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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.
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. .
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.
That said, some telcos are making the investment, particularly in new neighborhoods.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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!
$40 may be a lot of cash to some people, but they also need to examine the costs of dialup. In most areas a decent ISP is going to run about $20. If you don't want people griping that your phone is busy while you are on the internet, a 2nd phone line is needed. In my locality, this is about $12, but once all the taxes and other fees are tacked on, it runs about $20 or more. So we have about $40 for broadband and about the same for dialup. Other than being potentially less reliabile, if broadband costs the person about the same as dialup but is much faster, why wouldn't they choose it?
Personally, I don't care about entertainment content via the web. I just like not having to wait for sites with a lot of html and/or images per page (like slashdot). It makes downloading email and software nice too.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs