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Why You Don't Have a Broadband Connection
blandthrax writes "I ran across this article on The New Republic. The long and short of it indicates that the reason why almost 90% of Americans don't have a broadband connection is because current broadband providers are preventing other ISP's from entering the fray. The result: higher prices for broadband connections and a general lack of innovation. An interesting read full of good details. And, as usual, we learn that countries such as Japan and Korea are far ahead of the US in terms of innovation and technological saturation."
this sounds awefully like their original phone monopoly earlier in the century. mediaone (my original provider) was bought out by att, and they really tightened things up, raised prices, etc.
BSD is for people who love UNIX. Linux is for those who hate Microsoft.
I agree with the post, havent read the article yet, but...
We work at a small ISP that used to (try) to offer DSL service, it worked for a few buisness clients, but the problem is, we are in california, and our telco is SBC/Pacbell/Devil-Company. It was so much of a hassle to deal with, and also too expensive. I don't think we made much profit on that deal at all...pacbell were whores. We ditched that pretty quick.
I didn't have broadband because my local exchange wasn't ADSL enabled, there are no cable companies neer where I live and satalite is toooo expensive.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
I completely agree. There is only 1 provider of broadband in my area and that is the QWEST (sucks!) DSL. It is not available in my area so i'm SOL for now. I want it so bad... I'm considering moving just to get it. But being fair, its DSL service is far cheaper and faster then the ISDN high speed service before it in my area.
i haven't read the story yet, but i wonder if this is one case where the "new republic" might advocate federal regulation to stop companies from abusing their positions...
nah.
never happen.
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
I definetly think that the "last mile" of cabling to everyone's house should be public domain, allowing new companies to come in and offer lower broadband prices. I would find a new ISP just because the billing support people at Comcast are idiots that should have never been given jobs dealing with anything...let alone billing!
SIGFAULT
I have trouble justifying the $60/month for a cable modem, and I'm online all the time. Most of my family and friends that do not have broadband claim it is far too expensive. Period.
Holy s-, it's Jesus!
It's only been like 20 seconds, and the link has been slashdotted. Too bad there's no google cache.
There needs to be an entry in the guiness book of records.
"Fastest Slashdotting"
Live in San Jose, CA (you know, Silicon Valley), and broadband is not available in my area (Santa Theresa), neither cable nor DSL.
Je ne parle pas francais.
Every year you pay more for less. At this rate, by 2010, We'll be paying $90/mo for 768Kbs. To put it in perspective, I used to pay $35/mo for 6Mbs. I understand ISPs need to make a profit, but they aren't going to do it by charging more for less. Hopefully tiered pricing will get more people to go broadband.
Part of the reason that Sprint canceled their ION service was that the local telcos were screwing them over when it came to provisioning customer lines. When I had ION installed, the local telco told me it would take them 30 days to install a "conditioned" line that was suitable for ION....
:(
Of course, when I called the telco the next day to inquire about their own DSL service, the "conditioned line" could be installed the next day....
In the end, it did take 3 weeks to get ION installed, and it was far better service than anything that DSL could provide.... I really miss ION
I have a broadband connection. I don't care if the other guy doesn't. In fact, being a member of the 10% that does makes me feel like a real 3liT3 d00d.
Roving Web-Teleoperated Robot
Out here in Raleigh we have lots of broadband providers to choose from. Unfortunately, they all cost the same. So much for competitve pricing.
I have AT & T broadband. So I get this advert from Earthlink, basically offering the _exact same_ service for the _exact same_ price. I bet it's just AT & T with the Earthlink name. Why go through the hassle? Is this competition?
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Apparently "The New Republic" doesn't have a broadband connection, either. ;)
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
It's like I'm always saying. The free market only benefits the consumer as long as laws and senators are not for sale. Telecom laws in this country are being handed out like utility contracts in some single-resource dependant dictatorship.
When is the US going to get it's head out of it's sphincter and realize that telecom is a public resource. Or that public resources are to be protected for use, not auctioned off to the highest bidder.
Disclaimer: MINAA (Mummy! I'm Not An Animal!)
So true, so true. Powell seems to really have absolutley NO CLUE on how to apporach or handle his job. Everything he has done so far has been primarily a benefit to big business (allowing telephone records to be sold, forcing TVs to use digital recievers, etc). And even that (benefiting business) he does poorly. I wish my daddy was secretary of state. Then I could be put in charge of an important government regulatory commision that I have no clue about too, as long as I support the president's ideology: business first--consumers (I hate that word!) second. It makes me sick.
----rhad
Slashdot needs to interview Natalie Portman.
I have many collegues overseas. For starters, the [overwhelming] percentage of Japanese and Korean weathy enough to acquire broadband is highly suspect and inflated. Secondly, the degree of this "saturation" you speak of is much easier to attain in a relatively small country such as Japan or South Korea, south Korea being about the same size as Indiana and the total sum of Japanese islands being comperable in area to California. Got the smaller land mass? Build the infrastructure quicker and "saturate" it. If this is how "advanced" a country's 'broadband' (ugh) situation is, then Liechtenstein or Luxembourg might as well be the technological capital of the world.
I live in Canada and I've had a high speed cable modem for 6 years now. Now I can't think of anyone I know that still connects through the phone line, unless it's adsl of course. I think it is basically because the government decided that everyone should have it and opened it all up for us. All I know is that I could never go back.
$_='while(read+STDIN,$_,2048){$a=29;$b=73;$c=142;
Could it be that most users on the internet are just there to send e-mail back & forth between their families, or to hang out in chat rooms?
This is because most people do not need broadband and cannot justify the increased cost just for the online activities listed above. That is why by 2005 broadband will will just be catching up to dial-up percentage wise for users of the internet..
In central Texas (south Austin/San Marcos area), there is a local provider called Grande that provides cable Internet service at speeds of up to 2.5 Mb for much cheaper than Time-Warner.
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
Umm, no. There's tons of different reasons Americans generally don't have broadband, and probably top of that list is they don't want it.
Is uncompetative behavior a problem? Sure, but if you suddenly "fix it" America isn't going to buy up cable modems.
And yet I'm still unable to view that article now...
;) Yes I AM lazy!
I guess it's time for the google cache mod whores to jump in.
eTrade SUCKS
My broadband connection just is not very good. There are many restrictions on how I use it. I cannot run servers, for instance, or even have a static ip. Downtime of a few random daylight hours a week is not unusual. Recently my bill was increased by $5, to a total of $45 per month. No increase in quality of service accompanied this price hike. I will not name my service provider, but it is a major one and is currently being investigated by the SEC.
but phone companies continued transmitting the "last mile" of connections through slower, lower-capacity copper wires. This isn't a problem for telephone conversations, which transmit a relatively small amount of information at a slow speed. But it's a major problem for broadband, which transmits huge bundles of information and can be greatly slowed down by copper wires. Obviously this author hasn't heard of DSL/ADSL.
I'm considering moving just to get [an Internet connection with throughput greater than 56 kbps and ping less than 1 second].
It costs $200,000 to buy a new house, generally with 360 month financing. For that price, you can probably get a T1 line to your current home.
Will I retire or break 10K?
That said a month to month contract (and no install fees) for a reasonably priced Unix and Unix like friendly provider with a self install kit in NoVA and I'd probably grab it.
~~ What's stopping you?
In my area, the two LECs (Local Exchange Carriers) are Verizon (evil!{my opinion}) and SWB (not as evil anymore{my opinion}).
When I or friends have tried to obtain broadband service from companies other than these, we come up against a brick wall: although smaller companies have the ability to provide dsl service in our area, they actually have to lease the lines from these LECs (verizon and southwestern bell).
It took weeks sometimes just for the LEC to have the access on their end set up, and any time there was a technical problem, we'd have to speak to both sides, where each party generally needed cooperation and information from the other. Needless to say, this was not something that was easy to get accomplished and it totally ruined my (and others) experience. On monday, I'm ordering broadband at my new residence, and guess what? I'm going to be getting it through one of the big boys. The reason, the hassle of trying to get service through two companies that are in competition with eachother is too painstaking.
Fine! You don't have to yell at me! But do repeat what you just said though because something's going on in my head.
I work for a small ISP and one of our competitors thats much larger than us is going to start offering cable broadband through Time Warner. From what I understand, Time Warner provides the actual hookup and hardware, and then the ISP would provide mail, DNS, and tech support. The ISP would get $5 per month, per user that chooses the ISP.
This seems to contradict, the stories of excessive bandwith etc. Or perhaps, it helps to explain how it is possible to have all the supposed excess capacity and yet there is no "demand". There is no doubt that the demand is there, it always has been.
If the demand wasn't there we would all still be using 9600 baud modems, or perhaps 300 baud C-64 modems. But, instead we have tried to squeeze out every possible bit per second from our modems and it is still inadequate.
And, in case you didn't know, this doesn't change with today's broadband. Almost anyone who has used broadband (xDSL/Cable) for any period of time will tell you that the speed is the best available and that it is much better than dial-up but, they are still wanting or needing more speed. I assure you that if everyone could get a T-3 (45Mbps) for a decent cost, everyone would have one and still complain that it wasn't quite enough for them. The demand is there!
Why is it that in Canada everyone seems to be on Cable or ADSL. I dont know anyone who has setup a new dialup account... nor have i seen any of the ISPs pushing their dialup service...
I guess at $35 CDN/month (~$23 USD) why would anyone use dialup. At the office we get 10Mbps ethernet over fibre service for $600CDN/month (~$400 USD)
I think the US needs to get on board and start reconsidering their marketing and deployment plans for broadband.
There is only one simple reason that I don't have a broadband connection, oh wait, I do have a broadband connection!
BT are to blaime in the UK. Luckily I can get my broadband through telewest. I just hope that the scottish power line trials are a success
...a phone company in the US...can only depreciate their equipment every 22 years..so they dont have an incentive to upgrade the swithches which wil give you the humoungous broadband everyone is dreaming about..whereas a corp can depreciate its equipment every 3 yrs... now to have fast broadband would require the IRS to change that 22 yr rule to something smaller... its a pity because there is bandwidth in the optic cables already laid out( almost 100 times available)...something world com almost went bankrupt doing... a simpler reason for slow rollouts is also the lack of percieved sustainable demand.
(north raleigh, that is)
i have the choice of TimeWarner or AOL using TimeWarner or EarthLink using TimeWarner. BellSouth won't bring DSL to my neighborhood and MCI's sphere of influence doesn't come this far east. so, i have TimeWarner.
i guess it's better than no choice at all. but i sickens me to give them yet another $50 every month.
-c
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain.
Let's face it... until the 'baby' Bells get what they want (i.e. access to long distance markets without having to open up their own networks) they won't make it any easier for providers to give their customers broadband access. And even then, I doubt that they will make it easier. I blame the lack of broadband access in the US, fairly and squarely on the bells...
And guess what? The FCC is not only allowing them to do this, they're actually encouraging it!
Why? Well, it seems that a couple of months ago, the FCC determined that the Communications Act of 1996 doesn't apply to the Internet. Remember all that bullshit about Clinton using the 'net to digitally 'sign' said act? Remember him saying how this act was going to revolutionize the 'net? Not any more. It turns out that the act was just a big land grab for companies like Clear Channel Communications and CBS.
Naw, really!?
What I think we should see more of is alternative delivery methods explored. Sprint PCS just deployed their new wireless network, I'd think wireless access would sidestep the Baby Bells entirely. Even better are satellite internet options (no new ground infrastructure required).
But instead we have... well... you get the idea.
Well yea the broadband market sucks. In my little qwest controlled town 2 people where I work got switched from Qwest internet service over to MSN. They switched back in less than a month to Qwest with biz accounts that were more costly because MSN was down more than it was up. Qwest also offers crappy service to the local ISP's who try to lease the lines from them. The DSL lines like to desync and qwest dosent fix them they just point fingers at the local ISP.
We should all look into setting up a DSL-co op like thoes nice people in Colorado.....
Vote early. Vote often. Vote CowboyNeal.
...because my local cable complany kept upping the prices every couple months. What started out as a $29.99 service + $5.00/mo modem rental ended up costing me $60+/mo by the time I canceled, less than one year later. There were no service improvements or extras added in that time. I wasn't able to charge it to my employer (I need internet access for some system support work) because it wasn't reliable enough and I still needed to maintain a dial-up connection.
It's a very common misconception that Japan is way out ahead of the US in the absorption of technology into the culture. (and that's NOT what the article says, by any means) Anyone who has lived outside of Tokyo/Osaka (and probably those folks as well) can tell you that Japan is NOT the leader of the pack in this respect. DSL (YahooBB) just came available in Mito, which is a small city north of Tokyo. Compare this to a comparable size city, Lubbock TX, which has had DSL and cable BB for years and years.
The computer lab in the school where I taught from 1996 - 1998 had 286 machines running Windows 3.1 They kept applications on floppies. The machines weren't networked at all. Schools started getting internet access after I left. The teachers were absolutely CLUELESS re computers. Most of them used wapuros (word processors) or nothing at all.
As the article mentions regarding BB: the NTT monopoly held Japan back for a long time, but BB is finally catching on.
There are lots of neat GADGETS in Japan, but proliferation of computing is slower than in the US. In the "real world," not standing Akihabara (an electronics district) or at Shinjuku station (with a video screen on the entire side of a building) Japan seems much less technologically advanced.
Yes, it's a blog. Sorry if that offends you.
Been online ten years and never had to pay for access once. That thar's the benefit of working for ISPs. Free is good, so because of that, I siphon off others' broadband connections and use my 56K connection for IRC and a bit of web browsing.
- IP
Me too -- You would think that your WiFi card would light up upon crossing the border of a place called "Silicon Valley". Funny how the companies that build the infrastructure, and are suffering because of the slowdown in tech spending, haven't banded together and built their own wireless (or alternative) infrastructure. Cisco, Symbol, 3Com, etc. could certainly install wireless in this town, with very little capital outlay on their parts, and then establish a recurring monthly revenue stream from a loyal subscriber base.
But I guess I should be happy that for only $80 a month my SBC upstream DSL bandwidth has a service level guarantee of between ZERO and 128 kbps
Obviously this author hasn't heard of DSL/ADSL.
ADSL is available only within two miles of the phone company's switch. In order to live within two miles of the phone company's switch, some people would have to move house. Buying a house may cost $200,000 payable over 360 months, and for that price, you might as well get a T1 line to your home.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I would say the main reason the best laid plans of telecoms to convert everyone over to broadband failed because the high quality/high datarate content never appeared.
The reason for this 'more infrastructure than content' phenomona, I believe, is that the telecoms overestimated how willing the entertainment industry (@see MPAA and RIAA memebers) would be to move their content to digital formats. For example, if all the major record labels all had their entire libraries online, available for purchace and download in a fair-use friendly format, then the demand for broadband would be much higher. If you could buy, download and burn DVD's over the web, people would probably be complaining that current broadband isn't fast enough and might be willing to pay more for access to all those fiber networks out there, which currently, are sitting dark.
Fantastic article, this piece really caught my eye:
In February, Powell, who enjoys a three-to-one majority on the FCC, announced a "proposed rulemaking" on "telephone-based broadband." According to the FCC's decision, telephone-based broadband services are "information services, with a telecommunications component, rather than telecommunications services." The distinction sounds semantic, but it has profound legal implications. According to the Telecommunications Act of 1996, telecommunications services have to grant open access to their facilities, but information services do not. By defining telephone broadband as an information service--a designation originally intended for content providers like LexisNexis--the FCC removed it from regulation, allowing the Baby Bells to ban other ISPs from transmitting over their lines.
What he's saying here is that the FCC can't regulate DSL because DSL is a service which provides content like AOL, MSN, Compuserve, etc. So if you have a DSL line, and you're reading Slashdot, the chairmain of the FCC believes that your DSL provider brought you this story.
Mike Powell is a damned industry whore, and a disgrace to his father.
yeah, except that with each purchase of a $200k house you get... A FREAKIN $200k HOUSE!
Ahem.
Having said that, I have cable access, but I'd rather have cheaper access and more choices. But that's because I'm a greedy bastard... But hey, that's capitalism at work!
m00.
You know, I bet the main reason why Japan and Korea have higher has nothing to do with competition (isn't NTT a monopoly?) is simply that they're far more urban than the US?
Look, in general, you're going to see better broadband access in urban areas. Why? Because it costs the same (especially for DSL) and there's more potential customers. Maybe broadband will be what ends the fucking idiotic trend towards greater sprawl.
Would you take a house on a 100 acre sprawl in the country if it meant you lost your DSL/cable?
Why is it that people always take the opportunity in their story writeups to badmouth the United States at every turn?
What the fuck is up with that? If you're so sick of the perceived lack of technology here, move to Korea or Japan, you fucking whiner.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
but we have laws to ensure fair competition so that even the biggest telco cannot say no when the owner of the house switch to their competitors. Even the telco own the physical network implementation of that house, they must let their competitors share with it at a rate.
It's because we always think that networks system is like sewage system which can be owned by private sectors but must be regulated by Government for the best of the public interest.
I thought US has similar laws on fair competitions?
Japan is tech savvy, but broadband connections are not as popular as you would think. For email, web surfing and chatting, cell phones are much more popular there.
Please bitch slap your son for us,
Thank you,
Consumers of America.
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
I went from having a residential T-1 coming directly into our community wired with redundant fiber pairs into our townhouse to netzero dial up. Do I miss it? Yeah, I miss the leeching speed but not like I do much interneting at home to require that much bandwidth now. :-)
I'm tired of seeing and hearing all the broadband commercials that make high-speed connectivity seem like such a panacaea.
Such ads usually concentrate on some particular aspect of broadband that makes it superior to dial-up. For instance:
1) No waiting to connect!
Now seriously, of ALL the reasons to go to broadband, this is the most idiotic. Since most people aren't running servers on their home systems , the connect time isn't that big of a deal. I have also seen DSL systems that still require you to actively connect to the network, and it takes about the same time as a 56K handshake.
2) I get my email in seconds!
I guess this is just because we get so much spam or something. I rarely receive an email that huge attachments.
3) Watching streaming video
I have yet to see streaming video on the web worth watching. Maybe I'm not looking in the right spot or something, but until I can watch DVD quality movies online, I don't care about streaming video.
4) Listening to streaming audio
This is much more plausible, but probably doesn't justify the much higher cost of broadband vs. dial-up. I do like listening to streaming audio.
Dial-up is more practical simply because it is far less expensive, and is more than adequate for most users.
Now, when it comes to:
5) Getting the latest linux distros that are upwards of 400 MB and...
6) Downloading tons of pr0n
well, broadband just can't be beat.
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
yeah, except that with each purchase of a $200k house you get... A FREAKIN $200k HOUSE!
... and usually the proceeds of sale from your previous house.
Yup
Tuus crepidae innexilis sunt.
Another problem with the lack of choice is that often the few choices you do have, don't let you do what you want to do with the internet. My local cable company has broadband cable, but their Acceptable use policy reads like a Microsoft EULA. I don't like it and won't use it. It bans servers of any kind, bans P2P sharing, I think it even attempts to tell you that you must support community deceny standards. (I thought that was the whole point of the internet, letting you determine your own deceny standards)
My other problem is that I'm in a DSL dead-zone and the only one even willing to try and offer me service is Ameritech, which has a similar draconian Acceptable Use policy, and they use PPPoE.
My only hope is that I can get a wireless broadband connection with a local ISP (who has a decent Acceptable use policy and allows servers... their only restriction is that you don't use the connection for illegal activity), but currently my house is situated too high to have a good line of sight to their antenna. The only way to get to it is to have a larger antenna then my community allows (I'm petitioning the Building Dept for an exemption). Hopefully they'll agree and the antenna won't make my neighbors nervous about "death rays" as the Building Dept Manager put it.
There are lots of people out there who just don't care about having faster Internet connections. You always hear about some freak out in the sticks, salivating to get his paws on a fast pipe. What about the millions of people who have access to broadband connections but don't sign up!?
Let's face it: People like us are not normal at all. Most people dial in, check email, buy a CD from Amazon on occasion, and that's about it. I've told several people that DSL or cable is easily 50x faster than dialup. They look at me like I'm crazy, "Now why would I need to go so much faster? And doesn't that cost a whole lot?" It's like, you just want to bang your head against the wall. But when you consider how much TV normal people watch, it makes perfect sense. They don't really want unfiltered knowledge. They can't handle it. Why go looking for information when all most people want is the pap and pizzle the spews from the their TVs?
I recently ordered Verizon DSL (NY suburb area, optimum online not available). I asked the sales rep why I should go with Verizon and not with another equally priced DSL provider: He said something about how Verizon has much more experience with DSL.
I found out the real answer later. When the rep was checking my phone line to see if it was DSL capable, he implied that if my line hadn't been DSL-capable (if it was on older wires) then it could have been fixed, by speaking to a local Verizon phone line technician, usually by catching him on the job and asking him politely to hook it up (or possibly by requesting a service job through my local Verizon office, although they wouldn't be obligated to do it).
This gives Verizon a completely unfair advantage, since no other company is authorized to maintain the phone lines in the area. DirectTV DSL can't sell to non-DSL enabled customers, but Verizon DSL can since they can enable just about anyone who asks!
$8.95/mo web hosting
You mean a country full of greedy individualist companies is technologically behind contries with a strong sense of the common good? Amazing.
Science may someday discover what faith has always known.
It can be seen that the companies controlling the infrastructure definitely can push out other players by offering their own services, and this seems all too familiar. There needs to be new laws to govern networks and infrastructure, since this is a prime example of a natural monopoly. Although I dislike the government interfering (or being stupid) when it's not necessary, in this case it actually is.
These networks should either be owned by the public (like the roads) and can be used by a number of carriers, or should be owned by a company that is only committed to infrastructure. Currently the companies that operate this infrastructure also offer services that use the infrastructure, which should not occur since they can easily drown out competition.
This lines up almost perfectly with Microsoft's position in the operating systems industry; they have what has been acknowledged to be a monopoly and they continue to abuse that monopoly by driving out competition in other sectors, such as web browsers, office suites, etc.
This is just another case of how there need to be open standards to give competition a chance on a uniform platform and not letting one company take control of all aspects of the industry.
A computer is a valuable tool, so use it and stop whining.
I live in broadband hell. ... everywhere all have DSL but not me... ... ..
Namely Aurora, Illinois.
I'm close enough to the Central Office (12,000 ft) but Ameritech/SBC claims their CO is full (which I think may be true).
No problem, they are working on project pronto which is supposed to offer DSL for all the suburban neighborhoods. Notwithstanding the legal issues, they started rolling out project pronto in Illinois this spring. Of course it's completely half-assed and there are no rhyme and reasons to the way they are doing it.
So they keep calling me to tell me that DSL is finally available. They send me a DSL modem and they tell me, oups sorry, not yet for you and I send it back.
I played that game 3 times. Now I stopped.
So technically the remote terminal (the project pronto Fiber to the neighborhood part) is supposed to be up in October for us, but I heard that one before.
So I left Ameritech/SBC alltogether and went with another local phone provider (cheaper).
As for Cable, it is still not available, as ATT inherited some really crappy and old system from the previous cable company and they haven't had a compelling reason to upgrade yet. (they have the monopoly). So there again, I refuse to use ATT and I have satellite (much better).
Of course satellite Internet sucks (pings terrible, no good for VPN) and will probably go bankrupt soon.
There are some wireless options but it's all mom and pop and most of them have been known to get our money and run with it.
Plus they can't subsidize the cost of HW as much as DSL and cable so the upfront cost is too high for me ($250 to $500) and the monthly cost is also too high.
So in the mean time, I just pay $5.95 for cheap dial up access.
I still think it's ridiculous. I live in America!
People in Korea, Japan, Taiwan, France
The perverse nature of the capitalist system:
No money (not enough) for the big guys and they won't get in
Sad sad
I think my situation sums up the situation of many many millions of American.
Just my 2 cents...
I have to respectfully disagree. I think when you write "everyone would have one [T-3] and would still complain it wasn't quite enough" you mean "everygeek" not "everyone."
I'm not very geeky (one of my many weaknesses) so my 3MBPS is just fine with me. Let me watch a couple of QT trailers and very rarely Limewire something and I'm as happy as a clam.
Yes, it's a blog. Sorry if that offends you.
Especially for cable modems that are sectioned off in nodes that are shared. If 9 people on a block belong to one ISP and the 10th guy is proxy arping/rogue DHCP on another ISP. Good friggin luck getting the other ISP to shut their clown off. Although traffic can be separated, The CMTS is going to be managed by someone who is not your ISP.
This only complicates things when something needs to be fixed or replaced.
This goes a long way towards forced/open access issue that started @Home's downhill slide.(ATT's decision to bankrupt the company was another, Excite management betting the farm on page hits and click throughs another.)
I pay $50 a month for real life through put of 1.5Mbits with a cable modem(280Kbytes a sec in real life downloads) . Considering a real T1 goes for $700+ I think this is a steal. I find 56kbits unacceptible.
Also of note is that 90% of internet users don't need broadband. They only use email and buy whatever their AOL page tells them to
and usually the proceeds of sale from your previous house.
Which are taxed out the wazoo. After taxes and other fees, the amount a typical homeowner keeps from the sale of a house is barely enough to make the downpayment.
Besides, you can't buy a $200,000 house for $200,000. The bank will want a lot of that in finance charges.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Upgrade the thornbury exchange or else.
This reinforces caution against naive predictions about the future, reminding us that the curve of the technologically possible and the curve of the market reality can diverge widely.
It means the answer to "When will we all live like The Jetsons?" Is not necessarily "When we know how to build everything The Jetsons had."
A simple point, but important.
The powers that be learned their lesson from the fall of the Soviet union.
Free access to communications technologies for the common man will lead to the downfall of the corrupt system.
In the USSR, it was mimeograph machines and cassette tape recorders. In the United Corps of America, it's Napster.
I'm only half kidding.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Heh -- you must be living, with me, in the wonderful SF Bay area. Yeah -- $200,000 is ghetto here. Expect to pay $750,000 for anything decent.
.. maybe it's time to get that T1 and charge my neighbors for wireless access.
And, what's even better, here in the middle of silicon-valley, the heart of the tech revolution, I can't get DSL!! Oh sure, iDSL.. but 144k is marginally better that a 56k modem.
I digress -- The reason iDSL is the only thing available is because Pacific Bell refuses to let other providers use their copper. Covad got in, somehow, which is the only reason I can even get iDSL.
Eh
One of my parents work for a school district. The school district then gives them free email and internet access. My parents will not change until they have to. Free email and internet as convinced my parents.
"Cable and phone companies rarely compete with one another, and both have effectively discouraged independent service providers (ISPs) like MindSpring or EarthLink from using their connections." "Independent Service Providers"? Independent? What? "Mindspring or Earthlink"? They have been the same company for quite a while. Get an editor...
Yes, Mitsubishi, Daewoo, Toyota, Sony, Honda- they're all out for the common good. Hmm. Do you know ANYTHING about the Asian crash of the mid nineties or the current Japanese economic crisis? All about greed and avoidance of responsibility.
And no, Japan at least is NOT technologically ahead of the US. Not even close. Don't know about Korea.
Yes, it's a blog. Sorry if that offends you.
The article mentions a few times the poor effects of declaring data traffic to be "information services" instead of "telecommunication services" which are regulated differently.
However, I seem to recall when that happened that people generallly took it to be a good thing - are there not unpleasant implications to declaring data traffic as "telecommunications" that would hutr us more? I can't remember the full implications of each type of service.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Unfortunately, no politicians, either Republican or Democrat or anything else, know the underlying problems here. I am sure they are not familiar with underlying aspects of computing, and instead of learning themselves, they are handed agendas by large organizations (corporations, foundations, etc).
I doubt we will ever get many sensible laws dealing with computers any time in the forseeable future, especially since techies are too busy doing their own thing to worry about politics. I know that personally I see politics as illogical anyway, so why not spend my time on something that makes sens and where I can get something done.
A computer is a valuable tool, so use it and stop whining.
When I see so many posts commenting on how expensive 40-60 bucks/month is, I have to smile. Here in Tokyo, I jumped at the opportunity to install ADSL in May last year. My price for the telco fees + ISP port connection/services was just under 80 bucks/month. It has since dropped, thankfully.
However, prior to ADSL, my dial-up charges were on the order of about $250/month. The North American all-you-can-eat dial-up courtesy of no-charge local calls would have delayed my adoption to xDSL for a very long time. The move was made because the pricing was so much more attractive.
Of course, now things are different. Telecommuting and doing the VPN into the office network wouldn't be possible with dial-up, so when the company asked me if I wanted to work at home, I was suddenly VERY pleased to already have ADSL installed.
Hmmm. It occurs to me that some of you folks stateside might have a good argument to present to your local representatives. Telecommuting really does require broadband. If the broadband providers are forcibly slowing the adoption of broadband in wide areas, it's plausible that there are negative economic consequences coming about as a result.
"In Virginia, when one small town, Bristol, wanted to set up its own broadband system, Verizon lobbyists persuaded the pliant, Republican-controlled state legislature to pass a law prohibiting any town from doing so."
I found that quote very disturbing. Fortunately, I read more on the subject and found out that Bristol won a lawsuit that overturned the decision. The state is appealing the decision (imagine that), but for now, Bristol has set a precedent that says that municipalities can set up their own broadband service. It's insane that Bristol even has to go to these lengths, but at least they won.
Simpli - Your source for San Jose dedicated servers and colocation!
To synopsize the synopsis, we've screwed regarding broadband. But then, anyone that's been keeping even a casual eye on broadband for the past couple of years already knew that. The Baby Bell shutout this year was just the last nail in the coffin.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Speaking as someone who goes from a cable modem at home, and a T3 at work, I'd much rather have the T3, you just don't know any better.
3 megabits/sec (~300kbytes/sec) is slow.
If I get transfer speeds like that from sites I'm downloading from at work, I look for the file elsewhere and see if I can get it quicker. Most of the time, this is a whole linux distribution download, where 300k/sec is awfully slow for 1-2 gigs of ISO images.
Always have been always will, who else is allowed to change contracts to customers, resellers, and vendors at will and not be penalized? Plus they control our communication grid and infrastructure, which is one reason why taxpayers must bear the burden of Worldcom or risk losing a portion of our communications system.
Can you tell I have a dislike for telephone companies?
You want to know why I don't have broadband? Because despite living within 10 miles from AOL, PSINet, WorldCom, as well as big corp. offices of several other well known firms, there is still no viable broadband for most people out here in Loudoun County.
Rumour is, eastern Loudoun was a failed experiment in "fibre to the curb" a few years back. There's more fiber out here than in a Metamucil factory. Thus -- no DSL.
"Fine," you say, "what about cable?"
Well, we're in a real jiffy of a situation in that aspect too. As if the fact that we've got Adelphia out here isn't bad enough, the bit of broadband roll-out that they are doing is going west-to-east -- leaving the areas with the highest population densities out in the cold.
Finally, since you likely live in a TH/Condo out here -- myself included -- unless you have access to southern skies, you have no satellite options.
A while back, I wrote a letter to my local Representative about the fact that they lured all the high-tech companies out here w/o having the infrastructure in place for high-tech workers. His reponse was typically clueless.
Verizon themselves also recieved an angry letter from me, very recently, as they incessantly flood my mailbox with DSL ads, despite the fact that I can't get it.
Bitter? No, not at all...
I'd rather use the T1 connection at work. Dial-up is fine for home use. If there is anything I need, I download it at work at use my iPod to transfer to my home computer.
The good thing is that the telephone companies can't prevent it (the data itself) the bad thing is that they don't have to allow equipment hookup.
So, you can have the data, but you can't get it onto the network.
The US is a heck of a lot bigger than these other countries (Japan etc). When one ISP can cover a country well, like the cell phone situation in Japan, it is very easy to be quick to market. When you are a huge country, in terms of area, it is a much slower, and more costly, process. The dead spots in between (area of minimal population) make it much less attractive for companies to spend the money on it, especially now after the dot-com fiasco.
How many people in the US can say they don't have cable TV? DSL is dependent on short range transmission, satellite has huge lag.
There are problems... we have to come up with the fixes...
I'm guessing one of the reasons 90% of Americans don't have a broadband connection is because a huge percent of them don't want broadband.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
I was the first one to get DSL in my neighborhood a few years ago.
An appointment was made through the Pac Bell website to have DSL installed and sign up for one of the DSL providers listed on the web site. I also ordered a DSL modem from the website. It took the phone company about three months to check the line before they can install DSL.
Finally when a technician showed up, he installed a splitter on the phone line and hooked the DSL modem to the computer. Then he asked me what IP address to use. We spent the next couple of hours trying to find someone at the ISP that knew what an IP address is and which one to use. The technician ran out of time and had to leave. It took three more days of phone calls to get the IP address and finish the install myself.
The DSL worked great for a couple of years before I started to have lots of problems. To get the problem fixed I would have to call Pac Bell who tells me to call SBC, they tell be to call the ISP, the ISP tells me to call Pac Bell. A never ending circle.
Finally I cancelled DSL and used the Ricochet wireless modem for a year and half before Metricom went bankrupt. Now I am back to 56K dialup.
If you want Cable, 3 different DSL companies, or even T1+ hookups:
1. Move to the middle of a big metropolis.
2. Call aforementioned broadband providers.
3. Pick the best option to suit your needs and have them install it.
4. Complain about the traffic, homeless, noise.
If you want plant life, fresh air, lower crime rates, and room to stretch:
1. Move to the middle of the country.
2. Find a local dialup ISP.
3. Complain about the slow net connections, lack of entertainment, hay-fever.
Stop whining,... choose.
You can thank the FCC, too, and its chief Michael "son-of-a-general" Powell.
Thanks to FCC ruling, cable companies *DO NOT HAVE* to share their medium with other service providers, like say, PacBell *MUST* do when it comes to DSL service.
Score one more for de facto monopoly.
Heh -- you must be living, with me, in the wonderful SF Bay area. Yeah -- $200,000 is ghetto here. Expect to pay $750,000 for anything decent.
Why on earth would you continue to live there then? In the midwest $750k will buy you a huge mansion in the very best neighborhoods with excellent schools and low to zero crime rates. Hell, $200k will generally buy you a huge house in a nice neighborhood with low crime and good schools. It amazes me anyone would still want to stay in the SF Bay area unless they're making $300k/year.
Don't get me wrong... I well remember the days of dial-up access.
;)
I happen to hate dial-up. I got broadband because I tend to be a technophile. (I'd be more of one if I had more money, but that's a different story.
Anyway, I'm certainly no stranger to busy signals and dropped connections. There's no way I'm going back to dial-up. But, I tend to get a lot of use out of my broadband connection. For most people, I still think it's overkill.
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
Yes, you're absolutely right. And so am I. When's the last time I downloaded Linux? Never. Remember, I'm not a geek and I run OS X. (If I want Linux, I'll buy a commercial distro on CD 'cause I'll probably need the fancy schmancy installers to get it working)
I work on a university campus and my connection is actually faster at home. So I guess I don't know any better.
Yes, it's a blog. Sorry if that offends you.
Well, I'd hazard a guess that probably about 20% of Americans don't even know what the internet is, and another 50% have no need for a broadband connection and wouldn't want or need it even if it was free. So throwing around this as being "the reason why 90% don't have broadband" seems a little over-dramatic to me...
It always amazes me how in the USA, land of capitalism, how QUICKLY it turns into communism!
Something in its extreme form becomes its opposite.
Keep that in mind.
Heh -- you must be living, with me, in the wonderful SF Bay area. Yeah -- $200,000 is ghetto here. Expect to pay $750,000 for anything decent.
Why on earth would you continue to live there then?
Obviously you've never been to SF.
-Valiss
There is quite a range in price/performance for broadband.
I live in ashland oregon. The city owns a high speed fiber network that covers most of the homes that can receive cable. Since no single company owns the infrastructure it is open to mutliple ISP to sell you the bandwidth. I pay about $30 a month for access speeds that are usually about 250K/S. When I lived in Portland Oregon I paid Qwest $50 a month. that was limited to 25K/S and they were the only game in town.
Here in the UK, we were a little slower with broadband, but it's taking off here now to some extent.
Rather than the 12 month contract, leased modems, astronomical prices and company monopolies, a new method has emerges that seems to be working. Approximately 40 to 70% of UK exchanges are dsl capable now, dependign on how far along you think they are. Oftel (the UK telecoms regulator) ruled that BT was obligated to allow other ISPs to offer dsl over BT's existing phone lines with no punitive charges in order to aid competition.
As a result of that, I have a dsl service (640k down, 256-300k up) that costs me $35 (equiv) a month with no 12 month contract. The only outage I had was when lightning struck my house and cut the phone off (hardly the ISP's fault!) and I own all the hardware at my end.
You buy a small dsl splitter from your ISP (or an online retailer) that you plug into your existing phone socket allowing you to connect your phone and modem. This way, no engineer needs to call round and install any hardware. The setup is a breeze, and I can have a static ip and run my own servers for a small fee if I need that capability.
The other option is to get your broadband with cable TV. NTL offers cable internet with their cable TV service. The modem is built into all of their set top boxes, so if you want to use the service, all you need is an ethernet cable from your tv box to your PC and a phonecall to them to get set up.
I think the driving force for this is the way the phone system works here. Local calls are not free, so dialup access is either through an ISP that offers a toll free number (AOL, Compuserve etc) which are expensive or an ISP that offers free use, but with a normal local call rate number, costing you 2p per minute off peak, and 3.5p per minute on peak.
For the amount of time I spend on the net daily, I'd easily rack up the same cost in phonecalls as I'm paying for my broadband access, except at dialup speed. No contest.
You people are such buffoons. Before you start blaming elite capitalist pigs, lets look at two things.
The thing that everyone fails to mention is who wants everyone to have broadband. It's the media companies. I'm sorry if this will sound political, but. Who's pushing it for them? The democrats who's funding comes from movie companies. Disney wants Democratic politicians to keep bringing up broadband. Broadband gets them distribution into the home. Like it or not, this issue is being pushed by media companies on the high end and geek desires on the low.
Here's something else. There were broadband buyers before the phone and cable companies got into it. We had a few of them for customers. They paid us millions (or said they would) to have access lines all over the country. Nobody signed up. Okay some signed up. But not enough to pay their salaries or to pay our costs. They went bankrupt. We went bankrupt. We only blew 1/2 Billion in my company trying to do it. It seems that most people other than geeks that read slashdot don't put that high of a priority on broadband. Folks, that's reality. We can do all the geek mental masturbation that we want, but most people actually have a life.
For the record, I have broadband.
So anyway, the companies went bankrupt. Some got bought out of bankruptcy by bigger companies. That's life.
It costs a lot of money to build the network. Some people actually expect these big evil companies to pay them. We built one that cost us millions a month for these broadband companies to support geek dreams of fast porn. We're all out of jobs now. If the big companies make it, it's because they've already spent BILLIONS of dollars on infrastructure. I'd love to see the little guy make it in the market and keep some choice outside of the big providers, but it's really not gonna happen. Been there done that.
I sure had a party when the Death Tax was repealed.
However, the Death Tax by 2009 will be at it's max of 3.5 million dollars if I remeber correctly from last night when I was doing my will.
until a later government is strapped for cash and decides to sell them off again. hmm... can't think where that happened
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Now, why you'd want a WinModem in the first place is beyond me. If I have a modem, it is going to be external so I can see the blinking lights and hit the power switch if necessary.
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
2 words: Download Limit.
Sure, I can go with Tel$tra and have a 3gb broadband which can be close to the same price as my current dial up account after taking phone call savings into account. But, I'd be about 7 GB a month worse off.
Yes, i'm a download whore. I typically get around 10GB a month on this trusty 56k connection - why the hell would I want to go for a connection which is '50 times faster' if the net result is me being worse off?
Comparing something like this in the US to Japan and Korea doesn't make any sense at all. They have much less space to deal with, and a far smaller rural population. The US is full of big empty spaces and would better compared to Russia or China as far as how many people are connected. It's a lot easier to connect large numbers of people when they live in a small area as opposed to a huge mass of land where they are spread all over.
What?
68% of US residences can get high-speed Internet access, but only about 13% do. That's about typical penetration for a luxury good.
Where's the problem?
that a broadband infranstructure covering the Yukon would be idiotic, there aren't many people living there, whereas Japan and South Korea are consistently populated throughout the nation. The landmass of Canada to really be considered is that US-Canada border belt where most of the people live.
Would you take a house on a 100 acre sprawl in the country if it meant you lost your DSL/cable?
Uh, yes...
You can promote socialism all you want, but you cannot discredit an economic system that doesn't exist.
free-market.net
A: Obviously you've never been to SF.
I'll ask again. Why on earth would you continue to live there? I've been to SF, and except for the great chinese food, why?
I currently live in MD, in the distant DC suburbs. $300k in this area will buy you a basic 3bed 2bath house. Get closer to DC and you're looking at around $500k-$800k for the kind of house that would run you $150k anywhere else in the country.
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
Not to mention the $200 they charge you for "installing" it.
That's ATT or SBC in my area and each of them all ready sucked me dry with overpriced long-distance or overpriced cable service. I no longer have cable because I refuse to pay $40 a month just to get basic. Plus, I can therefore afford $19.99 a month for my local ISP.
I believe in buying local because I want to support my local economy. It's a lot easier to go down personally and complain, too.
c.
The importance of "content" (remember when we used to call it "art") to the Internet has always been overstated. Take a look at this article.
> Secondly, the degree of this "saturation" you speak of is much easier
> to attain in a relatively small country such as Japan or South Korea, south Korea being about the same size as Indiana
> and the total sum of Japanese islands being comperable in area to California. Got the smaller land mass?
Then what are the figures for parts of the US that are densely populated, relatively affluent, & under the same local government? If this lack of density were the sole cause, I'd expect the states of Rhode Island, Connecticut, & Delaware all to be either at the top or near the top in terms of saturation.
(I'll concede that there are probably enough low-income folks in Delaware & Rhode Island to make keep them from the ideal of a broadband line for every household, but last I checked Connecticut had one of the highest average incomes in the US. Anyone who wants a high-speed internet connection in that state should have one, unless the market wass hamstrung by hide-bound ILECs.)
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
I live in a mostly rural area, too far from any switch for DSL. Adelphia Cable has promised cable modem service for my county for well over a year now and still zip. And, now of course, Adelphia has 'restated' their earnings and we've seen their CEO lead away in cuffs. We may never see cable modem at the rate. But the good ole boys in county government renew them anyway...
"Love is a familiar; Love is a devil: there is no evil angel but Love." --William Shakespeare ('Love's Labors Lost')
I just got back from my first business trip to Tokyo, and I was surprised to see there that they had numerous competing DSL providers, each providing much higher bandwidth at lower prices than you can find in the U.S.
Yahoo!/Softbank had the best offering: 12Mbps DSL for ~ US$19/month!!! This would be amazing in the U.S., but factor in that Tokyo is a ridiculously expensive city, and it's even more amazing. A cappucino in my mid-range business hotel costs ~ $6.
What do we need to do for that kind of service here? I am paying over 3x that much, for a 1.5Mbps DSL service.
I can't speak for Korea, but in Japan the situation is no different for a startup broadband isp. Distribution of access might be better, but check out Professor Collins' post, below. NTT's blatant monopoly and unabashed abuse of power makes ATT's actions here seem insignifigant. The dot-com boom never happened in Japan. Can you guess (one of the major reasons) why?
For more info on Japan and NTT, look for Tim Clark's "Japan Internet Report".
Broadband is not readily available in our area. And even where it is, its not an option for anybody who has many trees on their property. It's because wireless is the only option offered. They've placed equipment on select large buildings such as an elevator or water tower near where we live. Apparently the signal doesn't go well through trees. Thus trees on our property=no broadband for us. Even if we could get it, its $60 a month plus about $250 for installation.
So the only option we have left is satellite, and we can't afford the $800 up front and $90 a month. I can't say that even if we could we would get it. It's just rediculous to think that we can't come up with a better solution. They've laid fiber otpics cables across our whole damn state. Perhaps we can use that, or maybe something through the REC's power lines?
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
"In Virginia, when one small town, Bristol, wanted to set up its own broadband system, Verizon lobbyists persuaded the pliant, Republican-controlled state legislature to pass a law prohibiting any town from doing so."
So vote those legislators out of office, people.
-- Knuckle Blood : Official Lube of Team Rusty Nuts.
At the same time, a coworker up the road from me in Daly City had a 1.5/784k ADSL for $69.00/mo.
I resigned and relocated to Westerly, RI and Cox Cable was my only choice. I now pay $109.00/mo. for 256/256 with 1 static address. The service is absolutely slush (and I'm on a "Business" class connection, no blocked ports, separate non-residential subnet, etc.). Cox has now started capping people below their subscribed bandwidth, and has begun to shut people out of their own cable modems, so you can't get traffic statistics from the modem any longer... even if you own the equipment!
The nearest DSL around here is from ChoiceOne, and it's 2x the price for 128k SDSL. I'm 2,000 feet from the CO. 1.5m SDSL from ChoiceOne here is $499.00/mo. That's almost what it would cost me to get a T1 dragged into my house.
That same friend recently moved from Daly City to Fremont, and now pays $79.00/mo. for his 1.5/768k DSL line and he also has a cable line, which he pays $29.00/mo. for. He's getting two broadband connections at more than 10x my speeds, for less than I pay for one cable connection, per month.
Broadband pricing varies WILDLY from location to location, even a few miles apart, from the same providers and CO.
And for those who don't know what the "Brass Rail" pricing is, "..just firmly grasp this brass rail on the front of my desk as I step behind you for a moment.." -Broadband Provider
It just struck me that the USA is increasingly seems to be getting behind when it comes to new technology.
Broadband is just one example where the USA lags behind other parts of the first world. Mobile telephones is another where the Euros and Japanese seem to be in the lead. With technologies such as Digital Cameras, Camcorders, DVD etc. Japan seems to be clearly in the lead. The XBox is trying to catch up with the Japanese PlayStation and Gamecube. With cars, it seems that the Germans increasingly have the lead.
Thinking through all the technology I have, hardly any of it is American. My laptop is Sony. My mobile phone is Ericcson. My car is German. My watch is Swiss. My DVD, television, Playstation, PDA etc. are all Japanese. My building architechture is European. About the only American technology I have is a HP printer.
The funny thing is that this is probably going to provoke a load of responses from Americans saying what bullshit it is to suggest that the USA does not lead the world in technology and it will probably get modded down to -1. Go on then. Whatever.
Well, unfortunately, I cannot get to thenewrepublic but here's my take: As a person who once has broadband, and now does not, I can think of the following reasons why I don't "need" it anymore:
1) I've seen the whole internet and i'm sick of it. Of course I haven't seen the whole thing internet and I'm not totally sick of it but I'm implying two facts: i) I do a lot of my browsing at work and don't mind seeing much internet while at home, ii) is it just me, or has the internet lost a lot of good content it used to back in the day??? Perhaps it's a combination of personal decrease in mp3 downloading...so maybe the RIAA is having some indirect affect on me. I can admit that the less accessibility (and more effort it takes to get) of mp3s has made me throw my hands up in the air.
2) Gaming. I know for a fact that Korea probably has the strongest Starcraft culture out there. I'm not sure how Warcraft is faring but I'm sure it's become a craze there. I definitely needed broadband when I was playing my network game of choice (Counterstrike). Why don't I have broadband now?? Personally I felt like I was spending too much time indoors rather than outdoors. I'm not railing against gamers/nerds but the average person probably feels more along the same way I do.
Necessity and demand. There's no real necessity for broadband (as of now) and so there is no demand. Perhaps people should start making webpages so that they are pretty much impossible to view with a 56k connection (kind of like trying to run windows 95 with 8 megs of ram) and try increasing the availability and lower the pricing models.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
The biggest problem is that telcos are trying to piggyback new solutions onto old technology. The time is nearly ripe for a major revolution in communications: Rip out the old worthless infrastructure and run independant fiber lines to each house. Start getting everyone setup to run Voice over IP, design a backbone that can handle the bandwith, and eliminate long distance calls! Never worry about giving people your new number every time you move.
I also believe in putting solar panels on every south facing rooftop in the country (Seattle and Portland get exceptions: there's no sun there.)
bance.net
I think it's time we had a good, healthy debate on whether or not America is a good country. That matter has been swept under the rug for FAR TOO LONG on the internet.
As a side note, I defy anyone out there to give me a single good reason to buy a $70.00/month broadband connection (the cheapest that's available out here in the boonies). For what? Download songs? I can do that on a dialup. Download movies? I can pay less per month and get them on DVD. None of my favorite sites require broadband.
So what's the point? I can think of a hell of a lot more things to do with that money...
Phallic Symbols in LOTR
The author of the article underplays the effects of the corrupt telecommuncations companies. The so called boom of the late nineties was due in part to their fraudulent accounting and illegal/questionable business practices. The bust now is due in large part to the chickens coming home to roost.
So the idea that: the telecom industry was doing great in the late 90's, and so did the economy; the telecom industry is doing bad now, and so is the economy doesn't imply that fixing the telecom industry will save the economy.
The whole piece sounds too much like someone pushing for a bill to "save the economy" for some lobbying group. Back when the tauzin-dengal bill (and the opposing industry groups bill) were being debated in congress, the DC area radio stations were flooded with ads explaining how their bill will jump start the economy, and the other bill will give gloom and doom.
-asb
Actually, I suspect it's more of a case that dial-up is an entrenched market in the US whereas it wasn't in either Japan or Korea. Oh, sure, it existed and people used it, but they hadn't had the years of dial-up exposure before cable and DSL hit the scene like the US did. Again, dial-up is an entrenched market. Sure, the limited pool of cable/DSL providers may have something to do with it, but lets get some perspective here.
As to the "And, as usual, we learn that countries such as Japan and Korea are far ahead of the US in terms of innovation and technological saturation." bit, Gee... no biased there, huh? Granted, Japan has one of the highest suicide rates in their workforce and schools as well, in addition to the huge number of unreported rape cases, but hey, they are saturated with innovative technology... As usual. It's not nessisarily the topic, I realize, but loaded comments like that so irk me.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Telecommunications was the driving force behind the great economic boom of the late '90s. Between 1996 and 2000 the telecom industry grew at twice the rate of the national economy. By March of last year telecom companies had reached a market value of $3 trillion, and their share of the national GDP had risen to almost 6 percent. The Internet, and wireless and other telecom services, spurred investment in information technology, which by 1999 accounted for 43 percent of private, nonresidential investment. To a great extent, the boom of the late '90s was a telecommunications boom.
By the same token, the bust of the early 2000s is being driven largely by a collapse in telecom. The industry has lost an estimated $2 trillion in paper value on the stock market--more than eight times what it cost to bail out the savings and loan industry a decade ago. New investment capital, vital for innovation, has dried up. In the first six months of this year (i.e., before WorldCom's bankruptcy) telecom lost 225,000 jobs, one-fifth of the total jobs lost in the country. And with thousands of miles of excess capacity in fiber-optic cable, and as much as $500 billion in questionable debt, the industry may continue to hemorrhage value and jobs for the foreseeable future--potentially imperiling the country's overall recovery. Says former Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman Reed Hundt, "If the communications sector doesn't start attracting investment again, it's going to be hard for business investment in general to increase. And if that doesn't happen soon, the whole economy will begin to shrink again."
The government official most responsible for turning telecom around is the current FCC chair, Michael Powell, son of Colin. Articulate and well-liked on Capitol Hill, Powell was the first choice for the FCC job of former Senator Commerce Committee chair John McCain and House Commerce Committee chair Billy Tauzin. But Powell has proven a disaster. He has equivocated, frustrating even ardent supporters like Tauzin; and when he has finally acted, it has been to prolong rather than shorten the telecom slump. Like Harvey Pitt, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Powell would be ripe for replacement--if his feckless, ideological approach didn't so perfectly reflect the president he serves.
y Powell's own admission, the key to reviving the telecom industry is stimulating the growth and improvement of broadband--the high-speed Internet connections that are widespread in business but have only incrementally made their way into consumers' homes. High-speed Internet connections--carried either over cable TV lines or phone lines (called DSL, for "digital subscriber line")--could speed the technological convergence between the phone, the computer, and the television and spark new investment in hardware, software, and infrastructure. As Powell himself stated in testimony last month before the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, "Broadband very likely holds the key for the long-term recovery of the telecommunication industry, and indeed our nation's long-term economic growth and its ability to compete on the global stage."
But the growth of broadband is lagging. Eighty percent of businesses connected to the Internet use broadband, but only 12 percent of homes with Internet service do--not nearly enough to spark widespread new investment. The reason is largely that prices for residential broadband remain high. While other kinds of telecom prices--from long-distance and wireless-phone rates to super-high-speed oc-3 lines--have fallen, prices for high-speed cable and DSL connections have actually risen. It costs between $40 and $50 per month for residential broadband, compared with just $10 or $20 for slower, dial-up modem connections.
Why have broadband prices risen while other telecom services are getting cheaper? The answer can be found in the first chapter of most economic textbooks: There is little or no competition among broadband providers. In most areas, the cable company connects residences to the Internet through the TV cable, and the regional Bell company connects businesses through DSL lines. Cable and phone companies rarely compete with one another, and both have effectively discouraged independent service providers (ISPs) like MindSpring or EarthLink from using their connections. Cable companies have often blocked other providers outright, while phone companies have used a variety of tactics--from getting local or state commissions to set prohibitively high rental prices for their lines to sabotaging rival systems by deceiving them about whether Internet addresses were available. In Virginia, when one small town, Bristol, wanted to set up its own broadband system, Verizon lobbyists persuaded the pliant, Republican-controlled state legislature to pass a law prohibiting any town from doing so.
In the older dial-up market, where prices have fallen, there are 15 ISPs for every 100,000 subscribers--everything from AOL to MSN to the small start-up. These ISPs have been the source of innovations like instant messaging. In the high-speed market, by contrast, there are fewer than two ISPs for every 100,000 subscribers. Affiliates of cable and phone companies have a 95 percent share of the broadband market. That lack of competition keeps prices up, demand down, and innovation at bay.
That's the short-run problem limiting broadband's expansion. The long-run problem is that the high-speed services offered by the cable and phone companies are still fairly primitive. During the late '90s fledgling companies laid down high-capacity fiber-optic lines between large cities and even across oceans, but phone companies continued transmitting the "last mile" of connections--i.e., from local hubs to individual residences or businesses--through slower, lower-capacity copper wires. This isn't a problem for telephone conversations, which transmit a relatively small amount of information at a slow speed. But it's a major problem for broadband, which transmits huge bundles of information and can be greatly slowed down by copper wires. Nor is widespread broadband access over cable lines a solution: Like copper phone lines, cable is a relatively low-capacity conductor, and the speed of delivery slows dramatically as the number of users grows. (If you subscribe to broadband through your local cable system, cross your fingers that your neighbors don't follow suit.) To achieve its potential, broadband providers need to "uncork the last mile," extending fiber-optic connections to office buildings and residences. But so far, the Baby Bells, which own the wires, have proved reluctant to replace them. And why should they? Lacking competition, they have little incentive to improve or innovate.
here are solutions to these problems, some fairly obvious. As Americans first learned a century ago, the way to encourage competition in an industry that tends toward natural monopoly is through strong government regulation. That is the long-standing purpose of antitrust laws. In this case, the FCC has the power to force the cable and phone companies to open their lines--for a reasonable price, of course--to the competing Internet providers trying to enter the high-speed market. The problem of wiring the last mile is a trickier one; but here, too, the government could adopt measures like those it has traditionally used to encourage new industries. Just as it helped develop the railroad, automobile, and airline industries by subsidizing the construction of rail, roads, and airports, the government could subsidize the last mile of the information highway, either through tax breaks or outright grants. (Former FCC chair Hundt and others have urged exactly this.) By so doing, the government would also preserve its right to demand open access to the broadband infrastructure it had helped create.
But Powell, backed by the Baby Bells and the cable companies, has rejected these forward-looking solutions in favor of a simplistic mantra of "deregulation." "Deregulation is a critical ingredient to facilitate competition," Powell announced when he was nominated last year. But Powell's brand of deregulation protects the Baby Bells and cable companies from competition in the illogical hope that they will invest in new technology to improve transmission. Far from increasing competition, it will reinforce the trend toward monopoly.
t first, Powell's deregulatory crusade was largely rhetorical, but this year he began to take action. In February, Powell, who enjoys a three-to-one majority on the FCC, announced a "proposed rulemaking" on "telephone-based broadband." According to the FCC's decision, telephone-based broadband services are "information services, with a telecommunications component, rather than telecommunications services." The distinction sounds semantic, but it has profound legal implications. According to the Telecommunications Act of 1996, telecommunications services have to grant open access to their facilities, but information services do not. By defining telephone broadband as an information service--a designation originally intended for content providers like LexisNexis--the FCC removed it from regulation, allowing the Baby Bells to ban other ISPs from transmitting over their lines.
The next month Powell struck again--getting his majority to declare that cable-based broadband was "an interstate information service" and not either a "telecommunication service" or a "cable service." Here again, by defining cable broadband as an information rather than a telecommunication service, Powell permitted cable to ban other providers from using their lines. Moreover, by defining cable as an "interstate" information service rather than a "cable service," he removed it from any local regulation over prices and service. Michael J. Copps, the sole dissenter on Powell's FCC, said of the March decision, "Make no mistake--today's decision places these services outside any viable and predictable regulatory framework." Or as Governing magazine put it, the decision means "local governments won't be able to enforce customer service standards."
Lately, as deregulation has been discredited by scandal, Powell has openly espoused the end to which deregulation was the means. In an interview last month with The Wall Street Journal, Powell admitted that he favored major (supposedly innovation-spurring) consolidations in the telecommunications industry along the same lines of those the defense industry underwent in the '90s. During the '90s the defense industry was reduced from about a dozen to three giant firms: Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Boeing. By that logic, the telecommunications industry would consolidate into a handful of firms based on the Baby Bells. But as Mark Cooper of the Consumer Federation of America has noted, the two industries are hardly analogous. Defense firms contract primarily with a single buyer, the U.S. government, which enjoys substantial leverage over them. They are thus intrinsically subject to government oversight. Phone and cable monopolies, by contrast, contract with millions of unorganized consumers who, in the absence of a vigilant FCC, can't exert much influence over them.
If you want an analogy for what Powell is trying to do, you have to look at the Bell system before the breakup of AT&T in 1982 or to the French telecommunication monopoly in the '90s. AT&T was broken up partly because its monopoly was stunting innovation and removing competition. Long-distance prices fell 40 percent in the decade after AT&T's breakup. Similarly, French Telecom once boasted about its Minitel network, which since 1981 provided text-based, monochrome information services. But by the mid-'90s its monopoly held back the introduction of the Internet, a far better medium for conveying information. The U.S. telecom industry could eventually suffer similar obsolescence under Powell's plans for new consolidated regional monopolies.
Indeed, U.S. failure to wire the last mile is already undermining its telecom industry in relation to competitors in South Korea and Canada. South Koreans, for instance, are currently four times more likely to have broadband than are Americans; and South Korean telecom companies are now in a position to leapfrog their American competitors in Internet technology in much the same way American telecom firms leapfrogged the once-formidable Japanese during the '90s. (This, too, was largely because the Japanese were held back by a national monopoly, NTT.) Falling behind in telecom technology won't just mean American consumers have to wait for affordable broadband service. It will mean, as Powell himself argues, that the telecom industry will likely remain in the doldrums--and perhaps keep the overall economy there with it.
In June, when the Los Angeles Times asked Powell what he considered his greatest accomplishment at the FCC, he responded, "I'm still here." It was a joke that could just as easily have been made by Paul O'Neill at Treasury, Harvey Pitt at the SEC, or Lawrence Lindsey in the White House. Powell is yet another Bush administration appointee who has not measured up to the daunting challenge of a downturn that has swept away many of the gains American industry made in the late '90s. Powell may indeed survive. Sadly, the American telecom industry--and with it, hopes for a near-term economic recovery--may not.
"Are you now or have you ever been a TERRORIST, sir?"
Well they should save money get broadband and and P2P the CD./
broadband costs about the same price as 1-2 cd's a month or 1 DVD.
The RIAA put this kinda spin on it...
"In all, total U.S. music shipments dropped 10.1 percent from 442.8 million units in the first half of 2001 to 398.1 million units in the first half of 2002. In dollar value, this represents a 6.7 percent decrease, from $5.93 billion in the first half of 2001 to $5.53 billion in the first half of 2002."
but didn't notice that a 10.1 % decline in shipments and only 6.7% in financial terms, means they put the prices up....
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Here in SF, I have one option for broadband at home - ADSL. Cable modems are beginning to show up, but are not available for me yet. All other options (other than leeching off others 802.11b) are more costly.
The cost, per month, is $50, from PacBell. Of this, $40 is the rental fee to use the same line they had already installed for my phone. Due to government regulation, anyone can be my ISP, as long as they pay PacBell $40 per month to rent the line. This process effectively killed all competition, since the ISP margin is razor-thin, whereas PacBell is raking it in. Now, the ADSL works fine, outages are rare, and service is pretty good (excepting the slow time to get connected after ordering). But if the line rental were $10/month (or even $20/month - about what local phone service costs), I would have something that approached the value I receive. Remember - this uses the SAME LINE that my phone uses.
Recently I visited Japan. The hotel had free high speed access with DHCP. This wasn't even a costly hotel. It is seemingly ubiquitous there. And the blame in the US is a complete lack of appropriate government regulation on the people who own the lines.
The funny thing is, I signed up for DSL 3 years ago, and got a static IP address. Recently I moved, and now I have to use PPPoE - for the same price. That is right, after three years, they offer me worse DSL service for the same price. Something is rotten in Denmark.
japan and korea have broadband everywhere because 90% of the fucking people live in fucking cities. The fucking companies know this so they can charge a fucking dollar less (LINUX R00LZ) for a fucking lot of people. FUCK NORTH KOREA. thank you.
I think the states focus too much on "marketing" rather than the actual "product" where as other country (like japan) will continue to work on robotics/broadband/etc... without trying to promote it all over the place until there happy with it - while we will promote the hell out of an "idea" before we even make so we get all this funding and deliver nothing (much like the whole boom in nasdaq a couple years ago)
Ave Molech Setting
Would that stand up in a court of law, the parent is just ranting and kama whoring and talking shite
There's a load of stats thrown about to back up only partly tangable claims but only one link.
When will mods learn, is the parent really +3 interesting ? doh...
...Okay whatever. I don't think so but apparently anyone with an opinion that differs is a troll.
It has been pointed out in previous commentaries that the main reason why many other countries can achieve a higher amount of technical sophistication is the cost of roll-out.
Japan is a lot smaller than the US. They can deploy new technologies with the risk [cost] of failure a great deal lower. In addition to that, US consumers don't often pay the prices that the Japanese routinely pay.
History has shown, however, that companies in the US have to be forced into compliance and into change very often. For example, the mandate of touch tone service... the utility commissons of various states had to insist they upgrade their equipment.
Broadband is another matter since it's not yet seen as a "utility" as I consider it to be. Soon enough it will be I think... give it about 5 years.
but I plan to be {is that ok?}
Price has nothing to do with it for me, availability does. I can't get cable, dsl, or anything. I live in a heavily populated near suburb of Chicago so it's not like I'm out in the styx either. If I can't get it at any price, then price doesn't even enter the equation.
You can promote socialism all you want, but you cannot discredit an economic system that doesn't exist.
Okay, you've piqued my curiosity now. The U.S. isn't a pure free market economy -- I can accept that. So are there any examples of a pure free market economy in the world? If not, which countries qualify as the closest to pure?
How would you respond to the suggestion that no pure free market economies exist for the same reason that no pure communist states exist? That is, perhaps society demands some degree of compromise between these two ideals, and where countries differ is in the blend?
We are probably too wrapped up with digital rights management and copyright stuff to let high bandwitdh be cheap because if it was cheaper for someone to get 100K+ a sec on gnutella to download that bootleg of some current movie, or whatever, I am sure the mpaa and riaa would be aware of this reprecussion of cheap bandwidth
Just another angle could also be good ol american greed at work
I moved to the middle of a suburb of a big city. I get it all! I can now complain about traffic AND hayfever!
I work at an independant ISP in northern California. We offer broadband DSL, using SBC's DSLAMS. DSL is distance sensitive. If a customer is too far out from the DSLAM, a repeater (RTCLLI) is necessary to keep the signal clean. Part of our agreement with SBC that allows us to use their DSLAMS and sell DSL is that we can't use the repeaters. If we do, all traffic becomes property of SBC. So, if a potential customer is too far out for a direct connection, but is in the range of the repeater, we can't service the customer. They must go with SBC. Can't tell you how much that sucks.
"Jesus saves, but everyone else in a 10 foot radius takes full damage from the fireball."
No really, can you come over my house and tell me which soaps and cereals to buy too? Hey maybe you could tell me which sexual positions to use because of course it comes straight from God's brain to your keyboard.
Get this straight Nimnertz:
Your usage is not my usage. My usage requires it. My dialup was capped at 21.6kbaud, there is no xDSL and there never will be and ISDN is hundreds of dollars a month plus 1500 in setup charges. If it were not for Earthlink or Roadrunner I would not have multiple computers in my house. I would probably not have a job since I could not work at home and I have to work from home at least sometimes.
I get at least 1Mbps rock steady on cable and I would not move to new home without it.
Ok look at it this way. The article stated that "That is the long-standing purpose of antitrust laws. In this case, the FCC has the power to force the cable and phone companies to open their lines--for a reasonable price, of course--to the competing Internet providers trying to enter the high-speed market." Ok reasonably priced means, in the case of broadband from telco, less than it cost to buy and install the equipment. So the telephone company spends X amount of money to buy and install DSL equipment and must lease that equipment to a competitor for less than X. Also the telco must maintain the equipment. That is a huge loss for the company. Remember this is a business. The companies will not invest in a product that will cause them to loose money. If the margin is to small and profit is to low the share holders will freak. The equipment is available for telco to supply DSL to everyone not just those that are with in 3,000 feet of the central office. The problem is if they install the equipment now they will take a loss by being forced to lease the equipment to a competitor for less. Maybe deregulation will fix that.
This is also the reason why prices are high. It costs alot of money to maintain the small amount of equipment that is available for the telco to use now. So if they could expand the network to allow more to customer to get DSL the margin will increase (or decrease not sure the correct saying) and they can provide the service cheaper. Basic economics here, the more product you can produce the cheaper you can sell it for because your overall profit will still be higher.
Ok another statment "But it's a major problem for broadband, which transmits huge bundles of information and can be greatly slowed down by copper wires." Wrong again. Yes the amount of information is more but not that much. The encoding technique that is used is very similar to that of ISDN (and is actually better) and ISDN has and still does work quite well. A user has a dedicated line back the office in there town. Once in the Central Office the DSL is sent out on an ATM network which is mostly transmitted along fiber.
This author needs to do a little more research.
www.fotoforay.com
Aren't Mindspring and Earthlink the same company?
I don't have it since a modem connection is alot cheaper. I've told Verizon to lower their $50/month charge to $25/month for the lowest speed DSL connection to no avail.
The reason most Telcos are raising their prices is that they've eliminated the competition by bumping them from the shared wires and since they feel internet phone calls (which are alot cheaper) are eating into their regular phone profits, they are making up for them by charging a higher internet price to make up for the loss. If their regular phone profits keep dropping, they will continue to increase the network charge in turn.
When marking a post 'Redundant' check the date and time of the post.
It may be convenient to blame 300 pound gorilla monopolies, capital markets, and even the FCC chairman for the pitiful state of broadband in this country....but the real story is way more complicated that that.
Throughout America's history, every nationwide, life altering technology was deployed by private companies with financial assistance from the federal government. Technologies like electrical power, public roads, running water, fuel, even the telephone, were all deployed with the assistance of the US government. This is why most households have access to running water, electricity, and telephones.
How do the people on captital hill expect broadband to have universal, affordable deployment without government help? It is painfully obvious that the private sector and capital markets are not up to the task. These instiutions require a quick return on investment to keep the rank and file happy. Deploying a network on this scale is VERY capital intensive and will not show big returns for decades due to slow adoption rates (it took cell phones 20 years to get to where they are now).
Wake up Washington! If you want to get the economy going, it's time to create a government authority with the money and resources necessary to deploy (or assist in the deployment) of a nationwide broadband network. This program would have a similar effect as the parks program during the depression...it will create jobs, better the nation's infrastrucutre and feed a future economic recovery.
-ted
um... I would like things like hair, a deck on my apartment, and a huge-ass collection of DVDs. That doesn't mean I "demand" them.
I think you're confusing "demand for something else" with "lack of 100% satisfaction with what I've got now."
You would not happen to be the flounder from ASSHOle in the morning??? Anyway, where in MD are you? Cause My parents live right outside of DC in a SFH and it is worth about 250,000.
www.oobersworld.com - For those that ride.
Regulation is not the answer. Look at the CA power crisis. It occurred because government regulation caused there to be no real profit in CA energy. Therefore, there was no incentive to build new power plants, even though the increase in demand was obvious. Now, only after threat of blackouts and therefore loss of re-election by govt. officials, is anyone doing anything about the power crisis in CA. If you allow broadband to be regulated, you will have a similar situation. The network will become so overused due to lack of incentive for upgrades, that the effective bandwidth users will get will decrease instead of increasing over time. We'll start seeing commercials to conserve bandwidth by not using your computer during peak hours. The solution is to allow competing companies to lay their own redundant phone lines and cable. This will allow real competition. Deregulation of long distance has been successfull when more than one company has its own network. We just need to fix the "last mile" problem in the same manner.
Vote for Pedro
You're just noticing this? Not that I disagree with most of it, but you're neglecting a minor point-- Most of the R&D is "made in the USA" when it comes to technology, and farmed out to foreign markets for production. And just for something to chew on, who developed the technology for the CPU in your computer? Your high end graphics card? Who has been the leader in computer developemnt and innovation for the last few decades? Not saying your wrong, but it's a relevant point to study. When it comes to stuff like this, I think America is on the wrong side of the scales. It's not national pride when I say more stuff should be made in America... It's financial security. Hey, lets go to war with... China. Ow. That's gonna seriously hurt the marketplace for a bit. We're way over-leveraged when it comes to our relaince on foreign markets for daily items. World trade is good... To a point. Unfortunately, the US is past that point.
Fact is (speaking as an American if it isn't already obvious), the US is the leader in technological development, not always, however, in its application into the market at large. I think Japan has everybody beat in that arena...
You need a FREE iPod Nano
and then lose the war anyway
If you're unfortunate enough to live in a rural area as I and my henchmen do, most of the towns simply do not offer broadband regardless of what you are willing to pay. The phone lines are outdated, the infrastructure has to be completely redone, and we can't offer them enough of a customer base to make it profitable.
I suppose that ties in with the point made elsewhere about how the sheer land mass of the USA makes connectivity difficult... there are MILLIONS of us scattered out here in cornfield
country with simply no choice for broadband, period.
(You know you're in the sticks when AOL doesn't even offer a local dialup # for you...)
Phallic Symbols in LOTR
The reason most people don't have broadband is because there isn't any fine, high quality content on the internet for them to download! And the reason for that is because the poor media companies know that making that stuff available will lead to rampant piracy of said content. That's why we NEED to support CBDTPA, because it's entire purpose is to promote broadband! I mean, that's why it's called the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act. It's right there in the name! The fact that it gives media conglomerates obscene amounts of control over what basic electronics and personal computers can do is merely beside the point.
Yeah, right.
"Prejudice is wrong; you should hate everyone the same."
I split my time almost evenly between Moscow and New York. Long story short its a lot worse in Russia! At least in New York you can get DSL relatively easily, in Moscow its like looking for a needle in a haystack you have to pull teeth to get service. Though there is DSL, there is no Cable (tv or modem) of which to speak and satelite costs WAY to much. The only good thing about Russian DSL is nobody here cares if you keep all your ports open, telnet, ssh, ftp, even http. Nobody will terminate your service!
Actually, what you have here is the opposite of a free market--you have an over-regulated series of local monopolies with rent-seeking regulatory bodies .
Adam Smith's insight was when you put business and government together, you get corruption and the consumer gets screwed. If it's senators and laws are making the decisions of who gets to buy what and what gets sold, then it's not a free market.
Telecommunications de-regulation was simply telecom re-regulation, a botched job, and is being attributed to everything except the inability of governments to fairly and productively regulate a "public resource" such as privately-built wires over private property.
Broadband is very cheap and reaonable here in Canada. Same price or cheaper, before exchange. First 6 months are $30 CDN with Shaw where I am, then $40 after that. That's somewhere around 7 cents USD. ;)
I regularly get 400k/sec download speeds.
Random is the New Order.
The Alberta Supernet
:)
Not to mention that cablecos and telcos have been providing steady, stable, and inexpensive broadband in the major centres for 4+ years.
I love living here.
-- kwashiorkor --
Leaps in Logic
should not be confused with
Jumping to Conclusions.
Anyway, I'm in Frederick, and I'm so sick of the housing situation here, I'm ready to move back to Ohio. Friggin people spending $300k on a damn townhouse. They deserve to loose their shirts when the bottom falls out of the real estate market here.
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
To my knowlage there hasn't been anything like a communist system about for the past few hundred years(we were all more or less communist once!)
/. because of all the Americans, it's a great way to take a snap shot view of there opinions by the stupid posts the mod up and the not so stupid ones they mod down and the way they bight at anything than mentions communism whitout even knowing what the hell it is or isn't
The Soviet Union was nothing like communist nor is China people are too greedy and pig headed for a communist system to exist on that kind of scale.
I always like
This is not a troll ...
I used to be surprised, but I no longer am -- when I travel to the US (from Canada) I have never had broadband access in my hotel rooms. I don't stay in no roach motels either -- always business class, about 50% Hilton or Hilton-properties.
Once in Atlanta, I noticed the RJ-45 outlet in the wall, but was told by the desk that broadband service was no longer available - even though the wiring was all in place.
Two weeks ago I was staying at a recently built Hilton (3 years old) and they didn't even have the wiring!
When I travel within Canada -- my hotels always have broadband. Plus, for the most part, all I have to do is plug in and boot-up - no IP addresses, no DNS entries, no nothing. They just work.
Oh yeah, plus in my city (Edmonton) There are at least 4 providers of cable or DSL service for me to choose from for less than $35 US/month.
Grip
Failure is not an option. It comes automatically enabled in every Microsoft product.
Texas.net is a good provider of internet services. When I lived in San Antonio, they got me one of the first DSL lines. SBC was in charge of the hookup. It only took a year.
I've since moved and looking back at their page, I notice they don't even offer DSL anymore! Only dialups, ISDN, and T1 business. They tried their hardest to deal with Southwestern Bell and did pretty well for me, but I'm sure things were made absolutely unbearable for them.
I live in Canada and pay about $32 Canadian $$ for a cable connection. I think it is shameful that the US has to pay about the same rate in US dollars. If you take the current exchange rate that means the US pays about 50% more than Canadians for the same type of service. The true North strong and free.
"Laugh, and the whole world laughs with you. Cry, and they still think its funny." - Mr. Boffo
Fact is the cheapest way to provide utilities, electricity, gas, water, telco, etc is govt utility monopolies.
Because economies of scales are king here, the fixed costs are the biggest proportions of costs in such industries.
Take mobile phones whether a company has 100% of the market or 3 companies share the market the fixed costs are the same for each company, obviously the company with 100% share can therefore charge the least. But there's no motive for a monopoly to do that, unless of course its a govt utility monopoly, where politicians can get voted out if they charge too much. This is what keeps electricity costs fair in NSW.
I bet Singapore wouldn't have the broadband rates it has if they didn't have a govt telco monopoly behind it. I bet the Netherlands wouldn't have a over 90% cable TV rate but for a govt cable service monopoly (admittedly only a proportion are paying extra for paid content, the rest just receive their free-to-air through the cable, but it means no ugly antennas messing up the skyline where their are row houses everywhere).
Facts are, only in places with govt telco utilty monopolies or govt cable service monopolies will there be broadband take up rates for anywhere aproaching 90%. Its just too bloody expensive when the market is divided up between different providers all with the huge infrastructure costs, which arn't much different to what a company with 100% of the market would have, relatively speaking.
Can you imagine the economies of scale if their was just 1 nationwide cable TV (infrastructure service, not content) & telco with 100% of the market in the US.
The net isnt a need like the telephone. My parents never use the Internet and yet they pay $50/month for me to use it (Thanks Mom and Dad!). Most people don't have the need to use the net because they never grew up with it or find any real practical use.
100% Insightful
In June, when the Los Angeles Times asked Powell what he considered his greatest accomplishment at the FCC, he responded, "I'm still here." It was a joke that could just as easily have been made by Paul O'Neill at Treasury, Harvey Pitt at the SEC, or Lawrence Lindsey in the White House. Powell is yet another Bush administration appointee who has not measured up to the daunting challenge of a downturn that has swept away many of the gains American industry made in the late '90s.
Is it 2004 yet?! Worst. President. Ever.
I'm a 2000 man.
Cable and phone companies rarely compete with one another, and both have effectively discouraged independent service providers (ISPs) like MindSpring or EarthLink from using their connections.
Kinda hurts your credibility if you don't understand something so basic...
One thing they didn't really hype, however, is their Merlin C201 connection card. It is a PCMCIA wireless modem. It costs about the same as a new cell phone ($250.00) so it isn't exactly cheap, but it isn't outrageous either.
So if you don't have broadband at your home, but can get digital cell phone service, you can get wireless Internet connections 3 times faster than dial-up (Slightly faster than ISDN).
I don't work for them or anything, just passing it along.
___ I don't respond to Anonymous Cowards, and I Never Mod them UP.
No, and there are no societies that are even close. The thirst for power (and the wealth that goes with it) is simply too great. There is always someone who thirsts to control others, and there are always those who blindly follow the power-hungry. This is exactly why there is no such thing as anarcho-capitalism (the purely free market) in the world today. There is not even a such thing as a Libertarian state (limited government). We are not even close.
2. How would you respond to the suggestion that no pure free market economies exist for the same reason that no pure communist states exist?
See question #1.
What exactly the fuck do you know about my life? So stick to what you actually know instead of what you think the rest of us should appreciate about you, asshole.
braudband service is way to expensive.
doesn't penitrate the current phisical or economic
infrastructure.
oft times sucks hardcore.
is run by slashdot newbies.
Runs the electrical bill through the roof.
Need I go on?
Make it not suck and i'll fork out 40 dollers for it making my digital citizon cost of living:
50 for TV 50 for braudband 60 for cellular and 10 for the PDA batters (once every 12 weeks or so).
total cost about 170.
The seperation of business and state is every bit as important as the seperation of church and state.
And, as usual, we learn that countries such as Japan and Korea are far ahead of the US in terms of innovation and technological saturation.
Saturation...maybe, but the U.S. is behind in technological innovation?! Give me a break. Take a second and think about who innovated the technologies you are using right now to read this message. Yep, the Internet was a U.S. creation. So was the transistor, and the integrated circuit, and the microprocessor, and the web browser (i know, berners-lee wasn't U.S.), and the cell phone. Shall I go on? What else do we sit in front of for more than an hour a day? Television? Yep, another U.S. innovation. Automobile? Ok, the Germans invented the first auto but it became mainstream because of U.S. innovation. Ballpoint pen? CRT monitor? Microwave?
The U.S. still produces the most innovative ideas. Other countries, such as Japan, are more efficient and better at manufacturing but we still come up with new ideas and products more often than other countries. Sure, there are numerous exceptions...the Sony Walkman comes to mind. However, take an inventory of what products and technologies you use daily and do a little research as to who came up with them first.
these are the same people that pay $80+ for their cable TV subscription with stupid movie and sports channels. why would they want a net connection. they're consumers. they shouldn't be allowed to produce a single bit of information and send it out. broadcast waste is all they need.
Oh! I thought the reason I didn't havw broadband was that cable blows away DSL in terms of raw speed, so I'm waiting for that.
Thanks for clearing that up.
It's been a long time.
I use QWEST DSL & ISP. It's a mixed bag of bytes. Far as QWEST business folks I got to agree - they got three thumbs never one or two ... but the tech side works very different. Good equipment loaners, first rate 24/7 support, and I get 217Kb UP/DOWN every day.
I think you're getting a little overzealous in your U.S.-bashing there, Michael. Korea and Japan have relatively low PC ownership rates. In Japan, mobile phones have become the dominant vehicle for e-mail due to high per-minute dial-up charges and the slow penetration of ADSL into homes. Even in Tokyo, a local call will cost you between 20-70 cents per minute depending on distance, and that's on top of whatever fees your ISP imposes. ADSL is coming along, as well as mobile phone services. Right now you can get national wireless access for about $85 per month. That's 128kbps access via a phone or PC Card, unlimited, nationwide. Not as fast as 802.11b or ADSL, but still pretty nice.
Korea has a similar situation, combined with extremely popular PC rooms that attract kids. So much for games driving the hardware market. Japan's trade in PC parts has made prices low for do-it-yourselfers, but prices are still comparable to the U.S. when you compare the same kinds of stores.
The U.S. has its telco monopolies that drive up prices, but its availability is ever-improving. Don't count us out yet.
For more information, click here.
Gradually recouping the cost of laying fiber and of keeping some equipment alive is a no-brainer business!
The real expense comes in being recruited into a polcing role to enforce the interests of others (like RIAA) because of the DCMA.
Qwest one day just turned off my DSL after a year of service, resulting in my first ever call(s) to their tech support line, after several hours of hold/idiot/hold/idiot/hold/idiot They told me it had been turned off, they wouldn't tell me why, only that a FedEX was on it's way. Well, the next day an overnight FedEX ($14) informed me that MPAA had sent an email claiming that I was distributing a copy of "101 Dalmations"! WTF! I've never seen the movie, it's certainly not something I'm going to waste my bandwidth sharing, even if I had it.
Cost to MPAA to send Qwest an email - $0.00
Cost to Qwest to enforce interests of MPAA
$14 - Sending FedEx
$30 - 50 minutes of Tech support call time!
$20 - to deactivate and reactivate the service
at least $64.00!
Cost to me for MPAA's mistake - 2 days broadband withdrawal pain, 3 hours wasted on the phone.
The other main expense is supporting customers that won't RTFM! If Joe consumer wants on-(the phone)-line training they should pay for it not me just because we use the same ISP.
If legislation continues to increase the cost to ISPs, the cost to consumers will continue to rise in direct proportion (plus a margin).
Sprint Broadband sells a wireless option.
DirecTV also sells a two way satellite option but that's insanely expensive.
...or the Ulysseses ($50), but that doesn't have that cool ring to it.
Your average consumer doesn't want to cough up fifty bucks for broadband. I'm not an expert on bandwidth costs, but I'm willing to bet that they'd find bandwidth a lot less expensive if they ever really had to compete for customers.
My guess is that in a few years, it's theoretically possible for people to have cable modem speeds for $20 a month -- what the average person is willing to pay. The problem is, with broadband costs still ridiculously high, there's little incentive for average folks to jump on the (brace yourself for a bad pun) "band" wagon. Hell, I don't like paying fifty a month for my cable modem.
Anyone who has DSL that uses PPPoE should really use the PPPoE protocol - works much like a dialup connection rather than that abortion of a program that most DSL companies hook you up with:
download here
for windoze only. not sure about *nix b/c I'm a newbie there myself.
After filing for Chapter 13, Adelphia launched an initiative to wire our area for Cable connections. And boy, is it taking off. With the students at PSU returning for fall classes this week, they're seeing a spike in users with the hunger for broadband. Not to mention they're rebuilding each town's cables in the surrounding area (something AT&T and TCI didn't do). Now that our rural areas are getting wired, we can finally jump on the broadbandwagon. Another tactic of theirs (which AT&T didn't do, leading to their bowing out of the Broadband market) is actually charging for installations. After that, a Digital Cable/Cable Modem tandem package is costing local residents about $80/month, which isn't half bad at all. Hopefully, this works out. My town will be broadband ready within the next 2 months (a promise both AT&T and Verizon couldn't/haven't kept), and the day it is, I'll be on the horn ordering it up.
Any other areas experiencing a similar situation? Any positive steps being taken to get broadband where it belongs (in our homes, not over our heads)?
Blog Prophyts - Right On, Man
point an 802.11b antenna at your nearest starbucks and you've got instant $30/month high speed net access.
So are there any examples of a pure free market economy in the world? If not, which countries qualify as the closest to pure?
According to the "Economic Freedom of the World" report from the Cato Institute, the most free economies are Hong Kong and Singapore, followed by the USA, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, and Switzerland.
It should be noted, of course, that economic freedom is different depending on where you are. For example, the UK has introduced private alternatives to their old-age pension system, whereas meddling with Social Security in the US is still the "third rail" of politics.
Western European countries generally ranked high in all areas except size of government and labor market regulation.
Life expectancy is higher among more economically free nations, and they also enjoy higher levels of income and faster levels of growth. The poorest 10% earn much more income in economically free countries.
The bottom five nations in terms of economic freedom were the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Myanmar, Guinea-Bissau, Algeria and Ukraine. However North Korea and Cuba were not included in the report since their data is not available.
Everybody just assumes that USA is slow or incompetent.
Only because that's what the evidence suggests.
This is the first time I've seen soembody bring up the point that the United States has a LOT of ground to cover.
True, but Canada has EVEN MORE ground to cover, and we don't have the same problems as you. As an example, take Morinville, Alberta. Population of 6400. They have access to both Cable AND ADSL. And at reasonable prices ($35-42CDN per month.)
And Morinville is not alone (I just use it as an example because I happen to know lots of people who live there.) As another poster pointed out, even Inuvik has broadband.
Most other countries are roughly the size of 1 (one) of our states.
Most, but not all, and there are bigger countries than you that don't have this problem.
you couldn't resist could you.
I recently moved to the Orlando Florida metro area. I have previously lived and had broadband access in San Diego California, Phoenix Arizona, and Denver Colorado.
In San Diego California, around 1998-1999, I had access to a Time Warner cable Internet ring. No other competing broadband services existed at the time other than perhaps ISDN, though that was not viable due to costs. Rates were usually between 128Kbps and 1200Kbps bidirectional with 20 - 80ms latency to the first hop. The rate and latency varied wildly at times but you could usually get through. I could get only one static IP address assigned to me if I begged for it if I remember correctly. I think I paid around $100 monthly for this service.
In Phoenix Arizona between 1999 - 2001 I had varied choices at different apartments for Cox @Home cable Internet service, ISDN to Primenet (for who I worked, otherwise would not have been viable), and at one point Sprint offered a wireless service that was being market tested and later was canceled and folded. DSL was never available to any of my apartment complexes because I was either out of range (Scottsdale) or the End Office was not equipped with a DSLAM yet. Some other areas had DSL access through Northpoint, Covad, Jato, and Qwest. Jato was the first to go, then Northpoint. Covad pulled some DSLAMs and Qwest installed more. Getting static IP addresses from anyone other than Northpoint, Covad, or Qwest was not possible. Qwest gets bonus points for allowing DSL customers to get a
In Denver Colorado between 2001 - 2002 I had an apartment which I could get DSL through Covad or Qwest only. AT&T Broadband was available only seven months after I first moved in to a brand new apartment complex. The complex was all wired with Cat5, which made me happy. I was 17400 feet from the Qwest CO. I chose Qwest DSL service. I got an ADSL line, DMT signaling, PPPoATM, routed, Cisco CPE and Cisco DSLAM, 40ms to first hop consistently, 640Kbps bidirectional. The CPE cost me almost $300, but a free PCI Intel card was given to me. The service was $150 or so every month for 640Kbps bidirectional and a
Here in Orlando Florida where I have just moved, I found that getting BellSouth DSL in an apartment complex is completely impossible. Every apartment complex which I looked in, and I did look over the entire west side metro area, either was out of range or used Digital Line Compression (DLC), which breaks DSL. Time Warner cable Intenet services are available in almost all of the complexes, but user complaints are high and no allocations under any conditions. No wireless out here. I am screwed for any kind of IP allocation unless I own a house right next to the EO. BellSouth will do IP allocations, but they are bridged with PPPoE (BAD and completely defeating the purpose) using Alcatel DSLAMs in most cases, but it will really cost me to get any kind of upload speed like I had in Denver.
