L limiter... so do a lot of FTP sites. So having that pipe only gives me the chance to have 10 30 Kbps streams, not 1 300K stream.
I'll say it again. Broadband is all about me being able to put up the sounds of my (hypothetical) garage band, offer for download the (as yet unreleased) GNU software I wrote, and release myself from the leash of Geocities for my homepage. It's not about downloading content; it's about making mine available to the world. That's something that is stopped by the "big bad evils" that plague the hacker. And the average user does understand (well, somewhat). They see it's all about Goliath putting David in a choke hold. And thus, won't go anywhere near it.
Do you like Japanese imports?
New York City and Washington DC? Tough gun laws, high murder rates. New York City did recently manage a huge reduction in its murder rate, and gun laws had little to do with it.
Switzerland is well armed. Not much gun violence problem.
Gun laws tend to inconvenience the law-abiding. The criminals don't care since they don't like laws anyway.
I suggest it's something other than the Internet that prompts Frezzeyerassofflandians to keep their clothes on in public places.
Infuriate left and right
What we need is a good civil war to destroy all that infrastructure. Then we could start over with fibre all the way around. But what can we do to piss the south off this time? Maybe ban high school football?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Economies of scale & all that (you know the only Oz state that has had problems like California is Vicoria which just happens to be the only Oz state to have privatised it govt Electricity utility
Really you can't beat govt Telco monopolies - look at Nokia & Singapore Telecom.
I am an about-to-graduate college student at Appalachian State, a universty of meager endowment and funds (due to the NC state budget crunch). I and millions like me are absolutely spoiled rotten by the 100 Mbps campus networks hooked up to gargantuan pipes, not to mention the cheap 802.11b access that floats around in many college towns for those who want to live in apartments. We exist on our peer-to-peer apps and our gratutious bandwidth consumption - personnally, I'd rather stream the headlines from CNN or MSNBC with my PC than have to reach 3ft. for a remote control.
My point is that in the next 10 years, a huge hunk of the workforce will have attended schools with broadband. Broadband is like crack. If I ever have to dial pu with a 33.6 modem again like I did last summer I am gonna go nuts. That huge hunk of workforce is going to be a major part of the constituency of our democracy, and if broadband isn't cheap and available, we will demand it be so (just like cable TV, which operates under heavy price controls in many places).
I predict the Internet will become like the roads and sewers of the nation - it will become public infrastructure. See Chicago MAN project article.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Back in the early days of electrification, the power industry was set up very similarly to broadband of today; Very little regulation and very spuratic coverage.
The problem is then when your trying to make money, you look for the places where you can get the most return on your investment, ie, urban locations and their suburbs. At some point the population density becomes low enough that a rollout in that area would be more liability then benefit. Hence, no rollout.
It wasn't until the us nationalized the power industry and set requirements on coverage that electricity was available to everyone. Even then it took until the 1960's to get electricity into the real boonies.
It was the same story all over again for cell phone coverage, and it'll be the same for broadband. In order for broadband to become a utility and not a comodity, government regulation is required. Ask the Canucks.
-Chris
--an unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys--
Hahahahah! This is by far the most annoying Troll ever! Good job on finding this!
for $69 I can get a 384/384 synchronous ADSL, and it gets installed in less than ten days...
384Kbps down/128Kbps up was the best Verizon, known as GTE back then, (with Flashcom as ISP) could give me, and I was less than a mile from the CO.
Now I have Adelphia PowerLink, and 384Kbps down is just about the worst it gets. Usually I get T1 speeds down. Yeah, bandwidth is capped at 128Kbps upstream, but c'est la vie. I got the same with DSL. They're trying to prevent people from running servers, that's all. I'm cool with that...I have a hosting provider for that. Let them deal with the minutiae of running a web server.
Before cable, I had two phone lines, one for voice, the other for fax/data/DSL. When my cable modem stabilized, I was able to shut down my second phone line. Cable modem costs $43/mo. That's about how much my second phone line costs. When Adelphia switches us from the proprietary setup we're on and onto DOCSIS, I'll buy my own modem and save $10/mo on renting this POS Terayon TeraPro. And hey, for the past three months I've been getting my cable modem service for $20/mo.
The only thing I should warn y'all about...don't get rid of your backup dialup ISP. And make sure your network is behind a firewall box...I have a SMC Barricade that has been working beautifully and has a serial port for a failover v90 modem. The only reason the cable companies don't like these boxen is that the clueless have been known to plug them in backwards, letting a rogue DHCP server loose on their network. Remember which port is the WAN port and which ports are the LAN ports and everyone will be happy.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
I guess I missed that part in the Constitution that gives people a right to broadband.
With AT&T selling it's cable biz to Comcast (who down here just sold their local franchise to AT&T!) it seems the hot potato just keeps getting passed. I've been told that if you can get DSL, your local cable company would offer cable modem (or visa versa, they seem to want to compete against each other) but NOT in my neighborhood. I'm lucky to finally get DSL.
The local bell (bellsouth) was no help. Try and order new phone service and DSL at the same time. No can do. The two services are differnent branches of the company and they don't communicate (except for billing purposes!). I asked when ordering my phone service for a dsl capable line. "no problem" (yeah right!). You have to wait 2-4 weeks after getting new phone service to order dsl (take's em that long to update their records). Then after waiting I find my line is NOT conditioned. So if I have to live with a dialup modem I'm going to need a second line. I ordered one. Guess what? IT WAS CONDITIONED FOR DSL! Oh well, with two daughters and a monitored alarm service I guess I'll keep the second line.
Anyway the self install kit worked fine, though I got an external splitter on EBAY and 86'd the micro filters. I also paid extra for an ethernet modem to work with my router.
As for ComCast, they never upgraded their shit to handle broadband cable modems (why bother, since they were going to sell it to AT&T anyway). And since AT&T wants to sell it back to them, they WONT upgrade the service for it either! Guess the neighborhood will have to wait for the final sale to go through.
Thats life in south fla!
I gave up submitting this broadband-related stories to Slashdot along the lines of Lessig's article when I realized that the prevailing ideological hegemony against government regulation was causing people to become blinkered.
We have all this dark fibre running between cities. We have all these consumers. We have intransigent telco ILECs and monopoly coax cable companies blocking consumer access to the dark fibre.
One way around this would be for regulatory agencies to step in, ala great public works projects of the past such as the Hoover Dam or universal dialtone access, and seize control of the last mile to mandate real broadband, fibre, connections between consumers. If this means appropriating incumbent's assets, then so be it. They have proved themselves to be a liability and are now impeding economic and social progress.
If the current state of lethargy is allowed to continue, then within a generation the global centres of broadband usage and economic development will not be within the US. They'll be in Canada, Singapore, Holland, Sweden, Korea, and so on.
Da Blog
Why does everyone expect to receive a T-1 in their home for less than $50/month? It costs MONEY to deliver bandwidth. It costs money to lay fiber and copper. The technicians earn a wage to install the fiber and copper. The wages they earn is what it is because they have to be trained and have to learn how to install telecommunications equipment. This is why local loop charges can end up in the thousands of dollars range. Port charges for a T-1 are about the same between providers. If a broadband provider pays $1500/month for a T-1 and then resells that for $50/month there has to be a limit somewhere or one person could hog the entire pipe and end up causing the provider to spend $1450/month to server one customer. $50 per month for a 768kbps pipe with 5GB of monthly transfer is more than fair. NONE of our current subscribers use even 1GB in a month and most of them are businesses with multiple computers. Sure, I could sell less bandwidth with unlimited transfer but people want a fat pipe. You sell the fat pipe with unlimited transfer and a couple people can monopolize the entire pipe. Clauses in contracts stating that people who abuse the bandwidth will be charged extra are futile. Get with an attorney and draw up a contract stating they get X amount of bandwidth for X amount of dollars per month. DSL and Cable aren't going to cut it either, you have to include wireless and I don't mean these community FREEnets. ISPs are in business to make money, not to convenience people. Until this is realized by more people broadband access will be limited to certain markets where a provider is guaranteed to make money.
I have a hard time buying the argument the article makes, I'd tend to think things like most telco's not deploying RADSL beyond 15000 feet from the CO (13000 is Covad's preference now) have a lot more to do with it. A very small number of people live 13000 cable feet from their CO.
Cable internet is an option in some areas but coverage can be spotty at best in some regions.
Other high bandwith solutions exist but haven't reached any significant level of adoption.
...has tended to throttle the rapid development of broadband.
To wit, the last mile of wire to the house is owned by a heavily regulated monopoly.
Hence, said owners of last mile wire can do weasily things to anyone that wants to put boxes in the central office.
Hence, said owners of last mile wire, when attempting to offer service themselves, are subject to all kinds of litigous cries of unfair advantage, have they provided comparable service in high cost rural areas, etc.
The net result is higher costs and slower roll-outs of new technology.
It's a mess.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
This speech is another attempt to lay blame for the failure of broadband a lack of demand. Supposedly, if only we had TV on the pipes then we'd have a *real* demand for broadband.
This forgets the fact that users *do* want broadband -- lots of them. The problem with broadband is not one of demand, but one of supply.
I know for a fact that I and many of my peers would pay for broadband tomorrow if I could, but it isn't available in my hip New York neighborhood. Why isn't it available? Because Verizon doesn't have the resources in place to offer it to me.
The failure of broadband is the failure of deregulation. If America really wants to have an "Internet Superhighway", then we must subsidize the superhighways the same way we subsidize the Interstates.
All this speech really is a prelude to more stupid encryption laws -- it has nothing to do with solving the problem of broadband.
I know at least six people who have dumped broadband in the last year because of the economy. It was just too expensive for them to justify the need for it. For many it is just a novelty. If my job didn't allow me to use a VPN and work from home occasionally I'd probably be on dialup and save about $30 a month.
High speed pop-up ads, 50 times faster than dialup. Sign me up!
'Same speed C but faster'
Man, that stinks...$110 for cable, with $55 going to cable modem? Jeez...really, really bad. We had to give up Encore, and Cinemax was going bye-bye anyway thanks to it being bumped up to digital, but between cable modem and digital tier cable TV we are only paying $80/mo. $43 of that, as I mentioned last post, is cable modem charges, so basically we're getting the rest for $37. Which is a price drop from what we paid monthly for analog cable plus Encore and Cinemax...$42/mo.
So I gave up a couple of movie channels. I got Sci-Fi, TechTV, Independent Film Channel, Sundance Channel, 8 different Discovery channels, BBC America and commercial free music channels in return. Actually I wish I had done this sooner.
And if I'm feeling flush, $20 more/mo gets me ALL the movie channels. Every single one.
You should complain to your Public Utilities Commission about how AT&T is gouging you. You shouldn't have to pay that. Eew.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Wow! I'm impressed.
The whole, we're afraid of piracy line is one that the MPAA, RIAA, Disney and Fox are all saying, basically in an effort to get the SSSCA (the evil sequel to the DMCA) passed. so they are pointing and saying, who wants broadband when there is nothing on (or nothing to download or "take down" as Valenti says, from the net..) excluding of course, Napster and good ole Scour (RIP). as for broadband horror stories... i live in big old Washington, DC and had my broadband installed by Starpower. The service works fine but let me tell you about the techs that put it in... i live in a big apartment building, so i left my keys with the doorman to let the techs in while i was out. we have 2 computers, my desktop and my roommates laptop. i left a note telling them to connect both. but, as i walk in to my apartment i quickly here the bathroom door shut, i think tech #1 was on the crapper. i check out the computers...and there is a PCMCIA adapter sticking out of my roommates laptop. thats it.. no cable modem.. or anything. finally, the tech comes out of the crapper and sets up the cable modem. sort of.. he actually has me sign a few papers, then leaves me a number to call the tech support with so they can guide me through the set up. as he is here, tech #2, who is setting up my phone service, comes back to my apartment, munching on a bag of cheetos (he has been in the phone room in the basement, near vending machines.) the guy proceeds to hang out and eat his cheetos. after setting up my cable, they finally leave and i have to call the company to configure my computer. oh, and as for setting up my roommates computer, i needed to buy a Linksys router. not that this is such a big deal.. *but* the cable modem has 2 ports on the back of it..one for the ethernet/RJ-45 cable and another one for a USB connection.. when i used to live in Albany and have RoadRunner, their tech support helped me and my then roommate connect 2 computers to the cable modem this way.. unlike the lazy ass Starpower.
I'd love to see the look on Bill Gates face if he had to sell every copy of Windows for the same price, and couldn't control how hardware and software were sold together, or more importantly had no control in how distribution would actually proceed.
But its not my personal demand, but the demand curve across people.
I would even pay the 1000$ to get it rolled out to my house personally.
I make my money off the internet. More speed = more money I make.
God spoke to me
It gets things done now, instead of waiting until someone figures out how to make lots of money off it. Gee, what will those Canadians think of next, Healthcare for the people? wait a min........
Bell Canada's main markets are Ontario and Quebec. Outside those 2 provinces, it's MUCH different. Telus, anyone? :). Alberta also got ADSL much faster than we out East did, also from Telus though I may be wrong about who did it.
In BC, Telus had ADSL running sooner and faster (possibly cheaper, too) than Bell did for Ontario. It was pissing me off to no end
I've had the Sympatico ADSL since it became available in Toronto (Dec 1998) and it's still $40/mo according to my last bill.
They started at 39.95, then went to 29.95 + 10.00 for modem rental. then some other deal if you used Bell long distance. Nothing has changed on my end as far as monthly charges are concerned.
One of the things I think most Americans forget about their country is the population density, and the damn population! Canada has 30 Million, mainly clustered in a few big cities, while the USA had close to 300 Million.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Yeah, but you have to live in Canada.
Suckaz!
Answer: Profitability.
Since when Has Laurence Lessig or the Washington Post ever claimed to be communist sympathizers? Or even members of the communist party? What the hell is it with all this red baiting? Why don't you argue his points with articulate counterpoints instead of calling them names? As for the difficulties in laying fiber in Washington DC, I can't speak to that. It would have been nice if you provided a link to the issue instead of just taking a jab at the Mayor (who has little to no real power in DC).
I had a sweet connection through road runner here in Atlanta, I moved LITERALLY across the street, and boom, no broadband. I called about it and they said that they had no current plans to provide broadband around that location. WTF? Now I live ~10 miles outside of Atlanta and I'm 33000 feet from my CO so all I can get is iDSL at 128k. No broadband cable here either. So what is my solution? I leech a sweet connection from work to do my pir... oh wait I don't pirate, no sir not me....
Living as I do in rural Alabama (no cable,
no DSL), I still am able to do broadband through
satellite. For my type of usage (I'm not
running a server, mostly browsing and downloading)
it works great. This is despite my uplink being
through a phone line at 24K (I'm 15 miles from
the central office).
If I load up on file downloads in parallel I can
easily get 1 Mbit speeds and still web browse
on the side.
This service is available anywhere a DirecTV
dish can be placed, so unless you are blocked
by trees or hills, that's pretty much the whole
US.
Now, having said that, has anyone got the
comparison of the rate of broadband adoption
vs. other recent consumer items (VCR, DVD,
cellphones)?
Daniel
Perhaps it's the long cold months we spend inside during the winter with nothing to do but watch sh###y Network TV and Hollywood movies that drive us to spend our money on a fast internet connection.
I love the internet and the way it is. So free and non corporate controlled..
That's the way it was meant to be.
