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FCC: Broadband Usage Has Tripled Since 2001
Brainsur writes "According to Newsfactor more and more Americans are migrating to high-speed Internet service, with the number of broadband subscribers tripling in recent years, according to a comprehensive report from the Federal Communications Commission. The U.S. is making progress in delivering broadband access underserved areas, the report states. The report also says that the number of users of broadband services (speeds exceeding 200 kbps in both directions) soared to 28 million in December 2003 from 9.6 million in 2001."
I'm surprised too, that it's been that fast, but I really shouldn't be. Everyone and thier mothers now have Cox Cable for internet in my area..
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Porn has increased three-fold...
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
i can't even think of a witty comment as to how baffled i am
In a few weeks, I'll be one of 'em. I'm really not surprised, the increase in gaming has made computing much "cooler".
"The U.S. is making progress in delivering broadband access underserved areas, the report states."
I thought we already HAD broadband access underserved areas?
Perhaps you meant, "The U.S. is making progress in delivering broadband access TO underserved areas, the report states."
A lot of people have 200+ kbps uplinks that are artificially capped in the realm of modem speeds by their ISPs. I wonder how many of these have been counted in this survey?
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
In other news... virus activity has tripled since 2001.
Hm, I get 1.5Mbps down, 128kbps up from Verizon DSL. Does this mean I don't have broadband?
It sure would be nice to have a fatter uplink, even if it wasn't a symmetric connection. Of course even though this is slow compared to connections in some countries I'm not complaining too loudly. A few years ago a dual-bonded ISDN 128kbps connection seemed would have been a dream come true.
...the RIAA and MPAA announced the number of people probably stealing their precious intellectual property has probably tripled since 2001, and that they'll be suing everyone just to make sure they don't miss any infringers.
I have become with complacent with this paltry 170kbps down and 15kbps. I need more! I want 125mbps and I want it to be symetrical!
Computer people can eat up excess capacity faster than it can be created. How many people here said when they got their first 20Meg HD "I'll NEVER fill up THAT much space!" I know I did.
All this really means is that in the near future web designers and multimedia providers will start to upgrade the amount of bandwidth needed, and the average person will still be screwed. We all saw it with the 2400 baud modem, the 14.4, the 28.8, and the 56K. We'll see it again with DSL and Cable. Until the day comes when web designers realize that too many geegaws ruin the experience, we'll continue to have this problem.
- No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades really cramps his style.
It doesn't surprise me. Broadband really does change the way you use the Internet, and indeed the computer. No-longer do you have to dial up (or dialing up is automatic and takes seconds), the Internet is just "there" whenever you want to access information.
I have always used the Internet too much, but I definitely notice it has changed the way several of my friends and relations have used their computers.
Just being able to search for something on Google whenever you want, without worrying about people potentially trying to phone you or your minutes running out or your phone line getting hung up is a major boon to trying to write a document or even just read the news.
I wasn't even able to get cable internet untill early 2001, no wonder it's trippled.
It doesn't suprise me, cause i was one of the first people i knew to get Cable internet in my area, now everyone has it.
I remember wanting broadband since 1995. I think it just took the cable industry forever to get the stuff rolled out. www.geocities.com/James_Sager_PA
God spoke to me.
I may sound naive, but for the benefit of all naive people like me, why are upload rates typically so much lower than download rates?
I wonder how many cable/DSL services that eliminates. I have cable from a pretty big provider and their TOS states you can't host servers and blah blah... but the upstream is capped at a disappointing 128k, so I couldn't really run a server if I wanted to.
it is getting increasingly inexpensive, faster, and more reliable than dial up...
... the down side, more people means more traffic, the pipes can only get so big, before there is no room left for all, and then there is the IP address problems that will come of it, there is hardly enough to go around now...
IPV6 that will help, but the costs of such a large protocol change will be daunting, to say the least... and what to do about those users that are still on win95/98...
42 69 6C 6C 20 47 61 74 65 73 20 69 73 20 61 20 77 68 6F 72 65 21
t's an interesting thing. There's a huge difference between broadband and POTS (or even ISDN). It just changes the whole connected experience. More and more internet content is predicated on users having broadband access and is not accessible to us 56K'ers. Giant apps., huge patches, streaming video and all the rest of it are just not a possibility for a vast number of internet users in much of the world (probably the majority). In my country broadband is available in some places but is prohibitively expensive for private individuals. Two days (and considerable expense) to download a new kernel versus 20 minutes or so. It is really creating a two tier system with a 56K underclass - sort of a Two Nations scenario.
in other words SPAM has tripled...
and is there a problem with the comment count on the main page ??
fifteen jugglers, five believers
..........availability. What is the amount of households that actually have access to broadband, that previously didn't in 2001? I know availability has been a real kink in most people's plans to get high speed internet access.
-Randy
As people become more accustomed to using computers, they become less patient.
As people become less patient, they become less likely to want to wait for the loading of such bandwidth intensive sites as, oh, say, Slashdot.
As people become less patient, they become more willing to pay for broadband, and be able to browse at speeds that will amaze them.
Also, file sizes have increased, and so gamers are increasing their pipes to compensate. For those of us, myself included, who have not seen the World of Warcraft beta...that's two gigabytes, downloaded over your internet connection.
Finally, I must point out...BitTorrent really became popular in 2003, as is evidenced by WoW using it as a distribution method.
Small wonder, then, that broadband is increasingly becoming a necessity.
It's only an insult if it's not true.
Doing my own math here:
So is it:
who | grep -i blond | date cd ~; unzip; touch; strip; finger; mount; gasp; yes; uptime; umount; sleep
Listen, you smashed body of a wretched animal. I suspect it wasn't meant as a compliment.
Furthermore, your grandstanding assertion that this is "one of the best [you]'ve ever had the honor of receiving" indicates to anyone with the barest grasp of Collaborative Discussion Theory that you've never uttered a word of substance. To anyone. I submit to you that any well-worded assertion predicated upon original and rational thought will raise howls of protest from the Mothers Against Drunk Driving (rehash of the failed and immoral "temperance movement" (i.e., the recurring meme that encourages the insulting and unbiblical (cf. Genesis 1:29: "God said, 'Behold, I have given you every herb yielding seed, which is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree, which bears fruit yielding seed. It will be your food. To every animal of the earth, and to every bird of the sky, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food;' and it was so.") suppression of the consumption of plants given to us by God for our sustenance and pleasure)), Million Mom March (attempt to subvert the respect for motherhood by associating the delusional wailings of those who cannot mentally separate a tool from its wielder with an unconstitutional effort to destroy our inalienable, individual ("A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves ... and include all men capable of bearing arms." --Richard Henry Lee, Senator, First Congress, Additional Letters from the Federal Farmer (1788)) right to defend ourselves against both foreign invaders and corrupt tyrants and usurpers (note that Diane Feinstein has a concealed carry permit but she doesn't want the hoi polloi, the proles, WE THE PEOPLE OF THESE UNITED STATES to be on an equal footing with her; why's she afraid of the well-regulated militia if she truly preserves and protects the Constitution?)), military-industrial-pharmaceutical-complex worshipping toadies.
Note the blatant censorship by Skull & Bones, Bush & Kerry, Kang & Kodos, yin & yang, there is no hope, your vote is a joke, the republic is dead, of "Chapter 5: The Right to Bear Arms" (compare Chapter 4 and Chapter 6)!
I weep for the future if you think a random blast of vulgarity is a "raving troll". Patriots question the "Patriot" act and Ashcroft says they aid terrorists, Maddox opens his mouth and censorship is attempted. We live in the age of feelies and soma and a lack of Quality (Pirsig) and you are amused by self-referential parody of the hopelessness of the age? You appendage of Cthulhu. Go back to your lair; we are not ready for you yet!