But rejoice! I have found an Oasis. An apartment complex where some little limp-dick piddly place called Orlando Telephone Company (website made by "ImageProz") who offers a strange VDSL solution using Cisco Long Reach Ethernet switches in the complex. They do not advertize anything about their service and the techs have no clue about what they are doing with their equipment. Check this out, the connection allows for 1500Kbps bidirectional, which I almost always get. They give me access to Time Warner DNS servers because they do not have their own. They use DHCP to lease out real world IP addresses, but they have misconfigured their server so that ANY MAC that requests an IP off of my line gets an IP address -- as many as I want! All for $55 per month with a $100 deposit for the Cisco 575 LRE CPE. Oh, another minor issue -- no neighbor can communicate with any other neighbor because the ISP uses "port protected" but not VLANs on their switches. Thus, no customer port can communicate with any other customer port. A rather broken network I would say, but they do not know how to trunk the VLANs to a router port. Oh well.
So, Orlando really sucks for broadband. Nobody knows what they are doing here, or access is just not available. Getting static IP allocations seems to be a growing problem, preventing users from being real members of the Internet.
While this is OT, Intrest is Tax deductable and can be very lucritve to some people right on the border of the tax brackets. If you are at the bottom of one tax bracket, and are making more then say the top of the lower bracket, you actually take home less money, and are getting screwed by U. Sam.....
www.oobersworld.com - For those that ride.
It's too expensive right now. If I had a lot of disposable income then I'd probably splurge and pay too much for DSL or Cable.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
See my earlier comments on the number of Internet users in the U.S. and worldwide:
Why would you live there, I live in the Cleveland, Ohio suburbs and I am looking at 3 bedroom 2 bath houses, ~2k sq feet for $90K =) Take the extra 200K plus a like amount in financing charges and invest in the stock market. By the time I retire that should be about 3 million (doubling every 8 years with a real return of 5%), sounds like a much better use of money to me.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
You talking shit read communism? a couple of posts up and follow the links.
In communism evrything is owned by everybody.
socialism is the transition between ownership by the bourgeese and communism (ownership by everyone).
anarchy is do what the fuck you like there's no concept of ownership
In addition to what is offered above, I suspect quite a few of us don't have broadband because we're freaking unemployed.
When times are tight, some of the first things go go are twinkies, cds, and broadband.
*sniff* - I miss you, cupcake!
nwp
A tack of a different sort. (Unless this is very common - I wouldn't know if it is.) In St. Louis you cannot get DSL service from anyone if you don't have SBC as your local phone provider. So, while we have a choice about DSL (Earthlink and DirectDSL also provide service here) we can't use that if we wanted to join The Neighborhood with MCI. SBC had the best startup deal when we were shopping so they got our business.
'Course, I can't prove it (I think it was an Earthlink rep who told me this) but given corporate culture it doesn't surprise. Nor does it take a great leap to believe it.
Service is good though. So I'm happy to be rid of the 26K connection I was getting on dialup. (Yes, I know I could be getting 56K but the damn modem never connected at that speed.)
Going cable was never an option thanks to the buffoons at AT&T. They got run out by Charter who proved equally buffoon-ish.
-r
Just because something is free does not mean you have to take it.
> Once you have it you can never go back. Never.
:)
I guess that depends on what you used it for, and whether you have fast net access at work. I use the net basically for email and news/info, and occasional chat with some friends who don't live near me anymore. I don't tend to play games on my computer (that's what the Dreamcasts, Playstations, etc. are for).
I have a fast connection in my office should I need to download a large file - say the latest release of Open Office.
So why should I pay $50 a month *at home* for broadband?
I haven't been able to come up with a convincing reason yet.
> Most people that do not have indoor plubming
> also claim that it is far too expensive.
Bad analogy. A more apt one would be, say, your house is equipped with a low-flow toilet. Is it worth the cost to buy an old-school flush toilet so you've only gotta flush once after a trip to the Chinese place?
-- Rick
Anyone interested in following up on this "mound of documentation" of his? I certainly don't have the expertiese to pursue an FTC action or anything like it but maybe someone out there would be interested. I don't know if he's still contactable since last I heard he took off with the remnants of his equipment to another state somewhere that he didn't specify but if there's someone who is reputable (ie: connected with EFF or other verifiable institution with a history and appropriate absence of conflicts of interest) I might be convinced to try and track him down based on the contacts I have.
Seastead this.
What the fuck is up with that? If you're so sick of the perceived lack of technology here, move to Korea or Japan, you fucking whiner.
Because I'm not a lazy slob like you who just accepts his crappy situation and won't do anything to change it.
I believe America can do better. I would hardly think it's that radical a notion but from the incoherent "love or leave it" arguments that jarheads like you constantly screech, I'm apparently wrong.
So I have to ask, why do you hate America so much? Why don't you want to make it a better country to live in? Why are you such a quitter?
What if the US Government gave itself a mandate to create a modern Tennessee Valley Authority to deliver broadband internet to rural America? It could be delivered via power lines. WPA project!
I doubt it would ever happen because the demand isn't there.Looking at what is being deployed and where the competition is among the telcos is wireless technology. They (Verizon at least) has the technology to distribute hardened DSLAMS out to neighborhoods, eliminating the distance limitations of DSL from the CO... Marconi has developed and demonstrated fiber from the curb - 5Mb/sec connections + phone and TV. The cable companies had an infrastructure in place and tried to deliver service on the cheap but that business model failed miserably (@Home) - AT&T bi continues to lose money. Comcast, Cox, Rogers and others raised rates and seem viable.
My impression is the telcos are focusing on where the demand is - wireless. The speed of 3x technologies looks good on paper - it remains to be seen how fast it actually is (1x around here is pretty poor). Blackberry technology is pretty cool - and it probably satisfies what most consumers are looking for.
If a hard internet connection to the residence is 'vital to the national interest', let it be delivered as a utility like (or with) power.I believe the culture is demanding mobile solutions... and the competition is there to provide them.
What a monopoly? 1 bell 2 bells three baby bells....
The FCC determined that the Internet wasn't a 'telecommunications service' hence the Comm. Act of 1996 doesn't apply to it. They've already cut back cable TV's requirement to allow competing ISP's onto the cable...and Chairman Powell came out with a statement that ILEC's "can do the best job of providing broadband". I guess that the Qwest/MSN alliance can give me the best broadband experience? Let me clue you in: I had it and it simply sucked! The CLEC'S well know that things are tenuous for them....trust me..I know my DSL ISP and they're bummed that the FCC is probably going to leave them out in the cold..and they do a great job, too! As far as my land grab statement: The Comm Act of 1996 also deregulated Radio and TV allowing companies like Clear Channel to happen.
Better point may be . .
Why do you keep your braodband connection.
Me myself after kpig went off so did the Dsl.
I dont need a highpeed connection to retrive spam,it all come down to quality of information not the quanity. A faster connection doesnt make
the internet a better experence
Besides who want to highjack a 56k modem,even script kiddies have enough sense to know it's more trouble than its worth .
It's not surprising that Toronto and other cities have decent broadband, particularly considering the higher tax rates in Canada than the USA. However, I doubt that the rest of Canada has good residential broadband service.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I remember reading somewhere that broadband adoption was something at like 30% of connected users.. but don't quote me on that!
In Toronto, for example, we have only 1 cable internet provider (Rogers) BUT, on the same note, we have anywhere from 5 to 10 DSL providers in addition to the local TelCo (Bell CA).. I'm not sure about wireless (Look Communications offered 3mbps wireless access, don't know if its still around).
You can get 1.0/128 for as low as $25 a month here (Canadian.. which equates to.. about $13 US) and my cable (3.0/320) runs me just over $40 a month.
Mouse, Mice. Goose, Geese. Moose... Moose?
When I visited the Discworld Convention recently, Terry Pratchett asked how many people in the room had received a Nigerian spam. Nearly every one of the hundreds of people in the room put their hand up! Maybe comic fantasy (or scifi) fans have higher expectactions of connectivity?
Uhm.. DUH?! What kind of rock to you have to live under to not already realize this?
I happen to work at an ISP in West Michigan, and we've been trying for at least a year now to come up with some viable way to deliver highspeed/broadband to our customers. Cable is out becuase we arent the cable company, and DSL is a hellish combination of the telco and other third parties. So far wireless is lots of promise and little deliver, but we continue our research.
...maybe because of Neanderthal's like this guy? Shouldn't you be in Afghanistan on the front lines? Go and and blow up stuff, or whatever it is you do.
Uh, I don't? Myself and everyone I know has broadband. What Americans is this supposed to apply to, exactly.
Comparing something like this in the US to Japan and Korea doesn't make any sense at all. They have much less space to deal with, and a far smaller rural population. The US is full of big empty spaces and would better compared to Russia or China as far as how many people are connected.
... the idiots can't even distinguish between static and dynamic IP addresses.
... the same as the 1.5 Mbit SDSL I had from another ISP three years ago.
That is complete and utter bullshit.
I live in downtown Chicago. Out of my window I can see ground zero ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^ the Sears Tower, which is a short 5-10 minute walk away. I am in the heart of the financial district, probably the most connected part of the city.
I cannot get decesnt Broadband, and believe me, with the demise of Sprint ION and my soon-to-go-away 8mbit ADSL service, I've been looking.
RCN? Crappy broadband service, flakey network, connections which crawl during peak hours.
Ameritech? The less said the better
XO? Covad? Not bad, but to get circuits analogous to the 128 kbit service I had years ago costs $80
With the demise of so many DSL providors, Sprint being the latest, affordable, quality DLS or broadband simply doesn't exist, and the reason is exactly as the article states: SBC Ameritech and their ability to use their last mile monopoly to fuck with the market, thanks to that corporate slut at the FCC, Colin Powell's son.
Broadband is less available now, in one of America's largest cities, than it was just a couple of year ago, and what is more, it is less avaiable here, in the heart of Chciago, than it is in typical rural portions of Western Canada, as numerous people fortunate enough to live north of our borders have pointed out several times in this thread already.
Nepotism, cronyism, and George W. Bush are who we have to thank for this fiasco more than anyone else, and I for one hold those corrupt, evil fucks personally responsible.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
According to the Telecommunications Act of 1996, telecommunications services have to grant open access to their facilities, but information services do not. By defining telephone broadband as an information service--a designation originally intended for content providers like LexisNexis--the FCC removed it from regulation, allowing the Baby Bells to ban other ISPs from transmitting over their lines. The next month Powell struck again--getting his majority to declare that cable-based broadband was "an interstate information service" and not either a "telecommunication service" or a "cable service." Here again, by defining cable broadband as an information rather than a telecommunication service, Powell permitted cable to ban other providers from using their lines. Moreover, by defining cable as an "interstate" information service rather than a "cable service," he removed it from any local regulation over prices and service. I rest my case....
it's just no-one gives a fuck
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
I use Earthlink dialup for several good reasons:
- I don't need broadband to serve my customers: email and file sharing via my web sites works OK. When I do have to fetch something huge, wget -c works well enough if there is a network failure.
- I travel a lot for pleasure - it is great to always have a local free dialup number so that I can work on the road
- I am fairly much addicted to the Spaminator service that Earthlink provides - this allows me to post freely to the AI, Java, and C++ newsgroups without worrying too much about attracting SPAM
- There is not much content on the web that sucks using dialup, at least not the information-rich stuff that I am interested in
- I don't have to spend any time at all with overhead for running a small consulting business: I find that an iBook laptop and a dialup connection is enough to run a sucessful remote consulting business. I spend all my time either writing (which I love doing) and working on problems for customers (which is fun, usually), with basically no hassles.
The Internet is all about one-to-one connections and participation in (usually) small groups. I can do this just fine using dialup.-Mark
The article points out that the major suppliers of broadband are cable companies and phone companies. These are, like, my two *least* favorite services in the world! I pay way too much for the services I have; why should I reward them with more money for new services delivered just as poorly? There are some people I would pay $50/mo. for broadband, but they ain't them.
Not that they haven't asked enough. Since there is an existing business relationship, they are entitled to send you whatever junk mail or spam they want or call you whenever. Cablevision actually called me once at 8am on a Saturday asking me to sign up (these are the guys who use the NBA's most underachieving, overpaid team, the Knicks, for promotion. Pretty good symbol for the company. Oh, yeah, they own said team).
Think about it: If Microsoft started selling ice cream, even if it was 10 times better than the store brand and only cost 2.5x as much, would you buy it? What we need is the Ben and Jerry's of broadband.
Sources. In anycase, I didn't say we were the end all be all of technology. Just a major force in it. And I do think "leader" is an apt discription. Production? Oh hell no. We're outsourcing so much of our production as is unhealthy. Neither am I saying Europe as a whole isn't a major force in technology. To say otherwise is a misake. But to simply right the US off as a minor player as is implied is kinda (very) shortsighted.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
This article from The Economist gives some opinions on why broadband is more popular in some countries than others. According to the OECD, South Korea is way in front with 9.2 connections per 100 people. Canada is second with about 4.5, and the US is third with 2.25.
The only relation between these two things is Money. Broadband isn't technology anymore, it is money. It is shitty that broadband isn't taking off because of money. Widespread broadband technology would speed up the exchange of ideas, and utilize a superior infrastructure. Copper wasn't made to have such high loads transmitted across it. Making broadband easier to own would do wonders for our country, but if the telecommunication giants can still milk money out of older and dated technologies, we will be stuck with what they give us. It disturbs me to think that it is legal for them to make money on the indirect prevention of a higher standard of living.
Money can help push technology further distances, but it is also technology's largest speedbump.
It's all good.
I'm currently doing battle with the Quintessentially Worst Example of a Stupid Telco (bet you didn't know that Qwest was an accronym!) to get them to let a Covad reseller provide me with sDSL since they can't/won't. Needless to say, the last thing Qwest wants is a "competitor" even where they aren't competing.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
I WOULD have digital cable as well as Cable internet, But I was informed when I went in to pay my cable bill that everything is ready in my area BUT my apartment manager will not let the cable company onto the property to do all the wiring.
At the same time I see 50 little dishes mounted all over the f-ing complex. I think the manager has some kind of BoleSheit deal with the Dish companys. She probably gets free Dish in exchange for keeping the cable company off the property.
A.C.
I love living here
Because you have broadband ?
I have OOL where i live (NYC). I get downloads of 8Mb/sec, uploads close to 1Mb/sec.
I love where I live but I can tell you Broadband is not even in the top 30 reasons.
I wonder about people who obsess over things that I consider to be non-necessary.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
Before that I had ISDN which is 64kbps both ways. However, we when we had dial-up (okay, ISDN..dialup is not much difference in price), it was about 100Euro subscription per year and that's only the start: about 0.016Euro per minute in the evening (local phonecall). If you are about online 4 hours a day and that every day of the month (counting 30 days a month), it adds up to 115.2 Euro for the connection alone. Add 1/12 * 100Euro for the subscription it makes about 124 Euro per month only on internet fees. Now I pay less, have a faster connection, online 24/24 7/7 and I can run my own mailserver and webserver.
There is just a certain point where broadband is cheaper.
It was a no-brainer to decide for DSL... Considering the fact that neighbour countries have cheaper offers (I have the cheapest one possible in my country), you only have a reason to stay with dial-up if you just check your email in the evening. (Note: broadband-on-cable does not exist here, it does in the neighbour countries)
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
When trying to make that argument argue law...
So in a free market who would pay for law inforcement, and would it also be open to the free market.
I might pay for my child to goto school so that could work in a free market.
I might pay a toll on the road so that it was paved, which also works in a free market.
I might pay for a mercenary to blow your house up, well isn't law open to a free market?
you don't even have to mention socialism to win hat argument.
If you get the reply, we will decide common morals and that will be the law.. just iterate through one man meat is another mans poison.
e.g.
Q: Well whos morals would we choose.
A: The majorities, well have a democracy.
Q: and who will pay for that?
A: ummm well all chip in
Q: Isn't that socialist?
a: fuck.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
For the fringe areas in the urban communities that may not be as easy as some would think it would be... I had been pestering SBCSouthwesternbell to get DSL out to my residence which is clear out on the edge of town. So far al i got out of them were nastygrams saying that it was underplan and we'll call you dont call us.
Hrmf.
My phone line developed a imbalance in it that kept kicking me off so i called for a linesman to come out and deal with it. After he has completed that job I asked him why hasent SBC delivered on DSL out to this neighborhood... He replied "$250K". I asked why the price tag and he said that would be the amount to get the SLC that covers this area replaced with new building and install new equipment to handle the digital service...
The irony of this next phone bill that i got they were touting DSL service in it.... Dont you just love it?
The first time i do when i get things squared away here is get the frell away from Rockport Tx, and get to a place where they have Co-Op telco and broadband, to hell with all bells.
One question that keeps bouncing around in my head is this, would the internet have been possible if AT&T was not split up?
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
HallmarkOrnaments.Com
So in a free market who would pay for law inforcement, and would it also be open to the free market.
I might pay for my child to goto school so that could work in a free market.
I might pay a toll on the road so that it was paved, which also works in a free market.
I might pay for a mercenary to blow your house up, well isn't law open to a free market?
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Aside from the gratuitous and annoying bashing of Republicans, it was an interesting article. However, it missed the real reason that broadband is such a pain in the ass.
About 4 years ago, I got a cable modem from Marcus, our local cable provider. The infrastructure was designed so that few homes would share a line, and the speeds were estimated to max out at 6Mbit/6Mbit. There was no cap on bandwidth. There was no hassle about servers. I had 5 static IPs for $45 or so per month. I did not get any cable TV service. The provider was @Home, but I ignored them. Marcus' tech support was clueful and useful, the few times I had to call them. Uptime was excellent.
Charter bought out Marcus about 2 years ago, I think. The first thing that happened was that the prices started rising (to about $55 per month). Then the bandwidth got capped at 3Mbit/512Kbit. Then they hassled me about the server. Then the uptime started getting a little iffy. Then they required that I have basic cable service in order to get the cable modem, split the fees, and ended up charging another $5 per month net. Then they tried to rent me the cable modem I owned (that failed when I threatened them). On top of all of this, their technical support was miserably uninformed and useless.
When @Home died, I lost the ability to get static IPs (DHCP only) and the price was going to go up. Despite my $200 investment in a cable modem, I switched to DSL from Verizon. The cost was about $55 per month, the data rates were OK, but they set me up on the wrong service plan. I was unable to get static IPs, and to switch from the (wrongly-provisioned) home service to the business service (complete with IPs) would not only take 3 weeks, with all of the coordinating done by me (even though Verizon owned both DSL services, the modem, the phone line and so forth), but it also cost me another $30 per month to switch over, and I'd have to send back my DSL modem and get another one! On top of that, their uptime was not good, and their tech support was clueless. (Once, I called them to let them know that their nameservers were down. The tech support person told me it was not them, it was me, and that I would have to fix my problem. Note, I was on the DHCP only service, and was using their nameservers, etc., with nothing on my end but clients. I asked the tech to go check, and he came back with (I kid not!) "I can't check, because the network is down.")
I decided to get Earthlink's DSL, because I could get a static plus several dynamic addresses for $65 per month without any hassle about servers, and with better bandwidth, and because the sales guys appear clued in. I didn't want to wait weeks without service, so I reattached my cable modem and got it turned on for the interim period. I was told that for $45 or so per month, I could get 5 dynamic IP addresses. (Bandwidth now 384Kbit/128Kbit!!! and no possibility of static IPs.) When it was hooked up, I could only get three. I called tech support, and was told I was on the wrong package. I should only have one. Tappity, tappity, voila! Two of my computers stopped working. Call to sales got my package upgraded to one that "supports home networking" for another $10 per month. Still no additional addresses. Call to tech support informs me that while my package supports home networking, I had not purchased any additional addresses. Call to sales gets me 4 additional dynamic addresses for $7 per month each, total now up to $85 or so. I can get 3 addresses. When I bring my laptop home from work to use the VPN, I have to unplug the cable modem, turn off all of the machines, plug in the cable modem, and turn on the machines in the order that I want them connected to the network. Usually, I can get three, and sometimes four, to work at one time. I have stopped calling customer service or tech support, because they don't want to help me very much, and appear unable to help if they wanted to. I am expecting the Earthlink service to be working any day now, so I can shut off the Charter crap.
In the end, bad customer service, high prices and terrible difficulty just making things work will drive me off of traditional broadband. I am looking very seriously at moving to a community that has broadband installed throughout and run by the homeowners' association (they are building a number of these in my region now) rather than put up with the hassle of dealing with any of these companies. Maybe Earthlink will save me (I've heard good things) or maybe I'll move.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
I know its offtopic, but i heard that in the late 90's, the major american telecoms companies tried to have VoIP banned. Coupling this with things like the Microsoft anti-trust case(s) and this story and it seems to me that america is about as capitalist as communist russia was :) Lets not talk about Enron _cough_
While i dont care either way, it would be nice in future, if the country would make their political policies clear...
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
That's right, we here in america are just a bunch
of backwards Amish Neanderthals.
Now if you'll excuse me I have to log off the
802.11 network and and head back to class.
go read up on communism, you couldn't be further from the truth.
Evryone works to there ability, no force at gunpoint slave labor, if i can't be bothered than that my ability.
I could apply the same to capitilism, your not forced at gun point in a capatilist society because you'd die.
The lazy exmple I gave fits you description, but lets say I become sick and have no-one to support me, under Communism I will still be supported under Capatilism I'm fucked.
Capatilism applies the everyone is equal rule as 'everyone is born equal in skill'
Communism applies the everyone is equal rule as
'everyone is equal period'
the saturation in South Korea is not normal. it's more than just a small landmass. it's a cultural and political phenomenon. the country has consciously been moving away from industrialization and towards digitalization and knowledge industries.
my mother recently went on a trip to see old school friends in Korea. at the end of a big dinner, the half dozen friends all gave her e-mail address and cell phone numbers. they all made fun of my mother fot not being into e-mail. this from middle-aged women.
also, take in mind that virtually all new housing developments are coming wired with fiber, therefore making broadband de rigeur.
for more head over to wired. "The Bandwidth Capital of the World"
broadband in Japan is no where near the levels in Korea. there hasn't been an initiative.
Hey look that's a free market democracy...
Just what your looking for
Try not to confuse societal issues with technological issues. Cell phones take off in countries where land lines are expensive. Console saturation is high where PC penetration is low. Architecture is a cultural aspect outside of basic considerations for stuctural soundness.
Political issues are also not technological ones. Government granted monopolies are the reason broadband adoption is slow. Cheap foreign labor is why most production is farmed out to other countries - how much you wanna bet that Sony laptop is 100% made in Japan?
A much more accurate assessment of technological prowess, if such a thing matters, is Research and Development. Does it really matter that your Gamecube is "Japanese" if the chips powering it were developed by IBM and ATI?
How many different places did the technology for your digital camera come from? Who owns and collects on the patents? Cars are even more complex, believe it or not.
If a laptop is manfactured in Taiwan for a Japanese company using technology from the U.S. and chips made by a European-owned factory in Singapore, and then loaded with an OS from Microsoft... does it make a sound?
Who cares if it means more U.S. bashing! Woo!
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
Maybe other cities should hop on Tacoma Washington's bandwagon. Here the City of Tacoma is competing directly with other broadband providers, AT&T and Qwest. They layed down their own fiber optic lines and allow local ISP's to distribute broadband cable connections to consumers via the Click! Network. I myself pay $30.30/month for a 2mps download and 256kbps upload. I have had maybe 2 outages, that I know of, in the year that I have been with them, one was for 4 hours and the other was for 20 minutes. I have loved the connection and I think it is a great way for the city of Tacoma to bring in a little extra revenue. I used to be with AT&T and I was paying around $60/month after all the misc. charges. I was also part of Qwest DSL and was paying around $50 after all their fees. Click here for more information about Click!. Maybe your hometown can help disrupt the broadband monopoly!
One county near to me watched its revenues crash to the point where they couldn't pay teachers or policemen. So they voted to reinstitute a car tax to keep them solvent. Gilmore went out of his way to try and get rid of the county government. But hey- he cut taxes! What more do you need?
*You know you're a moron when the RNC fires your ass after only a year. Took him almost nine months to find another job.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
I am getting 512kb/s for $30 a month. It's only $20 for 256kb/s. I am using Charter cable, powered by HSA Corp. The only other choice is bellsouth DSL (BLECH).
I can run a server through it (here) and connect as many computers as I want directly to it.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
It's 80 Euro a month for P&T's dsl service and phone connection and not 100. :)
You didn't choose wisely your provider
It's not as bad in Canada, but in Ontario and Quebec, Bell, Videotron and Rogers Cable are starting to impose download/upload caps (combined) at ridiculously low levels of 5 Gb per month.
Fortunately, there is a wide variety of alternative DSL ISP's. Most of them can be found at:
canadianisp.com
You can search by region, price, and service type, and each ISP's details (per dial-up, DSL or both) are listed in a table with such information as low-end price, high-end price, upload caps, download caps, allows usenet, webservers, or webspace.
This space left intentionally blank.
I am certainly not a "normal" internet user, but for me a modem is just fine. The main problem with cable and dsl (both are available in my area) is that they are so expensive. I actually used to have a AT&T cable modem for years where I used to live, but for the last few months I have used a modem in my new apartment. I can say that there is no noticeable difference in speed for most routine operations. Web pages load just as fast as they did on cable (probably because of all the kiddies running mp3/warez servers on cable modems), and other stuff like email and instant messages are no different. Even downloading mp3s isn't that big of a deal -- I just leave WinMX running in the background while I browse the web... I guess the biggest download I did was a freeware game called "Steel Panthers." I think it was a couple hundred megs, but I have a program called "GetRight" that acts as a download manager. It took a long time for the file to download, but I didn't really notice it too much. I am actually really happy with my modem experience, I was expecting it to be much worse.. the last time I had used a modem was a 28.8 on a poor quality phone line. Oh yeah, and I am also $30 a month richer. Sure it's not much, but it adds up, and in this economy, every penny counts.
While you're idea might sound neat in theory, you need to add some basic common sense.
- WHERE I AGREE -
1. Our government IS too large.
2. 50% tax rate is way too much.
- WHERE I DISAGREE -
Anarchy isn't 100% pure Capitalism
Go to Africa if you want to see your extreme form of capitalism at work or any other fucked up area on the earth where governments don't protect people from enterprising warlords.
Real Capitalism needs a Foundation
First you need a legal framework that applies to everybody equally. Then you'll need institutions to enforce and execute the law. You'll need to make sure these institutions are resistant to corruption, especially when the goal of corruption is to circumvent the law. If you don't, you end up modeling yourself after many 3rd world countries.
Here's the real truth: You don't have a clue as to why capitalism has worked in many first world countries and why it's done very little in many third-world countries.
Here's a hint: Turn off the pundant on the radio, he's probably a divisive asshole who's just trying to get ratings by making his listeners feel vindicated when he explains the real simple answer.
You'll figure it out when you realize you're not as smart as you think you are.
Lastly, Realizing your stupidity is the first step towards getting smarter. I should know. I got this smart by realizing my stupidity A LOT. Sounds counter-intuitive, I know, but give it a shot! Admit to yourself you don't have a fucking clue, and you're really making up answers.
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
$40+ a month so they can tell me I can't run Apache, SSH, or anything else?
Thanks, but no thanks.
You mentioned strong property rights...
I didn't notice that...
That changes everything...
Now can you why comparing pure capitalism to anarchy is a bad idea? Anarchy suggests no legal framework. Use minimal government instead, suggesting anarchy gets guys like me in a fit.
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
Well.. you would live here because the average salary for tech jobs is $85k per year... which more then pays for the pricy housing.
And it's not a bad place to live; lots of things to do; lots of culture; lots of tolerance.
I'm certain you obsess over any number of things I consider non-necessary. I don't wonder about you. Why bother? To what end would you so wonder?
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
.. idiots. I got a flyer yesterday from Cablevision telling me all about family cable and their high speed cable modems.
I have both already.
Live web cams
> According to the "Economic Freedom of the World" [cato.org] report from the Cato Institute
Then again, reports from the Cato Institute are about as reliable as reports in The Weekly World News.
...I'm considering moving to one of the northern parts of Antartica. Not all of the continent is an icefield.
Does anyone know of a good source of fresh statistics for connection speeds? For general web stats, The Counter has decent free aggregate stats for things like browser, OS, monitor resolution, etc. But I'd really like to find something similar for bandwidth speeds. Any ideas?
"Luck is the residue of design" --Branch Rickey
The British army burned the whitehouse. I don't even think Canada even had an army at the time. I mean seriously. In 1812 we were a brit controlled. We're a great country, but stupid, ignorant bigoted morons whose only idea of national pride is who they hate, and whose only idea of identity is who they are not just make real Canadians like me look bad.
No shut up and go buy your back to school supplies.
. --- If you're looking for free e-mail you won't find it here! http://www.noemailhere.com
Oh brother.
a.) Canada only has a population of 30 million.
b.) Name two countries as big as USA both in size and in population that have high percentages of broadband.
"Derp de derp."
You forgot about his oh-so technologically advanced German car... And how that pertains to the topic, I have no idea considering. And since we're straying off the topic, lets not forget how the Dodge Viper has been dominating the LeMans...
You need a FREE iPod Nano
I'm going to guess cox. They just raised the rates 5$ to $45/month and they prohibit servers.
In 1812 Canada WAS the British Army that burned down the whitehouse. Do you think that Britain imported an entire army to North America?
And We kicked the shit out of our indians, Americans just gave them whiskey and diseased blankets.
We've got three computers in the house (two WinXP, one Solaris) all running through a shared dialup connection. My parents found a quick and easy way for them to get more bandwidth - it's called "Disconnect your computers, you're making our broswer time out."
They also tried sending me to college, which gives them a full 31.2k connection, but their bandwidth drops every ten weeks, plus around holidays and summers.
Everygeek? Not by a long shot...
If the geeks of this planet had any force over the economy Fellowship of the Ring would have over powered Titanic's box office numbers, Tesla would be better known then Edison and everyone would remember the good old days of playing LoadRunner on a C=64 instead of Zelda on Nintendo.
If you are at the bottom of one tax bracket, and are making more then say the top of the lower bracket, you actually take home less money
not true. If you sit at the bottom of a tax bracket, you pay that rate on the income that falls in that bracket plus a fixed amount which is basically the lower tax bracket's tax obligation.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
Alberta doesn't have anything on Saskatchewan for broadband. You can get ADSL from Sasktel in almost any town or city with a hospital, school, or government building with more to come. Sasktel was the first to offer ADSL in North America, with access in Saskatoon and Regina, then a few months later in Moose Jaw and Swift Current. I think you could get broadband in Swift before you could in Calary, but I could be mistaken.
Not to mention that cablecos and telcos have been providing steady, stable, and inexpensive broadband in the major centres for 4+ years.
We've had it in the major centres for 6 years now.
God save our Queen, and Heaven bless The Maple Leaf Forever!
I wouldn't mind paying $50/mo if it was as reliable as the phone, and I could ditch phone service for VOIP. You can buy a neat POTS adapter and a service to provide a telephone number for VOIP. The total cost would be less than two ordinary phone lines plus dialup internet.
Markets are only free to the people who own them.
--
jhw
I don't usually post (first time actually), so please take it easy on me this time...
When I first bought my house I decided to try for DSL through the local telco. I told them I had a local network between the laptop and the desktop, and they said, "no prob. just get a router and talk to our tech support". So I called their tech support to see what router to buy and they replied with, "Oh no! We don't support networks!" I canceled before it ever started.
Next try was through the cable company. Naturally I had the usual line of questions, and of course the sales staff said, "We can do that!" Then (of course) the complications arose. "You and the horse you rode in on," was my reply.
I use a local 56k dial-up ISP that is so simple to set up. (I like formatting once in a while to clear out the clutter so E-Z set up is important.) When a broad band provider can make it *JUST THAT EASY* then I will reconsider.
Until that time, they can all rot while I tell my lesser computer-literate friends to avoid broad band at all costs. It's just not worth the hassle.
Just my 2.
I think there's growing evidence that the marketplace will soon find its own solution to dawdling on the last mile over monopoly-owned wires.
Wireless.
Already I see where more than a few people are foregoing traditional land-line voice service in favor of cellular wireless phones. That same trend you're seeing for plain old voice traffic will be mimicked for IP service.
With all the war{walking,chalking,driving,flying} going on, I can see where a few strategically-placed public access points (maybe 802.11a with directional antennas) will start an avalanche of users to using wireless for their IP service needs.
Maybe then some of us poor slob end-users can start to see some benefits from that 12 month doubling period for BW/cost ratio on fat pipes.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Where? /mo (www.xe.com/pca/) /s downloads or higher depending on your plan.
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
When?
NOW
Price?
34.95 CAD = 22.41 USD
Hardware (DSL or Cable modem)
69.95 CAD = 44.83 USD , user installs and calls for activation
speed 1.5Mbits
EA David Gardner -"... but the consumers have proven that actually what they want is fun."
Untrue. Taxes in the US are tiered... you pay a higher tax-rate on the money that falls within the higher bracket, not the entire income.
-sid
Really, I have dialup with about 49333, and Look, I tried Broadband, and after an Hour, I was Wore Out!
No waiting, no time to go do the dishes while "USA Today" downloads. I clicked on it, and PooF! There it was! Now I gotta Read It!, then click on something else. Again, PooF! there it was! Darn, no time to get the dishes done, let the cat in or out, put my socks on, etc.
Rapidweather's Linux Screenshots.
do you wonder about sucking cock? it sounds like you do.
The Los Angeles metro area where I live is pretty well served by competing DSL services (although they all ultimately lease their lines from Pac Bell), and most of the region's cable companies now have cable modem service. I've had the latter through Charter Communications for about a year and a half how, picking up a preexisting Earthlink account, and bundled with digital TV service (basic tier plus more than 50 digital-only channels, DVD-quality premium channels, 50 channels of CD-quality music, and they just added 2 HD channels and video-on-demand). I have to say the cable-modem service has worked flawlessly and consistently, whereas I've heard nothing but horror stories from people who've gotten DSL. What outtages and DNS drop-outs there are are much rare than at the T1 line in my office, so infrequent I hardly notice it, and I'm online all night long. I've heard people say they've waited weeks and months for DSL service. I called on a Friday and they came out Sunday morning to hook me up. The guy who installed it had to rewire the cable connection from the pole to the building since it was barely adequate, but that was it. He didn't even know how to set it up on my Mac, but it was a simple switch from PPP to DHCP in a control panel, and away I went. My throughput has dropped a little since it first began, but is still in the neighborhood of 10 times as fast as my old 56k modem. (I live in a poor immigrant neighborhood, so maybe there's not as much bandwidth competition.) My vote would be to avoid DSL like the plague. Who wants to buy more services from the ^%$%@# phone company?