But we have a big problem arising. As more and more people need the access, we're running into less aware users who are easily controlled by large corporate vendors.
When I read this, all I can see is the government trying to force a redesign in the TCP/IP protocol.
Is this what it will come to? In order to "protect" copyrights, will we have to change how the internet works compleatly in order for it to be sufficient.
Will they try this?
hrm!
------------
Sase
"It's the opposite of that."
Look, at my brother's 40th birthday party, there were a bunch of guys from various broadband companies and some techies.
We all agreed it isn't this that's the problem, for it never stopped Europe.
Our problem is infrastructure. We have too much of it, so we take much longer to roll out changes.
This is why you won't see HDTV before 2005, because it costs too darn much to roll it out, since we have to upgrade EVERYTHING.
And this is why you don't get cable modems and DSL everywhere - we have too much investment in the current physical plant, so the companies involved come up with excuses why they don't replace it before it's been depreciated.
The rest is all carp.
-
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
It's just not that big a deal, in the grand scheme of things, to get broadband happening in the USA.
Canada recognised the value of communications about 5 minutes after Bell's patent, and has never put it "on the back burner". It is considered strategically critical; in the US the Interstate is the "strategically critial highway".
The Russians launched the first communications satellite, but it couldn't communicate, really; it just beeped to ham radios.Canada launched the world's first telecomm bird (Anik 1) in the early 60's, and telephone/TV has been over sat for nearly 40 years.
My home province (pop 1 million, area the size of Texas, and biggest city 220K) finished the fibre install 21 years ago. We'd been watching cable for 6 years at that point.
10 years ago, a company started up (in a town of 20K) and began providing wireless TV over microwaves; you could be 40 miles from the nearest hick town and pull in your share of channels; the same ones cable offered. They offer net access now, and it's hispeed. No wires, no infastructure except towers that the phone company built 20-40 years earlier.
None of this stuff is impossible in the US; but nobody in Congress has stood up and said "We will make comm a national priority, and do what we can to remove the red tape. The providers had better step up and do their part, or get left behind".
Does AOL want broadband? You bet they don't; and with 10 million US dialup subscribers, why would they?
Some people have mentioned population density re: Canada vs USA. Certainly it plays a role.
But low-density western Canada has much higher broadband penetration than the urban beltways of southern Ontairo (which pretty much look like any fairly urban area of America).
I've been all over America. When I was in Arkansas (pop 2.5million; Little Rock is the same size as the biggest city in my province, but the surrounding area was much denser) one of the biggest things I noticed was how dense the rural area was compared to home. The average rural resident here owns 8 sections (sq miles) of land, and they get access if they want it.
Obviously there is something else going on.
Maybe the hardwired providers have decided the "easy" customers are already online, and they're waiting for a wireless technology to finish the job. Or maybe they aren't interested but at the same time, want to protect their territory so they promise "soon, soon".
I don't really know; but I suspect it's just a little more complicated than the RIAA, as nasty as they are, conspiring to keep the content offline.
I thought the Koreans got all of their internet in those internet Cafes (that they also use to house the fist-fights after a rough game of starcraft). While the POPULATION might have 4x more than the US, I doubt the HOUSEHOLDS have as much.
Small point, mod appropriately.
Go check out the link http://www.unspeakable.org/earthlink if you want a good horror story about DSL. 4.5 months of waiting for my dsl modem and counting. Every week it's the same story, from a different rep. You know it's bad when, you start to get the same reps again. Maybe now, I'll finally get my damn modem. Mind you earthlink has been amazingly fast at charging my credit card every month for dsl service.
Those all sound like excuses to me. I'm too far from the CO, my phone line's too cheap, I can't communicate over this copper. Since you're reading slashdot you probably already know about Cisco's new tech that can run 10Mbps over standard phone lines, so don't even think the cable isn't capable of handling it. The problems with this 'last mile' situation arise because the phone companies are too cheap to install a CO on every block like they should in the first place. They're acting like good capitalists and maximizing profits at the cost of our time (wasted online @ 1200 baud), money and happiness. Something in that sound illegal to me, or at the very least unconstitutional. But who ever said comm corps were good or bound by little annoying things like laws? Wake up and smell the reality of your situation. No company likes you. They only want your money so I'd just give up and give it to them if I were you. There's a thought, try paying pac bell half a mil to install DSL in your home and see how quickly they hop to it. Personally I think the internet should be illegal in America, since Americans aren't intelligent enough to use it without hurting themselves.
Whats an internet?
Yes, that's the other benefit.
Stupid decisions like paying 6 billion dollars for a portal company. 6 billion bucks would buy a helluva lot of decent systems engineers, phone techs, and backbone.
(Speaking of @home, if anyone is that clueless)
I can't buy the fact that piracy fears is what holds back broadband.
Among the plenty of other problems posted above, lack of real, non-pirate content is the problem. Up until Napster and the open piracy market there was no way for John User to get movies or music online.
Sure there was a few things, like real video - but it is still somewhat limited. If we all could get commercial paid video, or some sort of system - broadband would explode.
Only haxor elite such as myself have a use for broadband. I download linux iso's at least once a week [depending on if I used a CDRW or not]. How many newbies are going to use that?
But alas, the video content provided [legally] is growing. I love netbroadcaster.com, for example because I can watch full movies - only at the price of a few pop-ups.
Get rid of the bullshit, commercial type video clips and we'd be happy. Don't dangle the hook, give us the worm!
I'm a TW-RoadRunner customer and they are showing some promise on thier own. Although, here in Cincinnati the DSL service offers WB over the net... we are on the right track.
But where are cool things for people on the straight and narrow?
Well, here is one I've been watching all day. Full screen too, amazing... I can actually see the camera focus before I get the video!
Get your Unix fortune now!
Here in town we have the choices of:
ADSL from SRT
ADSL from Magic Internet
Satellite Internet from Magic Internet
Cable Modem from Midcontinent Communications
All these choices and the town where I live, Minot, North Dakota, barely has 36,000 people.
It seems that the only cities that don't have very many choices for broadband internet are the larger cities and the reason for lack of choices is the fact that the phone companies and cable companies are looking to save an extra dollar in the weak economy.
We have had DSL for the past 4 years here and cable modem for the last year.
I have DSL and I have to say that it is fast .
I live in a suburb of NYC, less than 5 miles from Manhatten and I can't get shit for broadband. It sems to me that it's the suburbs of all cities that get affected by the lack of bb, not the city cores, or the boondocks. I keep hearing all sorts of stories about how some 100 person town 50 miles from nowhere can get bb, but if you live around a large city, just not in it, then your screwed.
Who would trust this guy? It's common knowledge that "Lawrence Lessig" is just one of Dr Seuss' many pen names.
Sigh, poor Lawrence Lessig. He is so blinkered by his obsession with legal issues related to content control that he sees every problem as a content control problem. I'm sure Lessig sees the U.S. Civil War, crop circles, and infant acne as content control issues too.
But once again, he is wrong. The difference between Canada, the U.S., and Korea has nada to do with content control, but everything to do with network structure. Canada and Korea have, until recently, had monolithic telecom marketplaces dominated by an oligopoly of mufti monopolists.
And say what you will about monopolies, but when it comes to pushing a standard into the marketplace, monopolies can do it better than anyone.
But will they innovate? No way. I'm betting that five years from now Canada and Korean will be relegated to the always-on slow lane at current speeds, while the U.S. will have caught up and passed both countries, with a competitive market offering variety of wireline and wireless solutions at myriad speeds.
Lessig is as adrift as ever. Silly academic.
Money and control of that money, namely yours.
"Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely."
One word - the root of all broadband issues in the Tristate NY area...
Verizon.
Nuff said.
Brielle
It's about uploading. Download speed doesn't really factor into it.
