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Broadband Envy: Fixing American Broadband
Ant writes "Broadband Reports has a story on broadband services among countries including United States falling behind: 'Bombarded with tales of South Koreans and Swedes watching high-definition soap-operas via 100Mbps connections, the media has apparently developed a nasty case of broadband envy. This Reuters article suggests the US has "missed the high speed revolution", while last week Business Week dubbed America a "broadband backwater".'"
I have bredbandsbolaget as my ISP. Let me clear up some facts in your post:
His 10mbit cable modem is a little over 3x as fast as...
The article is a bit unclear here, so it's understandable that you think he has a cable modem. In fact bredbandsbolaget delivers 10mbit ethernet to apartment houses, connected to an optical fiber connection. This means that they deliver 10mbit in both directions, which is significantly different from what any high-speed DSL/cable modems are capable of delivering.
We are also comparing Sweeden to the United States... I don't need to rehash the fact that the US is quite a bit larger than Sweeden and the population dense areas are quite a distance apart.
Population density, Sweden: 20 citizens/square kilometer.
Population density, USA: 33 citizens/square kilometer. (CIA Factbook)
As for population dense areas in US being quite a distance apart, you are probably right.
The land mass per capita of Sweden is almost twice that of the US. Or, in other words, Sweden is almost half as densely populated as the US.
So the cost per person of cabling out Sweden is probably more than the same exercise in the US. Frankly, this blows your argument out of the water.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Canada: 3,855,102.64 square miles
Penetration: Similar to South Korea
Their solution: Public funding.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
I know some cities Internet connections are subsidised, but Bredbandsbolaget is one of the biggest (if not the biggest) ISP in sweden and are a privately-held company.
TFA says that Canada ranks with South Korea in broadband penetration, and it has similar geography to the US.
Yeah, but in Canada, 95% of the population is less than 5 degrees north of the 49th, and that population tend to clump near the cities. And given that there still are people who are on partyline phones (I think they've only recently got individual phones when a microwave link was established)...
In addition, Canada has a very high percentage of the population that subscribes to cable TV, so the infrastructure to actually do broadband is there. We may have similar geography to the US (larger country, actually), but when you have a population distribution as whacked as it is here (we love to hug the border), as well as infrastructure penetration, it makes broadband access easy. (In urban areas, there are only two types of TV - cable, and satellite. OTA is very rare. In the sticks, they tend to have satellite (C-Band or DSS), since pretty much the only OTA channels is CBC and a couple of others.
RTFA:
A more just comparison would likely be Canada; but wait: they're not only offering faster speeds than their southern neighbors, but consumers pay less, and Canada is close to South Korea when it comes to broadband penetration.
For those who may not remember, here's alink to a story on a community based fiber project in Palo Alto .
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
That's 5 degrees in one plane only. It's approximately 90 degrees in the other dimension. That is still a huge landmass to cover -- particularily when you consider there are major centres strung out through that area.
Canada is a big place. Quite a bit bigger than the US. The difference in population density may help wiring the major centres themselves, but makes it much more expensive to inter-connect those centres.
Canada has always been an innovator in the area of telecommunications. When you have a country that covers 90 degrees of the globe at the 49th parallel you have to be good at telecommunications.
Statements like this have always bugged me, because with only two exceptions, the reason why the highest population density is close to the border has nothing to do with the assumption most Americans make that Canada's population is this way because it wants to be close to the US.
We don't particularily "love to hug the border" -- it's more that the border is placed along areas where it makes sense for higher population density. If you were to look at a map of Canada showing population density, the highest density areas are along the corridor following the St. Lawrence Seaway/Great Lakes. This makes sense if you think of how the continent was originally colonized, and how important water was to travel and commerce. Historically large population centres grew in areas with maritime access.
It's also the area where the best land for growing crops is. You don't farm in the tundra, and the original settlers of Canada relied heavily upon farming (and fishing) for their food.
The two exceptions I mentioned above were:
As such, it's not so much that we love to hug the border because of the sake of the border. Indeed, these areas were heavily settled even before there was a border, and the border cuts through regions condusive to commerce and travel. If the border were 1000km further south, I'm willing to bet you'd see the same population density as already exists between our two countries.
Yaz.
here ya go
0 9- 1240069,00.html
china stockpiling
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,82
http://www.aseansec.org/16144.htm
peak oil
http://www.peakoil.net/
--I stay informed, thankew. Prices can be manipulated temporarily for business and political purposes, but there's nothing they can do about rapidly diminishing supply in conjunction with rapidly developing demand. They haven't even found a single mega field for a coupla years now (longer I think really), and several large oil concerns have had to re-assess severely downward what they previously claimed as recoverable reserves. Maybe you missed that little news fact, it's somewhat of what they call a "scandal" lately. It's in the news, not even hard to find. North sea-past peak. Mexico-past peak. Venezuela-past peak. Indonesia-past peak. Lower 48 USA-way past peak. North slope-past peak. Last good stash that is rapidly approaching peak is in the little area of iraq/iran/arabian peninsula. Some dribs and drabs here and there left to develop, west africa, some offshorte areas, etc, but that's it for the good and still easy to get at stuff. I was just reading last night some wells in sauid are pumping at 55% water now from the water they force in to extract it. They used to *gush* pure crude out of the ground, now they have to force it out.
Naw, maybe the dittoheads still believe that smoke and mirrors razzle dazzle that there's unlimited near free black gold energy, but pure geology proves it otherwise. People who actually do the research and don't fall for snakeoil salesmens spiels know what's up.