Your inner thoughts as you posted your ill-advised diatribe:
While I do agree that the United States has been too slow in adopting broadband, this report would seem to contradict what I heard John Kerry say on the issue. To summarize what he said, he basically puts the blame for lack of bandwidth on President Bush, rather than the individual companies.
Disclaimer: I am a firm Kerry supporter.
AC to avoid a karma hit.
Is this another stupid "war" like the old GSM vs. CDMA?
Or it's only a simple matter of who owns the connections - cable & media companies in US and Telcos elsewhere?
"There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I'd mod you up myself if I could, but I spent my last mod-point modding down a person dissing Buffy in the Firefly thread.
Bastard.
Recently my girlfriend started surfing big for the first time in her life when she got cable broadband. I asked her why she didn't use the internet back during dial-up days and she said "Well, it took so long to get to web pages; I always thought the Internet was broken! Its now like changing a channel on TV."
Open Source Sushi
just keeps on going, stretching into infinity.
sig not found
Hmm my out going is capped at 128k like everyone else on my system..
That is, if i dont use it, once i do, my downstream is pretty much cut off at the knees..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Helps in increasing this. We're sort of a meta-ISP. We do cable modem infrastructure rollouts and provide phone technical support for small MSOs (multiple service providers, i.e. cable companies). Check us out at ibbsonline.com. And, wouldn't you know it, it was founded at the end of 2001.
/.ing.
P.S. I hope our servers can handle a
Verizon is launching a DSL service that is twice as fast as its current DSL offering, with downloads of up to 3 Mbps. story here
Especially because of this, the broadband wars should become interesting.
I think you can attribute this to more and more "package" deals that weren't available previously. For instance, here in the NY/NJ area, Optimum Online is offering a TV/Internet/telephone deal for $90 / month for a year (digital cable, internet, SIP phone) to users of any one or two of their services. That is a stellar deal in my book, considering that with optimum I am used to averaging 8.5 megabits down. I'm sure there are deals like this all over the place.
Coupled with that, take a look at the number of modem-friendly web pages out there - I would think that this number declines proportionately with the increase in broadband use.
I don't know if I can trust this report. Netcraft has yet to confirm it.
...mostly due to one the major drawbacks of the modern computing:
Bloating in all of the ways possible, so the increase of the data size creates a need in increase of the amount of storage required for it, as well as the bandwidth for its transfer
I have often dreamed of a cable router that is capable of using two phone lines in with dsl service. Lets say 2 lines at 3.0 Mbps downstream doubled to 6.0 (!) and 312 upstream side. The cable modem would have to be smart enough to manage and combine the two lines as one line. But man, talk about nice and fast! I am sure its most likely not a complete solution, but its just a dream of mine. It would be cheaper than anything else i can think of for those of us who need bandwidth on a budget. And that most likely applies to all of us.
Will this suffice as 'proof of concept" D
Wow. So my 1500/192 kbps ADSL line is not broadband? Who would've guessed.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
How much has internet use increased in the last 3 years? I'm sure tripling the amount of broadband users is a big deal, and I'm part of those statistics, but how many are still without broadband (and still will be without in another 3 years)?
Most who don't either:
A) Can't (lack of availability) *** this is big
B) Don't know the benefits
C) Haven't used it before
D) All of the above?
I know a family that pays for multiple phone lines and TWO $20+/m ISPs...they could have DSL for both computers for $30-40/m from verizon.
3x increase in 3 years is nice and all, but we're still way behind some other countries due to all the rural areas. Rural areas not having broadband won't change because there's no profit in expanding there. I'm talking out in the sticks. I'm guessing in 3 years one of my friends still won't even have the OPTION of broadband if he still lived where he does now. Luckily for him he probably won't live there.
The Xincom TwinWAN, model number XC-DPG402.
I haven't used it, but Cringely uses one and seems to like it.
~Philly
The latest new DSL offering in Sweden was 26Mbps, and that came last summer.