The traditional powers that be are trying to prevent end users from having upload bandwidth. Up to and including 28.8 modems, upload and download speeds were the same. Starting with 56K, this has changed: download speed has dramatically improved while upload speed remains slow. DSL providers artifically cap upload speeds to a low rate, compared with available bandwidth -- cable providers even more so.
Note that the services providing symmetrical upload and download speeds, ISDN and T1 among them, are priced out of the range of ordinary residential users.
Why do the companies do this? 3 reasons:
There's a reason the industry calls their customers "consumers": they want them to only consume, not produce. Sad but true.
Dr. Demento On The 'Net!
The simple fact is, most people I know will not pay $50/month for broadband (which is what "base" DSL goes for around here.)
In fact, most I know wouldn't pay much more than $20/month for it.
It's not content providers, it's cost.
Add the economy of late and you've got the double whammy. I've read any number of articles that have said when folks get laid off, the $50/month DSL is the first to go, and Qwest has said they are not going to be expanding the areas in which DSL is available due to (guess what?) the economy and their lies about not wanting to have to subsidize the last mile for other carriers.
In short, until DSL or cable modem service is $20/month, broadband penetration in the U.S. is going to stay low, no matter what the pundits think...
I live in Vermont, so there is a per-minute charge on all phone calls, even local ones, to a monthly cap. The cap is different areas, but for here in Brattleboro, VT, it's about $20.
Add that to the monthly dial-up service (another $20) and you've got $40. Adelphia's got decent service for $49.99 a month. That's only $10 a month more than I was paying, I've got superior DL speeds, and it frees up my phone line.
Cable Companies are also in many cases "content creators"...(Well, distributors is more accurate). When you have a situation like AOL/Time Warner who in addition to owning online services also owns several hundred record and video companies - you see an obvious conflict of interest.
There is another conflict of interest that is not so obvious. That is that major media, and many major corporations also want to keep control over the total content that is available online. IE: Censorship of views contrary to their position. There is a great deal of port blocking, companies (DSL/Cable providers) from having static IP's - all in the hopes of preventing them from being able to host content. ISP's look at it as reducing utilization. Corporates look at it as keeping out public participation.
To the degree with which the news media is censored and self censored (fear of lawsuits, food disparagement laws ) is in the view of corporates a positive thing. Keeps information out of the public debate, out of public participation. They don't want to have to track down 1000 web site owners with their servers all over the world, and potentially in jurisdictions not covered by disparagement laws. Media companies also have an interest in keeping out competition, and the maintainance of the status quo is good for keeping advertising revenues(their real source of income) at a constant. They don't want societal upheaval, nor do they want anybody potentially tapping in to their revenue streams by siphoning away viewers (or even potentially advertising revenues).
The US is, afterall, the corporate megacenter of the world. If you seriously don't believe big business interest don't get higher billing than John Q Public... The last president to attempt to reign in corporate power in the US was Wilson.
What I expect to see: Further consolidation in the broadband market, restrictive controls placed on it where content providers are in charge of it, and an economic domino effect of pushing out smaller providers who don't follow the restrictions, provided by active disruption of their services where ISP's compete directly with major telco's but are still dependant on the major telco for any part of the process. This has been the trend. Don't expect government regulators to do anything but turn a blind eye to it either.
Freedom is merely privilege extended unless enjoyed by one and all.
It's customer support dummy.
And I don't just mean people answering phones (though that is a problem too) It also has to do with actually getting the product to the household. I know way too many people who would be hungry to pick up broadband services - if it only reached out to their place. The next level of dissatisfied customers has to do with technical incompetence, technicians who are dispatched who know less than the customer, and telephone answering droids who know even less.
If we heard raving reviews from everyone who had it, and everyone could get it - we'd be wired to the gills. It would be like having telephone service where it's an emergency if you lose your connection.
- passion
More like "surprise!" your broadband provider goes out of business.
monopolies may have the ability to implement standards, that doesnt mean they have the inclination. For example in the UK when it comes to broadband we are a third world country. This is mostly down to our former (in theory) monopoly BT. Despite the introduction of new telephone providers, BT is still obsessed with maintaining its monopoly, in order to provide ADSL all providers have to rent line space from BT, therefore BT have kept the price prohibitively high and forced most other ADSL providers out. They are purpously dragging their feet with network unbundling and keeping the end price too high. one of the ways they did this was by forcing everyone who got adsl to have the service and box installed by a bt engineer, whereas in france DIY kits are on the market, thus keeping the instalation costs realy high. count your blessings that they dont run your connection
For me, the compelling reason for my DSL is that the "normal" internet experience is faster- and for me that is reason enough to have it. There just isn't enough bandwidth YET for movies, etc... audio mp3 is fine if you can deal with higher compression (I hate 128- and I would never pay money for a song at that rate).
The problem with the opinion piece is that even with top-end consumer level broadband, it is cheaper and faster to drive to the video store to rent a movie than to download it (for a fee- on top of the broadband "fee" of using the connection).
Who wants to watch a movie on their PC anyway?
A 5 meg mp3 is a manageable download even on a dial-up (not in my opinion, but I know plenty of people who can live with that).
Those that suggest you "dance like no one is watching" really want to see you make a complete fool of yourself.
There is a satellite system that will do it, both ways (up and down), not the old one where you need the phone.
And it's about $60/month. Big initial investment though ($600-1000) which is why it's probably not advertised more.
I forget what it's called--ask your local satelite installer.
Not long enough, fag! You suck!
- 1640 Kbps Down
- 640 Kbps Up
- 5 E-mail addresses
- Two dynamic IP addresses
- A VERY cool TOS/AUP
Guess how much I pay? $35.99/month CAD. That is $22.30/month USD. For Shaw High-speed Internet (Cable), it comes with a higher speed and costs about $5 more ($40.99 CAD which is $25.40 USD).After seeing some people pay $49.99 ($79 CAD) for Cable Internet, and about 10 bucks less for dial-up, I am sure as hell not going to move to the Internet with Internet rates THAT high. Hell, you can get 56.6 Kbps Dial-up for $6.30 USD/m.
You Americans are getting ripped off or we're getting a pretty impressive deal.
I see Rogers as being doomed.
The only part of Rogers Communications that makes money is the cable. The rest all lose money, and will lose more soon.
Currently, they have deals with Telus for roaming of their cellular customers. Telus and Bell just signed an agreement, however, so that, after their networks are fully upgraded to whatever they're upgrading them to, they'll be fully operational and interoperable.
Meaning? Telus' roaming deal with Rogers will be a waste for Telus. Rogers will likely be on its own, meaning it will have to implement more physical network (not that it doesn't have somethign like three physical networks already).
You cannot get a card at one Rogers Video store and then rent from another store (in my experience). You cannot use your VIP card to rent at a Rogers Video store (or at least, you couldn't in Mission, back when we were stuck with Rogers). Their selection is horrid, their prices high, and some of the three-year-old playstation games they have are still 2-day 'new releases'. Blockbuster will let you use any Blockbuster card in any store, anywhere (I could've used it in Israel, but we couldn't find any movies we wanted to watch).
Rogers Cable recently traded BC for Ontario. Why? Because they tried to screw all of their BC customers over by forcing new channels and packages upon then, and making the new (drastically expensive) changes 'opt-out'. Customers, irate at the sudden changes they didn't ask for and the sudden billing they didn't want to pay, switched in droves to StarChoice or Bell Expressvu.
AT&T may own 45% of Rogers, but I think that's worse for them than it is for us.
--Dan
Wouldn't there eventually be a point at which people don't need more access? I'm not saying that we're there, I'm saying that such a point could exist, and it's not likely to increase significantly. So somebody puts up an FTP server and does a few gigs a day in traffic. If more people were doing this, it would certainly be a drain on current infrastructure, but wouldn't we eventually reach a point where supply met demand? I think that a savvy business can make money until that point is met. It's just about making the right choices.
So how much bandwith do we really need? Videoconferencing, Divx Futurama episodes, pr0n, even PPV streamed movies only take up so much bandwith. If everybody who wanted it could get 10mbps to their house, would broadband cease to be a commodity, or a toy, and start to become ingrained into the lives of everyday (read: non-/. readers) citizens? How would things be different if there weren't the bottleneck of bandwith?
I know, more questions than insightful comments, but inquiring minds want to know.
Note: I connect to my ISP at 28.8 because my phone lines suck balls. I have two phone lines, and my computer automatically dials out to the internet whenever the line is disconnected (about every 6 to 8 hours). My effective costs, ISP plus extra phone line, is about $50/month. For 28.8. I would gladly pay twice as much for DSL. Don't you think that somebody charging me $100/month could eke out a profit somehow?
Synergy is your friend
I was going to answer "telephone poles".
Haven't you ever heard of something called IFTIL? That stands for Integreated Fiber in the Loop. Basically, IFITL is fiber to an ONU outside of your house (I believe they serv 4 customers per ONU) and then cat-5 into a jack for your house. They lie if they say there is now ay around phone/fiber systems.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
PacBell did the same thing to me in my old apartment. I had to wait a month just to get my self install kit, then I had to wait another month for them to answer my calls because the DSL signal wasn't turned on for my apartment. Then two more months for them to figure out they screwed up my phone line (it was lovely getting a 24kbps connection all the time where I had been getting 48kbps regardless of whether or not I used the high pass filter on the line) and two months after that for them to stop billing me for DSL service that never worked. Then PacBell accused me of stealing the self install kit because they didn't realize they had gotten it back and it had been signed for by the warehouse manager. And that was how I spent my summer vacation.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
... stupid.
Keep in mind that DSL only works over copper - So I'm F**KED
I own my house and for various reasons can't move right now (Ex-Wives SUCK). So what is my solution?!?
I want to know if anyone else is in this boat, Send me an email. I'm going to try to work on a solution with the Alternate local phone companies. I've been speaking with mine here (Cavalier). If you live in their area - I highly recommend switching - Thier website
I especially want to hear from others in Chester County, PA (where I am) - that want better internet connections. Cavalier tells me if I can show them enough potiential customers they'll try my idea. Keep in mind that I will not release anyone's info to anyone without the explicit consent (even if they torture me).
Why not wireless technologies?
That will take care of those "last mile" issues.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It's all a myth: There is no holdup of broadband. The thing is, this is just a really fucking huge country.
Most (all?) medium to large cities have two or more broadbands available, usually 1 cable company and 1 phone company offering DSL, plus multiple ISPs willing to offer you IP services for the phone company's DSL.
The United States is some 3,000 miles across, with much of that being sparsely populated great planes and midwest and almost empty Rockies. However sparsely populated, though, there's a lot of people there, just because it's an immense area. That's where the myth of 'no broadband' comes from -- all those people in places that are too sparsely populated for it to be worth while to replace equipment out there.
That is the defining factor of American telecommunications: Sheer distance. Our networks, relatively speaking, suck: We use T1s (1.544mbps) whereas Europeans use E1s (2mbps), because our telecoms don't have the signalling bandwidth. But we have a whole lot of it, hundreds of thousands of miles of wires.
So it comes down once again to money: The high profit areas (read: high population density areas) have broadband, usually 2 or more kinds, or the telcos are frantically rolling it out as fast as they can. The low profit/low population density areas will get upgraded in the next round of maintenance replacements.
A similiar argument can be made for the cable infrastructure. But they will not allow anyone access to their network. DSL is a different matter.
The content creators are to blame, because they have decided not to create a market? Yeah, that's the ticket: let's blame them for something they have not done.
The real reason broadband isn't taking off, is that people don't want to pay what it actually costs.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Well the US must be big time spoiled then.
You really don't need cars & trucks.
Horse drawn transportation will do.
You don't need water piped into your houses.
The nearest lake & stream will do.
Don't need sewage lines.
The outhouse out back works fine.
You don't need fancy-smancy supermarkets.
Ever hear of a garden?
And heaven forbid you think you need clothes.
You came in nekkid, you'll leave the same way.
How about the "providers" renting?
Not to us mind you, but to others who want to use their facilities.. The fiber providers for example could rent some of the excessive fiber to businesses like the telcos.
Every time there is some issue like this someone generally regarded as a pundit steps up to tell why said issue either is a problem or a boon to humanity. I remember two years ago economists at big and famous business schools were explaining why the economy was going to support continuous growth for the next decade and how we were entering a bull market boom period. Funny looking back on that now.
Same goes for broadband. I don't think it is content that is keeping people from getting broadband rolled out. Shit I got broadband just because it was impractical reading slashdot at -1 whenever Windows or Linux is mentioned in a story. The fact I can now download decent looking Star Wars trailers and keep my systems up to date is just an added bonus. For some people it's games. A number of kids playing Q3A or Counter-Strike don't know what the fuck a ping means but they know when their ping is below 30ms they can kick the shit out of the other kids with a 100ms or higher ping. Non-tech savvy AOL users also know that with a cable modem they don't get hung up on and they can download all the shareware they want without having to wait for it. Their kids know they can log onto (insert P2P file sharing client here) and get all the new singles from (insert popular bandname here). Everybody knows that porn downloads better with broadband than with a modem. Ergo content is not the problem.
It costs alot of money for a cable company to add digital services to users, same for phone companies adding DSL service. It costs the companies alot more to make service available than what they charge users monthly. This used to work well with dial-up access because connections weren't persistant and unless you were selling business accounts you didn't have to promise anybody any particular amount of service. However moving this business model to persistant connections that can easily max out your trunk line's bandwidth makes for out of business cable and DSL providers. Saying anybody needs more content just leads to even more problems. As you add content to an already taxed infrastructure means the infrastructure only gets MORE taxed as users are added. The nothing on argument is just ridiculous. I think poor Lawrence just sees everything as a content problem nowadays. Broadband is an expensive proposition because it requires an overhaul of equipment and a more efficient business model and the companies providing it can't or at least don't rely on their traditional revenue model of advertising. Phone companies made the money back on residential lines by charging more for business services. Now however more residences are getting DSL and cable companies haven't been able to interupt data services to add advertising so both providers are losing money. Content shmontent, broadband or a lack thereof is about the mula.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
I'm an engineer at Qwest (the long distance/data side of the house) and I can tell you that things on the telecom end are not going to change anytime soon. Why? Because the big wigs in Denver have decided that any further network expansion will no longer be based on projected future demand, like it has been for the past few years, but only based on immediate need. Hardware spending has been all but eliminated. Unless a big increase in demand for broadband at home developes, then no one telecom is going to spend the money on anymore big roll-outs of new services.
I doubt many will read this, so far down in the forum - but the way to get broadband rolling out faster is really simple, and within the control of the broadband companies - particularly of the cable companies.
They just need to get all the potential customers in their EXISTING coverage areas signed up. With cable especially, that reduces the cost per customer by spreading fixed costs over more customers. They don't promise mega-bps speeds - dial-up customers will be amazed by 100kbps, instant access and the occasional off-peak megabit per second download. They don't need to increase bandwidth much - that can come later as a premium service, AFTER they get the customers on board.
And all they have to do to get there is cut their price and do a little creative marketing - such as offering $20 a month service to an area if 85% of current dialup internet customers in that area will switch over.
With a little prompting, that can easily turn into a community-driven, volunteer door-to-door sales effort. People are far more likely to listen to a neighbor than an advertisement or TV ad, especially if the pressure is on to get everyone signed up.
But this will take some re-thinking - the cable companies have this "vision" of "broadband content" as the future - but are ignoring the idea that a journey of a hundred miles has to start with a single small step.