Actually, I have to agree with your assessment. Too many advantages for the entrenched monolith and too few for the up and coming innovator. The small business has more penalties working against it than ever via the US government. Combine that with the "defenders advantage", your idea has to be pretty outstanding to make it off the ground (depending on the business environment). Small business innovators are what led to the America's boom (despite the current economical bump) and they need better protection. The government needs to take a cue from nature-- Offspring generally get picked off by the bigger fish before they have a chance to grow. You either have lots of offspring (we have a bit of that going for us thankfully) or you protect them. Ideally, you do both. It's the individual that made the US great, not the corporate monolith. Even those had to start somewhere.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Everyone i know has broadband (i live in Toronto) but it's all from the same ISP (Rogers) and sometimes Bell Canada. Prices are not that much better than anywhere else, service sucks ass (but bad service is still probably the best service in north america,) and soon bandwidth is going down to something insane like 256Kbts downstream with monthly transfer caps.
This is simply not true. Cato is well-respected in the economics and political science fields. Perhaps you meant to say "biased", which is obviously true (Cato's goal is to promote free market economics, not socialism).
A last mile that was mostly built on *prexisting* "Cable TV" infrastructure that brings in income. Also since most cable companies have "suger daddy" media conglomerates behind them. The cost isn't as bad as it is for the small guy. Economics of scale and all.
In south eastern WI Time Warner Cable has road runner, you can also get AOL through their lines(same parent company different service, very different) earthlink(i think) and soon you will be able to get Inter Dot Net. And that doesn't include andy of the DSL providers in the area, which I belive there are several, 3+. So you talking around a 1/2 dozen providers. Yes the wires are owned by one of the two companies, the Bell or TWC, but the choices are there. Only problem I have is the price could go down a bit $45 month now is average. But even $45 is not that much, dialup+phone line is 22+15=$37. It is only $8 more a month for broadband than dialup. I feel it is worth it.
LinuxWorx
Spelling errors are intentional as are gramatical error
The reason I don't have broadband? The cable company won't run cable down a dirt road. It's too far away for DSL. Starband just filed for reorganization and alt.dss will scare anyone away from the directv inet system. (Love my directv receiver w/ tivo though).
The US built a high quality, universal (meaning everyone got it if they wanted it, period) nationwide phone service while the better part of Asia was still worshipping emperors. We did this by creating and heavily subsidizing a monopoly. The momentum of this monopoly (the AT&T breakup being meaningless in this regard,) is still very significant. Blaming the broadband mess in the States on our supposed "free market" approach is a laugh. There is nothing free about telecom in the US. Never has been. It's all about political influence and who is in power at the moment.
On the bright side, the pendulum is likely to swing the other way in the near future. It's an inevitability we are just taking a bit longer to get to for legacy reasons.
Phone service was wisely perceived as essential early on. The necessary force to achieve a solid phone network was applied. Broadband is not an essential. Some people might even claim measure of pride that our nation feels no particular urgency suddenly gubament the thing, and instead remain patient while the whole deal works it's own way out.
When we do get there, I have every faith we'll stomp the rest of the world. We always do. Try to remember, the USSR got to space first. They still lost.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
did i say army NO i sait country there's a world of difference.
Isn't Canada still part of the common wealth?
I know I'm a little late and others probably say the same thing, but it is not available where I live. We'll T1 is and satellite is. I can't afford T1 and satellite has some latency problems for such things a VPN. This is also becoming a real problem for the small office where I work too.
Funny that Japan was mentioned as being more sophisticated as far as market saturation and technology was concerned. No doubt these scenarios were true, but the biggest problem that I found was broadband was only available to a select few that could both afford the service and also get the lines installed. A few of my friends who were living in various apartments around the city asked to have either cable, dsl or otherwise installed, Jcom handling the only cable in the area, found that it was difficult just to get the bloddy wiring fitted to their buildings. Jcom made it severely difficult just to provide the hardware, never mind the $50 a month service fee, which doesn't include the rental of the cable modem. However, the dsl providers in the area were more than happy to provide their services for a slightly more affordable fee and guarantee of hardware provision, thankfully. Unfortunately, I couldn't afford the service, so it made more sense for me to raid the cable lines at the internet cafes or at the local university. A T1 can solve anyone's problems. I was actually looking forward to my Cox Liquor's connection at home after that. It could have been the area I was living in, but it was a fairly large city, and too large to have a mediocre telecommunication system. The biggest problem was that the competition was strong between the companies but noone was making headway as to provide hardware, i.e. adequate fibre lines and decent service at a more reasonable fee. So, it's six in one hand and half a dozen in the other. Several companies battling and no progress or a few companies doing their thing and providing decent service. Prices should come way down, no question, but at least we're getting the service. Now if our cell phones were up to the same coolness factor as the ones the Japanese and other Asian markets have available, I'd be happier. Something about a phone that has an mp3 player, GPS and a camera built-in for around $150 is pretty damn clever. Seeyas.
-Yim
Far better than using taxpayers money on things like the DCMA (usa), RIP (uk) or bombing the shit out of [insert favourite rebel country].
Universal broadband is something i'd be more than happy to see government money spent on.
I prefer the Old Republic with all them Jedi Knights and shit. Oh, and Natalie Portman.
graspee
All this discussion reeks of very short memories.
It was only a decade ago, or less, that you were
just as likely for your phone company to imply that you were some kind of deviant for having a
modem, especially if you wanted to use that modem
for *inbound* service. The smallest BBS ran the
risk of being pegged for "commercial" phone lines, on the whim of the telco. You'd have to think of ways to describe your line noise without explaining that you had a modem. Which was widely considered a very weird thing to have.
It has NOT been a long time since then, until today, when every joe, jon, and jeremy has some kind of internet service (albeit mostly dialup), but the MIRACLE that there is high speed wire AT ALL to ANY residential areas is not something we should be taking for granted.
When I started my "internet experience", 9600 baud wire to the home would have been $300/year, the best I could get. Maybe a little better with my university connections, but not much.
Today I pay $100/mo to my ISP (for a routed block of IP's, so I can run my own DNS and services on a 1.5 megabit bidirectional DSL line), and I guess about $60/mo to my telco, for their extortionate price on the nothing that they actually do once the line was punched down. But you know what? I consider it a friggin MIRACLE that I can get that service AT ALL, for ANY price.
The message I get from the discussion is that people are upset that they can't get the service I get, and pay dearly for, at a price more like $30 bucks a month or something. To me the most significant thing about the situation is that I CAN'T MOVE, because I can't get a definite answer about whether I'll get this same DSL capability at a new address until AFTER I MOVE THERE.
To me, that's a bigger issue, and amounts to a far larger cost (opportunity cost) than the price of the service.
It's not that some people have and some people don't, but that you can't even find out in advance where you need to be if you want to be one of the people who have!
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
this will have no DSL, because they put glass fiber cables there some ten years ago. DSL relies on copper, and i can't afford the enormous costs of using the glass fiber cable.
it must have seemed like a good idea back then.
oh well, hope we will get that WLAN going soon...
--
making up good sigs is a hard thing to do.
One of the reasons is, most people just don't need broadband. Unless you play games, it isnt really necessary. Yeah, downloading movies and mp3's is fun for a while, but it just gets to be a hassle sorting through all the stuff after a while.. If I didn't play online games, or ran a web server, I would probably be happy with dialup.
I thought height was the biggie...
Buckets,
pompomtom
"There's an exception to every rule. Except for some rules"
Building out a high speed network "beefs up" the economy by providing high-tech jobs, encouraging spending on high-tech networking gear, built by high-tech employees....etc.
When the telephone was invented, the immediate application was for voice traffic only...that "voice only" network evolved into a massive data network that connects millions of computers (T1, T3, OC192, and others are really telephone circuits). Broadband to every household has an immediate application...the internet, but it will eventually evolve into a medium capable of carrying other services...video on demand (no more blockbuster trips), and other things not yet imagined.
Like the pharmaceutical industry, many new technological ideas evolve from unintended applications of existing technology. The military has advanced research projects that may, or may not, turn into useful defense technology, yet the research proceeds(the ARPANET turned into the present day internet). Unfortunately, many people in washington and wall street think like you, and are too focused on the short term. America needs to invest in its technology infrastructure to secure a better future.
The US markets are way to monolithic, and cannot really expand anymore. There is a variety of reasons for this.
As I have said many times before, this is OK when there is little outside competition.
But, the world grows smaller by the hour. Countries such as the far eastern block, will have massive production and technological break throughs that will crush our markets like a grape.
New innovations introduced by foreign countries, will create market upheaval on a scale that will make the market cap of Linux companies in the 90's seem like small potatoes...
This will result in the following:
1) No big tax revenues for the US.
2) No big armies or navies, or space programs, can't afford them.
3) No big investment in research infrastructure. Can't afford that either.
4) Have to send people to the far east to learn about new business methods and new technologies.
Sound familair? Thats what the up N comming nations of China and many far east countries do now.
All countries have a time and a place when they walk on the world stage and command attention.
The USA's era of dominance will come to a close in the 21st century. You WILL see it in your life time if you live in the US.
Primary reasons why this is:
1) Economic illness of the US economy due to the collusion between government and business is resulting in unhealthy markets for competition, slowing innovation to a crawl.
(i.e. examples include Microsoft, Cable Companies, Power and Energy, oil companies, etc.)
2) The corruption of our markets has just begun, and will continue as no real progress is made or planned by politicians who were bascially bought by the same people investors are screaming to be brought to justice.
A few executives will be sacrificed for scape goats to appease, but the vast majority of fraud, illicit and illegal business activities by major companies in this country will continue.
Just in a MUCH more secretive manner so that any bankruptcies are declared "bad business, bad economy, 9/11" and never a reason for corruption mentioned, with new and IMPROVED accounting measures congress is promising will "fix the situation".
3) "Bad business" will cause increasingly large flows of investor moneies in the US to foriegn markets that have FAR MORE future growth and the US has anyway.
This has in some ways already begun. It will simply speed up as people who invested in "blue chip" companies now, at 50, find thier entire retirement plans invested in some executives house, and is building his 4th one with thier retirement money.
4)As the US loses power and influence, do to the same strategies we imparted on our enemies in the USSR, economic warfare, we will be defeated by the very same people who were once our enemies. Not militarily, but by the sheer power of 3 Billion people unleashed in a much healthier free market system.
This will take about 50 years to come about, but it is plain too see, some of the largest projects in the world, are being built and attempted in the far east using construction and advanced computer technology never before applied ANYWHERE.
The future eyes of world look to the far east to lead us into the 22nd century, and our current politicians and CEO's and other business leaders, due to thier selfish interests, will hand that future to our Far East "friends" without batting a an eye lash.
At least I HOPE TO GOD they are our friends, because there will be very little we can do about if if they really DON'T want to be at that point.
Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
If you don't have broadband, or can't get it from a provider here's an idea you may consider.
Check to see if you can get T1 or fractional T1 line connected to your house. If you live in a suburb, check out your neighbors and see if they have or want it as well. If you can gather up 20 to 25 people to share a connection, then it would cost you about as much ($20 to $25) depending on how much bandwidth you get. Then you need a Wireless Access Point (actually several of them to spread out the signal. If there are other ways to spread the signal further, then use those as well. With enough people and enough coverage you could provide a good connection with wireless. Don't forget to VPN or secure the connection so only those who paid get to use the connection. Just make sure you secure the connection and setup payment schedules and have one person responsible for it.
It may beat paying $48 a month to the stinking corporate fatcats.
Ever wonder what the situation in Australia?
The ISP charge you based on the download, meaning every single bit of incoming traffic is gonna cost you money.
Say, you signed up for adsl 512/128. You would think you pay for a pipe with 512kbps down and 128kbps up, period. Wrong.
here's the pricelist
Better put a 'comma', the ISP only allowed you to 'download' certain mega/gigabits per month, afterward... you must pay extra for the usage.
In a sense, they charge you for the content you downloaded on the internet. I'm paying for viewing this page... how about that?
You can MOOOve to the Midwest. $200k gets you around 2500 sq ft here in the KC area.
:O
Oh, and it's not that baaaaaad.
And if you want to live really cheap, you can buy a double-wide for about $20k new (lot INcluded). And it lasts until the next tornado hits. Guaranteed!
I'm wondering if the author has taken a look at the balance sheets of the "remaining Baby Bells". I think at this point, we are down to two: SBC and Verizon. Yes, PacBell, Ameritech, SNET, BellSouth, GTE still might exist as names (or "brands" in market-speak), but if memory serves, they are subsidiaries of these two major telecoms. The rest have been absorbed, outright. The shakeout that he says is improbable has already happened. Barring another populist-driven breakup (and how likely is that, with the present "administration"?) we are back to the two spoilt, ugly daughters of AT&T. Where oh, where is my fair telecom Cinderella?
You think China has less restrictions on its markets than the US? They are certainly lessening government involvement and opening up to competition (both foreign and domestic) but they have quite a ways to go yet. Industries there are still much more restricted than in the US, Europe, or Japan.
Current restrictions on development of alternatives or enhancements to current DSL technologies are preventing many telcos (who otherwise couldn't care less, since they wouldn't want to lose precious business to middleman ISPs) from extending the range of their connectivity beyond 15,000 (or 2.8 miles) of their offices...
This leaves MASSIVE gaps in available service, and additionally, gives AT&T near broadband monopoly powers, because frankly, not everyone can afford to get alternative services (T3, ISDN, et al)... And of course, simply moving house to make sure you live a little closer to the phone company is ridiculously expensive (in most cases, installing the T3 may be cheaper)...
The fact that AT&T has the FCC in their pocket doesn't help anything either... I'd LOVE to have more choices, but currently am forced to subscribe to the evil empire, just to have decent bandwidth...
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Most of the World: Improve the quality and value for money of your product/service so more people want it.
US: Buy laws protecting your interests and stopping your competitors, so people have to have your product/service.
"But the growth of broadband is lagging. " i wonder if John B. Judis even realised the pun here ;)
"One seeks a midwife for his thoughts, another someone to whom he can be a midwife: thus originates a good conversation.
The only way the typical /.er can pick up a chick is with a forklift. -- AC
Yes, I understand there are other restrictions to industry in China for example.
But, the kinds and degree of restrictions I do not believe are the same as in Europe or USA. They don't have copyrights, DMCA laws, and patents to slow them down. They don't have a corporate legal system bent on destroying competition, or startups. They also don't have as many crooked politicians as we do.
Furthermore, I am will to bet, that the far east continues it progress that it has made, to even more open markets over the next 50 years.
Leaving the USA and Europe, in the dust.
Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
If there is a cheaper one you can gladly inform me, but I have been with VO for over 5 years and their service is just excellent, that's why I didn't even research other options.
Compared to Belgium, France, and Germany paying 80Euro for a 256kbps/64kbps is *very* expensive because they have faster connection for the same price.
Why the hell did you go through all the trouble discovering where I live, anyway? It's not hard to find, but I was just wondering... You could at least have posted non-anonymously.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
It's true that Verizon and other American telephone companies have successfully gotten themselves classified as "information services", as a way of avoiding laws that require them to offer their lines to all customers. However, they argue on the other side of their mouths,too. In the recent interview about the Verizon VP about the DMCA, we see the argument:
...
The content community would like to expand the scope of the DMCA to have the service provider block infringing sites that are not located on our network and to use digital rights management tools to stop peer-to-peer transmissions. But these infringements occur on the users' hard drives, not (on) our networks. We're just a conduit.
So they don't need to provide lines to competitors, on the grounds that they are an information service, not a telecommunications service. But they shouldn't be held responsible for the data going across their lines, because they are a conduit, not an information supplier.
With government "regulation" like this, there's no surprise that the customers and competitors are all losing.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Now, in the good ol' US of A, all our power companies, cable companies, and telecommunications companies, acting for all intents and purposes as monopolies in their respective spheres, are too busy trying to cut each other's throats to do anything like develop cheap, reliable broadband service. "It's my fiber, and only I'm going to make money off of it. You can lease it, but I'll screw you if you try and compete with me." Anytime anyone comes up with something that's ahead of the others (Sprint's ION for instance), the other companies lobby and cheat to make sure that it fails, since it's easier to protect a monopoly by preventing new markets from emerging than compete in the new market. Ain't capitalism grand?
These people can goto hell. I'm shutting off my AT&T cable modem and digital TV. "We're sorry you have a degraded signal on you tv. If it was out completely we would send someone out today but you'll have to wait for AT&T earliest convienience since you have 2 channels." "We'er sorry you can't connect to the internet, oh our system doesn't see your modem. Get you TV fixed and you'll be back up." F**k AT&T's it's not our problem crap. I'm going satelite and DSL. Probably not much better.
parent +1 he he, well done mods I like to see a good bit of mod trolling ...........
Hope the metamoderators think the same way it's way coool
BellSouth did this to me. I moved less than mile and lost DSL over it, without even changing phone numbers! I was first told that DSL was unavailable. This state lasted for two months. I killed my Telocity account. Next thing you know, a friendly BellSouth rep calls me to sell me DSL service! Great, I called Telocity and asked for them to reactivate my account - I still had my old modem and everything ready. Nope, BellSouth had still not closed my old account so I could not open up a new one AND I had to send back the old modem. By the time all that happened, DSL was no longer available again and has not been available for more than a year. I suspect that it never will be available until all DSL competitors are out of business and DSL is viewed as hoplessly slow and obsolete. Silly Bells. They will sit on their network and prevent people from using it until it is worthless. This is a blatant violation of federal law.
I now have a cable modem with blocked incoming http and mail ports. Federal law, however, does not require the cable folks to do much more than broadcast local TV stations. Suck. When will US lawmakers get a clue about what they are holding back?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.