The most common upgrade these days in Sweden is 10Mbit full duplex to 100Mbit full duplex.
When are you US guys going to realize you're being shafted? The phone companies have no interest in promoting broadband beyond the lowest rate the market will bearably tolerate; it threatens their existing cash cow.
Is 200kbps broadband nowdays? (Has 200kbps ever been broadband?)
It might be better than modem, but.. 4 times faster, I don't know. It's, halfband, ASDL, but it's not broadband!
I'd go as low as 512kbps!
Ivan makes us wet and blows hard
Tobacco products may or may not cause cancer
Slashdot readers have little use for obvious news
I wonder how many users signed up for broadband particularly for Xbox Live. I've got several customers at the store where I work (we sell games) that discuss Xbox Live and how they're considering signing up for broadband particularly for this purpose.
Speed & 200 kbps in the same sentence...
200 kbps is so 1999........
We're still paying $60 a month for cable acces for a measly 2Mbps down and 30kbps up - while Korean and Japanese are paying less than $15 a month for 8Mbps down
well they aren't doing a good job in ALL areas... i live in Cypress Texas and around the corner DSL and cable are both available but because I live on a rural road with "country people" they don't feel the need to extend the extra mile to allow for dsl internet or cable...
And then there was E
.... the rate is probably not what they claim, but less than that, especially since I recently saw a story on slashdot saying doubled....
Broadband was/is subsidized by dialup subscribers.
Dialup legal position is one of insuring better competition.... some FCC thing about telephone line equal opportunity..... anti-monopoly.
But cable is not that way legally and can be and is used in a monopolistic manner. If I want a cable modem here there is only no choice but comcast.
I'm sure the report is a marketing effort making things sound better than they are in order to attract the "jump on the (broad) band wagon"... keep up with the jones...
It works against your consumer freedom of choice.
I first got broadband, in the form of a cablemodem, in 2000. It cost $40/month for 3 Mbps down, 384 kbps up. Now it costs $50/month for the same speed.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Our American government colludes with business to rape the consumer. I see only one solution--make the politicians accountable to public opinion, and then start indicting, trying and hanging some politicians.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
...since so many web designers have forgotten the basics of optimization. You need broadband just to get around these days.
The number of sites that ONLY have a bloated intro page (and not just Flash, but huge jpeg/gif background images, useless little java applets, and so on) is ridiculous; dial-up is positively painful. I see this as an extension of the rule: "Crap expands to fill the available space". In my opinion, a site that is bogged down with all this extraneous rubbish is not a site that wants to be looked at, since they are usually also visually cluttered or poorly laid out and hard to navigate (I put this down to over-enthusiasm. "Look, I can do the intarweb!! I'm 1337!!!1")
"So what?" I hear you cry, "dial up is old tech!". But a lot of people don't need or want to pay for a permanent, high speed connection. Some still don't have access to broadband. And some like the idea of being able to plug a laptop into any phone line and work at a reasonable speed (say, answering emails before the battery packs up) without chancing the availability of wi-fi hotspots.
As a rule of thumb, I think that websites, especially corporate ones, should be beta-tested EXCLUSIVELY on 56k dial-up (since that's the speed capped broadband drops to); if your test audience gives up before the page loads: SIMPLIFY! Sure, a plain black-text-on-white page is boring, but not nearly as boring as waiting 5 minutes for a graphic to load, and less likely to put people off if it contains the information they want. An HTML file containing "The cat sat on the mat" is simple, easily readable and takes no time to download; the information is not enhanced by animated gifs of cats* and a 500k hi-res jpeg of a rug, because if we've taken time to search for the relationship between cats and soft furnishings, we probably already know what both look like.
The internet is about communication; assuming that everyone has the latest, bleeding-edge technology is (a) rude and snobbish, and (b) alienating at worst or inconvenient at best for those who don't have it.
Here endeth the rant.
*Unless thats Cats of All Your Base fame. He enhances ANY website.