Lessig seems to think broadband exists purely for bandwidth. What about the exceptionally low latency which totally changes the experience of surfing the web or playing games? Not to mention the always-on factor.... No, the slow uptake of broadband is mostly caused by the economic downturn and absence of state subsidies. Growth will start increasing once the recesion is over, with or without content. Stick to law Lessig and quit pimping slashdot
Dedicated 56K circuits used to be big bucks. Now at least the downstream side can be done over a dialup.
In any case, I think you hit the nail on the head regarding the broadband Catch-22: much of the reason I would want a broadband connection in the first place would be to run my own domain - which is prohibited by the TOS. With my own mail server, for instance, I could deal with spam quite effectively, rather than having to rely on an uncaring ISP to deal (or most likely not deal) with the problem.
I remember when cable modems were coming out, and reading an article somewhere that $BROADBAND_ISP was wondering why @USERS weren't putting up all sorts of broadband content (like video clips!) on their personal web pages. Of course, the problem was, $BROADBAND_ISP only allocated 10 MB of space for personal pages, cut off pages that exceeded an unreasonably small transfer limit, and forbade @USERS from running their own web servers, which would have made the 10 MB limit academic.
Sigh. I'm this close || to pulling the plug.
Oh, no! You have walked into the slavering fangs of a lurking grue!
That doesn't explain why I live in Union City California (where a large # of tech workers from San Fran, San Jose, and Palo Alto live yet a large part of the city has NO broadband options (cept 144/144 IDSL for $90 a month) This is Silicon valley I'm talking about... but all I can get is 24K dialup.
The hold up on broadband is because of incompitence in the market... Pac Bell told us we could get DSL, then on our install date moved our date to next month... then on our second install date we were told we were too far away. It took them 2 months to figure that out? And neither time did they bother to call us, we called them to check up. Funny thing was when we got the phone lines the tech told us we had fiber to the corner, I'm trying to figure out who is right.
Another friend tried to get ATT Broadband Cable, He was told his street was not wired... after checking with the neibors he found out the house 3 down had Cable, so he called and it turns out someone had forgot to tell the system when the nieborhood was upgraded. Then after his install it took 2 weeks of tech support calls to find out he had not been put in the network system only the billing system, this took 4 level 3 support techs a week to figure out.. and then that the server that finalizes installs had been moved and its adress had changed... that one my friends figured out on there own and told ATT. Everytime he got sent to level three they gave him a direct number to call back.. but that number had a message that it had been changed.
Companies not knowing what they have installed, level 3 techs who don't know there own phone # has been changed, and servers moved with no one being told... these are the problems with broadband today.
iRepairIT - iPhone, Mac, & PC Repair
Imagine a broadband company that provides not only the line and the modem, but also an integrated firewall/server appliance, which sits on your home network. This way you can easily access/edit your web pages etc, from any home machine.
Besides the wire and the hardware such a company could provide services like: name serving, remote backups etc.
However, the first fan web site for a popular movie or TV show created by some teenager would attract a horde of lawyers sent by the "intellectual property" owners. When will these "content providers" realize that we don't want their content...
...richie - It is a good day to code.
Back in ancient times, there was ISDN (It Still Does Nothing). ISDN was deployed extensively in Europe, but there was a very slow rollout in the US. In the beginning, it was overpriced and offered speed that most people didn't need. Back in those days, people used terminal emulation, and 9600 bps was just fine. By the time anyone wanted 128K bps, ISDN was STILL overpriced, and dialup speed eventually hit 56K for a fraction of the cost & hassle.
Twenty years later, the telecom companies are only a little smarter. This time they know broadband has to be priced right to avoid "ISDN syndrome", but they will only commit the capital to deploy it where there is (1) a sizeable market, and (2) lack of competition. This leaves out huge sections of the country. As an added bonus, many of the prime customers live in areas with a low population density.
Here in the US, the government doesn't make the telecom companies do anything they don't want to do. That means broadband is only going to be delivered in the most lucrative markets. None of this has anything to do with copyright issues.
What kinds of applications would people develop if it only took creativity and technical skill and wasn't forbidden by usage policies? Most interesting applications include at least some kind of server somewhere - even an ICQ or IM "client" is technically a server, because it's sitting there on your system waiting for people to connect to it, and it's often advertising its presence using some kind of presence server (the ICQ login stuff or Napster index servers or whatever.) Some successful applications were carefully planned by a small or large group of people, but many of them just happened - somebody tried it, and a few people liked it, and it caught on. And the more opportunity you have for people to develop things that probably won't catch on, the more chance that somebody will develop things that DO succeed. Maybe it'll be a "neighborhood watch" or "home traffic/weather cam" application, or maybe cheap cameras and better PC audio will allow the ICQ-phone to replace large chunks of the phone company (so duhh, either team with a gateway company like Net2Phone or a long-distance phone company to profit from professionalizing it), or maybe simply getting $40/month instead of $80/month from people working at home over VPNs is enough to be happy with, or maybe you can provide a $5/month IP relay service an 802.11 client software so that wireless users will become paying customers instead of service-stealing evil leeches. Or maybe it won't come from home developers, it'll come from game developers, like the integration of networking, Dancepads, and Quake into Combat Aerobics, or the World Wide Rave Network, burning its 15 minutes of fame before something else takes over. Whatever. More likely, it'll be something I haven't thought of, and much more likely, it'll be something the cable companies haven't thought of, because it's a decentralized decision-making process, not central planning.
But if you're a cable modem company desperately needing enough customers to sign on to pay for growing your infrastructure, decreasing the chances of potential customers finding the killer-for-them app that makes *them* want to buy service from you is really, Darwinianly stupid.
Cablecos do have things they're legitimately afraid of, though it was worse in the past than today. Upstream bandwidth is still limited, and people running popular amateur porn or warez websites on their cable modems could dog down performance for their neighborhoods (unlike commercial sites, which need better performance than the typical 128kbps upstream of current cable modem.) And that gives them a bad reputation for performance, and encourages the local phone company to run "Web Hog" ads taunting them. And Napster and Movie-ripoff-ster and other copyright-violation-promoting services directly hurt the business of their major business partners, so they need some way to discourage them. And the band on "email servers" is partly driven by fear of spammers, though it's largely driven by the sheer corporate greed assumption that if it's a mail server, it's either a business that you'd be willing to pay more money for or that you're taking away potential cablemodem customers instead of encourage more people to get cable. But blanket "can't serve anything because we don't want to monitor your content or upgrade our hardware to meter" policies are just stupid.
Moore's commentary on Sturgeon's law says that the 90% of stuff out there that's crap keeps doubling every 18 months, and typical Freshmeat experience says that lots of projects will die out before they reach usable stages. But that's ok, and if we're lucky many of them would be in the 90% and not the 10%, or that the ideas in the good ones will get recycled by somebody else.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
DSL speeds are dependent on distance from your telco office - Maximum is usually 1.5Mbps or 1.1Mbps, 384kbps is common, 128 kbps is available farther away (it uses ISDN physical layer with DSL applications instead of telephone switches), and many people have asynchronous service that's either 1.5Mbps/384kbps or 608/128, where your downstream bandwidth may be lower than maximum depending on distance and conditions.
I'm under the impression that Canadian cable modem systems are usually faster than US systems, particularly upstream bandwidths (unless they're measuring in Canadian bits, which are half the size of US bits :-)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
The US also had other issues - much more of the land that "Manifest Destiny" said must surely belong to Americans was occupied by inconvenient other people who thought they already lived there, like the Indians, or who thought they'd already stolen it from the Indians, like the Mexicans, so there were a few decades of expensive war to clear them out, plus there was the bit of unpleasantness that the losers referred to as the "War Between The States" that took a while to put down, and also provided a diversion because lots of people wanted to rip off whatever they could in the South. And there was that minor "54-40 or Fight" attempt to steal British Columbia from the Brits.
I'd guess that Canada had less trouble from Indians, but also had a narrower area that was good for building railroads on?
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Go walk along a railroad track sometime, especially near bridges over rivers or the crossings with big highways. You'll often see multiple "Telco A - Don't dig here" "Telco B - Don't Dig Here" signs, which should give you some idea of how much redundancy you actually get by buying service from multiple companies...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
For the past 15 months, I've tried virtually every option available and I can't get it. The .com bust didn't help some struggling providers, but the real problem is the bastards that control the last mile. Because they have monopolies on the copper coming into my house, I am left with the poor prospect of allowing SpeakEasy.net to service themselves monthly on my posterior, while being grateful that they're only charging $89.99 for an 128k line.
I'd like to have other options, but reality has a nasty way of intruding on my dreams. Here's a quick rundown for those who are interested:
Cable Modem: Real Soon Now[TM], @Home says so. And that's been their story for the last 15 months.
Sprint Wireless: I live in a local valley that line-of-sight technologies can't penetrate. Of course, Sprint isn't even offering this now...
Wireless (Ricochet): Had a fat 128k pipe, but Chapter 13 took down the connection. Aerie (who bought Ricochet) claims to be offering service again. If only they would have done something 2 months sooner.
Satellite: Check out Huge Aircrash's, er I mean Hughes Electronics' spiffy DiRECWAY technology. What's that? Only available for Windows 98, 2k, and ME? Well Windows ME harder! I refuse to buy another computer to access the 'Net.
Fiber: I can pay to have Fiberhood run fibre to the rental I live in...or not.
DSL: Some local monopoly claims that they'll be upgrading their equipment in my area, which will shorten the 23,400 feet distance between my home and highspeed heaven Real Soon Now[TM]. And it's been their story for 15 months, too.
The real problem is that no one can afford to compete with the incumbent telcos. Even if someone could come up with a high-speed wireless solution (and 128k does not qualify) for my area, they'd be out of business within 2-3 years of inception and within 6-9 months of deployment. Why? Guess where the monopolies would spend their time upgrading their services--areas where customers have no choices, or areas where their monopoly is threatened?
The demand is threre. Content is not really holding up broadband. Broadband is being held up by the ILECs--at virtual gunpoint.
Turambar
------------------------------
Common sense is not so common.
--Voltaire
Of course the Canadians want broadband cable modems, cable TV, and other things to keep them occupied in the winter. It's *cold* out, and if they didn't have TV or the Web, they'd have to go out and play hockey. And cable not only provides more channels, even after ignoring the Canadian content channels, but it mean you don't have to go outside and crack the ice of the antenna when it's saggin' too much to get good reception...
M00se bites can be pretty painful, eh?
But a major problem is that Roosevelt's New Deal FCC quasi-nationalized the radio spectrum, giving broadcasting rights to big broadcasting businesses (most of the Roosevelt anti-trust activity was really trading around which big powers got market control, unlike their rhetoric about supporting the little guys) to prevent competition in return for regulation of content, and limiting most other spectrum use to business-speech-verboten applications such as "ham radio", which also wasn't allowed to use privacy protections and limited access to highly technically skilled people. By limiting the number of stations allowed to broadcast, there's an inherent push toward central powers buying them up. But also, by preventing widespread free-speech radio deployment except for the ubergeeks of the day, they prevented the use of radio as a common home telephony substitute, which slowed the development of radio systems as well as limiting telephony to capital-intensive wired systems which are often a bad economic choice for rural areas. There were exceptions - CB Radio was the AOL of the 70s, especially as truckers discovered that ham radio equipment could be used to give them kilowatt CB instead of the legal-maximum 5 watts - but most of them weren't generally usable.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
In most of the country, there are only a few DSL layer-2 providers (at most the telco, Covad, and the late lamented Northpoint, Rhythms, Jato, etc., and maybe a few upstarts), and often only the telco, but they'll provide PVCs from your house to any ISP that wants to buy a T3 line (or sometimes a T1 line) to deliver the PVCs to them, and those ISPs offer a range of services from simple IP packet forwarding to email to web hosting to shell accounts to whatever. Some DSL providers may do IP routing down at the DSLAM, or with a small amount of ATM-based regional concentration, though many of them use evil technologies like PPPoE or PPPoATM to retain lots of control over the packets they deliver to the ISPs. But for regulatory reasons, most telcos do pretend to offer service to multiple ISPs, and Covad and the other CLECs did it for business reasons.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Sure, the parts of Canada that not many people live in, like the parts of Australia that not many people live in, or of Alaska, are much less dense than a similar fraction of the land-area than in the US, and much much less than China, but most people live in a city big enough for broadband to be cost-effective, and near enough to the US border that they could get US TV, at least if cities like Buffalo and Detroit had much TV :-)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
The FCC limits dialup modem speeds to 56k even though we know the copper pair can deliver substantially more bandwidth than that. At a minimum we should all be using dial up DSL. But the FCC is a cash cow and they will not allow communications speeds higher than that unless they can sell a licence for the higher speeds.
FCC applies a tax to you through your phone company, cable, cellphone, television and emergency services. When the government mandates that cash leaves your pocket, that is a tax.
Insurance.
Communications.
Property Restrictions.
F@cking Cash Cow
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It's not just VCs that aren't giving broadband companies much money. @Home was doing relatively well, as a cable modem company, but unfortunately it had decided to do a multi-billion-dollar merger with the Excite portal site, which depended on web advertising for its revenue base. When that business model went sour, the revenues dried up but the huge debt was still all there, so it dragged them into ruin. (Investing nearly a billion dollars on an online greeting-card company didn't help much either.)
Well, the article does have one point right. The Canadian Government has been greatly involved in pushing broadband in Canada (which is why it comparatively cheap compared to the US), but there are several factors that come into play as to why the US isn't on the bandwagon.
In Canada, the government has basically subsidized the funding of broadband (cable and DSL primarily). The smaller guys can offer competition under the same rules that the big guys get, so if the small ISP leases lines from the big telco to offer broadband service, the telco can't squeeze the life out of the small ISP by overcharging. The small ISP also qualifies under the same rules as the big telco.
In the US, the government has basically left broadband to the open market. Telcos resistance is a big factor here.
Unfortunately, the approach the US has used basically has little or no ROI (unless you want to pay $100+ US on broadband, which most consumers won't pay).
And while the article points the finger to content providers, I'm sure that they do contribute partly to the problem.
He's mostly right about the digging in DC, but the problem was more correctly attributable to the fact that these fly-by-night companies laying the cable did a substandard job repairing roads and other infrastructure they'd just torn up, leaving the city with the bill to fix things.
Once the city demanded these guys fix the things they broke, then all of the sudden "DC is being bureaucratic".
DC has a lot of problems, but being anti-technology isn't one of them.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Fuck, I knew you damn fools were up to something with those all dressed chips.
The reason you're stuck with low-speed Internet access is because your last mile is fiber, not copper.
Wow.
LILO boot: linux init=/usr/bin/emacs
One way to get broadband deployed is to give out grants to Michigan counties through legislation. You may or may not be familiar with Michigan Gov. John Engler's plan, LinkMichigan. It was recently bashed in the Wall Street Journal, but it looks as though this legislation will soon become law. If and when it does, I will be working with people in six NorthEastern Michigan counties to develop a Request For Proposal (RFP) to get broadband available.
Some of the problems that this legislation will deal with is the problem of the LEC's and right's of way. This will lower the barrier to entry by establishing a single, statewide right-of-way authority with one uniform, statewide application process and fee. With help from government, broadband providers will be able to come in and provide the much needed service.