What is the exact definition of broadband? Here I have 10Mbit and I know that's broadband (ok, let's callit mediumband, 100Mbit+ we can call broadband), but where is de diff? I think here it's stated that a 2Mbit syncron/non-dialup line is broadband, less is just dialup.
As I'm a swede, I dont exactly know what T1, T3 is, can anyone define those?
------- In the end there are no begining
...there's no such thing as too much porn.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
If we go straight to hanging I'm willing to bet it would work wonders as an inducement for honesty and true public service for the survivors.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
I just recently ordered a high-speed cable internet connection, to go along with my existing DSL connection. 6 months ago, I would have said doing something like this was "complete overkill" and "bordering on crazy" - but with recent price-drops on routers and service itself, it's not a bad option!
I'm planning to use a load-balancing router that supports 2 simultaneous incoming connections. The "Hotbrick" unit I went with only costs $189 (with free shipping from a couple vendors such as Eagle Computer, if you look on pricewatch.com for it).
Right now, my local cable company is running a special where installation is only $9.95, and the first 3 months for the fastest package they offer is $29.95 per month. After that, it's about $39.95 per month. You get about 3mbit download and 256K up with this plan.
Meanwhile, I can get about the same rates for $38.95 per month for DSL. Combined, I'm paying about $80 per month (less for the first few months) for all of this bandwidth. Sure, it's not exactly "cheap" by some people's standards -- but I remember paying about $130/mo. for a lousy 128K ISDN circuit years ago, just to do a little better than dial-up modem connections. We've come a long way!
True. Everyone always brings out the "second phone line" argument. If someone really wants to get through, the operator can break the connection. Also V92 lessens the need for a second line.
Also here's something to think about. With the "hollowing out" of America's middle class (the primary customers of broadband). What will that mean for broadband's continued future?
"Because we are supposed to be consumers of content, not producers."
If that's insightful? Then I submit that dial-up holds to the same. Here's a clue regular internet browsing is asymmetrical. Has been that way since the early years. Even before "a server in every basement" was popular.
You want "server grade" lines for "server behaviour" then you'll pay "server prices".
It's interesting to note that every new domestic broadband connection has a maximum potential to deliver about 1 GB per day of pirated music, movies, and software via P2P.
Even if the average broadband subscriber only utilizes 0.5% of their maximum uploading potential, that still represents 5 MB per day of additional P2P bandwidth, contributed by each new broadband user.
5 MB can deliver approximately one average-quality MP3 track.
This means that each new broadband customer adds about 1 MP3 track per day to overall P2P capacity.
Over the course of a year, that customer will deliver about 360 tracks -- which is a few dozen CDs.
It's interesting to note that the average broadband customer will probably only buy 2 or 3 CDs during the year, but yet their P2P connection pumps out a few dozen CDs during that same period of time.
unfortunately, i'm still stuck on a lousy 56k modem AND aol. talk about frustrating. i live out in the sticks, so no one offers broadband to my house, but my (not-so-close) neighbors can get verizon dsl or charter cable
"As you say - certain behaviors minimize the HIV risk and writing Slashdot tripe on Friday night is by far the most secu
ADSL 6.5 Mb/s download, 680 Kb/s upload
+100 TV chains + free unlimited phone (national)
for 29.99 / month (around $35/mo.)
of the 28 million are windows botnet machines. :(
IPv6 we'rz you be.
"speeds exceeding 200 kbps in both directions"
That's the definition of broadband there. By that standard, most of us aussies don't even have broadband, except for those "business broadband" customers who pay a lot more.
All these thanks to our evil phone company telstra. Apparently they charge $70 to the ISP just to provide a "service" of catering a 1500kbps adsl connection. While charging a lower fee to 256k adsl lines.
Yet, the irony is.. there is no cost differential for them whatever port speed they provide.
This kind of thing can only happen in a monopoly!
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
I cruise upstream at a blazing 16Kbps. Thank you, Mediacom. :P