However, I do think that if this is to succeed, simply allowing more people to subscribe to DSL in rural areas is not the answer. I'm sorry, but DSL is NOT broadband. DSL is simply a faster version of a 56K modem. Broadband of the future will be receiving all of your telecommunication services over one medium... fiber optics. By laying fiber to the home, you will be able to get phone service, internet service, video on demand, and all the channels on tv that you could dream of. If all that this legislation produces is Ameritech offering DSL to a larger subscriber base, then this will simply be misguided ambition and a lot of poorly spent tax dollars.
One interesting sidenote.... In the last few years, enough money has been invested into failed CLEC's to lay fiber optics to every home in America. Just because its an open market, it doesn't mean that people invest wisely.
I'm sorry I missed this earlier, but I wasn't near a machine today.
I would have thought this the easiest of arguments to make -- here of all places. I'm not making any claims about why Canada and Korea are ahead of the U.S. I'm not making arguments in favor of any regulation. I'm not saying which -- between copyright or cable companies, or between telcoms and cable -- is more responsible for the slowness of broadband. Indeed, I've killed plenty of trees arguing that cable companies and telcoms both are a key part of the problem.
All I'm saying here is that if you lighten-up on the copyright-control-freakdom, more content would flow. How can that be a controversial argument among people who have watched the copyright-control-freaks kill-off whole sectors of the net? Or has Slashdot too been captured by the RIAA?
> A comparison is kind of useless if you don't actually compare with the US.
;) (for non USians)
Taken out of context that's quite a funny line
We want some answers and all that we get
Some kind of shit about a terrorist threat
- Ministry
This article is inane. What possible content is being withheld that is not already available to the poor misfortunates using dialup accounts? And what possible connection is there to the ISPs and DSPs who could really care less? In other words, what has the tune got to do with the instrument it's being played on? Shall I not publish a woodwind concerto because someone might play it on a tuba? BTW, I went BACK to V.90 dialup and cancelled my Verizon DSL some time ago because the actual benefits were nowhere near worth the added cost.
"Oh, well, what the hell!" - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Online music is the best example of this potential. Five years ago the market saw online music as the next great Internet application. A dozen companies competed to find new and innovative ways to deliver and produce music using the technologies of the Internet. Napster was the most famous of these companies, but it was not the only or even the most important example. A company called MP3.COM, for example, had not only developed new ways to deliver content but had also enabled new artists to develop and distribute their content outside the control of the existing labels.
These experiments in innovation are now over. They have been stopped by lawyers working for the recording industry. Every form of innovation that they disapproved of they sued. And every suit they brought, they won. Innovation outside the control of the "majors" has stopped.
Whether or not these courts were right as a matter of substantive copyright law, what is important is the consequence of this regulation: innovation and growth in broadband have been stifled as courts have given control over the future to the creators of the past. The only architecture for distribution that these creators will allow is one that preserves their power within a highly concentrated market.
Surely the laws that govern publishing can be considered "regulation". They limit who can do what and how. These laws have now been abused, and the silence of our elected officials is all that is needed for these decisions to continue to have the force of law.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
If there was a failure in telco regulation, it was a failure to promote the public interest. Short sighted opinions like yours are both cause and effect.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
I live in Ny and have had amazing earthlink DSL service for a year now that I clock at past 1.5MBS. Now I see them advertising 5+ MBs for $150. If america was slower the reason would be the same that were behind on TV..... We invented it.
The slow deployment of broadband to residential customers has many reasons:
1)Equipment is a problem. Not all telephone are capable of provisioning DSL. Moreover not all ILEC central offices have DSLAMs which are neccessary for the service. Users must be within 18K feet of Central office or remote in order to have a chance of service.
2)Since the 1996 Telecommunications Act, The ILECs have certainly dragged their feet on deploying new equipment. They did not want to deploy equipment that they would have to allow their competitors to use. It is easier and better in the long run to delay deployment.
3)Availability of broadband runs between 8%-10% nationally. Curiously, your best bet for residential service is to live downtown where there are numerous broadband options and competitors, or out in the country where rural ILECs, untouched by competition are rapidly installing DSLAMs.
4) At present, regardless of how much we want one, there is no killer ap for residential usage. Problem is that its seen as a "chicken/egg" problem. It is still an open question whether the ap will emerge and drive deployment or vice versa. Right now, everyone is standing around with their hands in their pockets hoping something will happen.
5)The ILECs have recently been more aggressive in deploying DSL as their upstart competitors are struggling to avoid bankruptcy and are no longer viewed as a significant threat.
In the recent 2001 budget, not nearly the amount of money required for the broadband access program was given. The target date has now been shifted to the end of 2005. Check out this CBC article However, our government has still been more supportive of broadband then others in the world.
The major content, bandwidth, and internet service Providers (are they the same company yet?) are in collusion to only allow asynchronous high speed bandwidth to consumers. It's the only practical way to solve the IP 'theft' issues arising from P2P technologies.
I don't understand these companies, no matter what their issue is, doesn't anyone of them realize that if they were to wire this place with a solid infrastructure and decent rates they'd make a killing? People would sign up just to sign up. I mean sweet Jesus in a smokin' birch bark canoe! We're the US! We blow so much money on shit that's hip/today/tech./pop/and whatever other word you can add it's absurd.
...even if you have to get into a large partnership to make it hurt less.. come on it just boggles my mind. anyway
Come on someone pull yer head outta yer ass and realize you could be making BILLIONS
No sig for you!!
That was exactly my approach a few years ago when broadband was being beta-tested locally. I had a second phone line for the computer/faxes, so I didn't tie up the other line, and my end cost for the phone (no services other than local phone calls) and my ISP was $36/month. Now, most ISPs have raised their rates.
:-)
My current ISP (different town so no broadband yet dammit) charges $21.95/month. I don't have a second phone line, but I would if the local phone lines weren't such crap that my 56k connection tops out at 29k on good days. But, assuming I was confident enough in the phone lines to have a second line for data, that would end up being about $45/month for my internet access on dialup. Gee, that broadband sure does look good now...
Besides, I found broadband to be a nearly life-altering resource. Never worry about yellow pages, tv guides, etc. It becomes so convenient that you grow derisive of dialup speeds very soon.
Can you tell I miss my cable modem?
Illegitimi non carborundum
The thing is, they're not going to "save $40 a month" by staying with dialup. Dialup isn't free, unless you like horrible service and random bankruptcies of your provider. Assume the normal industry standard rate of $20-22/month for dialup, and suddenly the savings of dialup over broadband are less compelling. Saving 40 dollars per month sounds like a lot, but saving 18 dollars a month is three meals at McDonalds. :-)
Illegitimi non carborundum
I'd first like to know where the earlier poster gets $9/month dialup access, but that's irrelevant.
In my current town, and I'm sure it's not too unusual, the broadband access is execrable. The only option available is 128kbps symmetric DSL, for $100/month. That doesn't include the ISP charges, that's the cost for the LINE itself.
Now, with that as a comparison price, I'd have to say that I'm not "cheap" for wanting to get something more economical before going back to broadband. As soon as there's an option for something faster than 256k and cheaper than 60 bucks, I'll get it. I was paying $40 per month for 1 megabit/sec access before I moved to this burg, so I know what is possible.
Illegitimi non carborundum
Oh, I know that broadband is not needed by everyone (although if you know what Slashdot is, it's probably for you). I would not recommend it to my brother, who is not home often enough to make use of it. The same goes to many other people, who are happy with their dialup.
But, the math of saying people will save $40/month by not using broadband is bad, that was my only point on that comment. If broadband is at all something one would be interested in and it is available (grumble stupid small towns), the cost is not that bad if you're already paying for internet access at home.
Illegitimi non carborundum
But at purchasing-power parity for what? All goods and services? Everything but energy and food? Big Macs? Just communications services? (Obviously not the last one, because that would be missing the point of the comparison.) Throw us a bone here.
A source for the numbers you're putting out would be cool.
Hint: In many places, 101 is an intro to microec. course, useless for this topic.