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Report: Broadband In US Homes Nearly 20 Percent
jangobongo writes "A Commerce Department report, prepared in September, shows that the number of Americans using fast internet connections doubled from 2001 to late 2003. Experts are disappointed though, because even though 12 million households switched to broadband, the total amounts to about 19.9 percent of all U.S. households, lagging far behind countries that include South Korea, Taiwan and Canada."
Of course it lags behind smaller countries, or in the case of Canada, one which is all bunched up along the US border for the most part. We've got a LOT of ground to cover.
Some experts said growth was disappointing, far behind countries that include South Korea, Taiwan and Canada. The report also identified troubling figures for use or availability of high-speed Internet services among blacks, Hispanics and people in rural areas.
"It shows we continue to have a significant divide between urban and rural America in the infrastructure for the economy of the 21st century," said Gregory L. Rohde, who was top telecommunications adviser under President Clinton.
What it shows is that competition rarely exists when it comes to broadband and when it does the price/speed ratio isn't even close to what we see in foreign countries.
Significant numbers of rural Americans said they couldn't subscribe to high-speed services because none was available. Most Americans who did not use fast connections said service was either too expensive or they did not need it.
3000/256 in a neighboring area for Comcast at 45.95 (with cable) or 63.95 (without).
3000/256 in my area for Charter (with all it's port blocking glory) at 39.95
2048/256 in my area for Frontier (line) at $51.95 (not including the required telephone service which is ~$30)
We hear these great stories of inexpensive HIGH SPEED service in the countries listed in the article all the time here on Slashdot yet here in the States we have all this "competition" yet we are stuck w/slow speeds, sometimes unreliable service, and high costs (comparatively).
Once the prices drop to a reasonable level a larger percentage of people will likely switch. Right now you usually have to pay the same for dialup service that other countries pay for high-speed (and you need to have a phone line to boot).
"This is lousy," said Harris Miller, head of the Information Technology Association of America, a leading industry trade group in Washington. "We're just not keeping up with our competitors. We're not even keeping up with countries we don't consider competitors. It's not acceptable."
Yet the government continues to allow monopolies like Comcast and the local phone companies to take over areas and hog the available broadband transmission mediums. How are we supposed to compete with other countries when individual businesses don't have to compete with themselves because of government sponsored monopolies?
Queue comments on relative population density of Canada and the U.S., and how Canadians actually tend to live in cities more than Americans, yadda, yadda, yadda... blah, blah, blah...
My Cablevision/OptimumOnline cable modem does about 8M/1M, whereas plenty of people have DSL that's 512k/96k.
It's a little sad to see it all get lumped together.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
Americans tend to be more fix cost centric vs. Total Cost or Value centric. They will look at dialup lines and see that they can have internet service for $10-$20 threw dialup vs. $30-$40 for Broadband. They are paying twice as much then dial up. So they will stay with it. It is the same reason why a lot of people buy crappy cheapo PCs that will break and improperly run software vs. spending the extra money and buy something that is more reliable. Because Americans have a hard time quantifying Value for a product vs. the Cost of the product. When people do put the money in buying a higher priced product is usually isn't for the fact that it was the best value but they feel the need to impress someone else. This is the reason why WalMart is a Huge retail store because it gives loads of stuff at a very cheap price, it may not be the best quality or even the best overall value but it is cheap and people can get it now.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Because in Spain is very far from that percentage... Maybe in 20 years more we'll be on a level with you...
So the report is ``disappointing'' or whatever. Ok. What are the actual numbers for the other countries - it's meaningless to just say "we did worse". By how much?
Wait 'till anything faster than 56k is banned. Those poor artists in their million dollar mansions are starving, you know.
Just upgraded to 5mb/768k because the Vonage box is coming next week :)
It really is amazing how quickly you can put that extra to work (even doing non-multimedia crap). i still design sites (unless otherwise specified) to work reasonably with 56k though - good netizen and all.
It is an evil regime controlling the population and their access to free information. Good broadband democratic principles will triumph over slow ass dial up access and allow the holding of proper elections in the US.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
For a basic "high speed" connection, you're pretty much looking at spending $50+ dollars a month in the US (In the northeast anyway, where I'm from). That's a lot of dough.
-Jesse
Nothing says "unprofessional job" like wrinkles in your duct tape.
[i]Some experts said growth was disappointing, far behind countries that include South Korea, Taiwan and Canada.[/i]
I, for one, am not disappointed. To me it means that many Americans have decided that they have priorities other than the Internet. Good for them!
Maybe someday I can have a life, too!
2001 * 2 = 4002
Pathetic humur I know, but it might make someone laugh
And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour Isaiah 3:5
...but another 20% are logging into open wireless access points.
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
Look at what other countries (like South Korea, as mentioned above) offer.
I remember reading a while back that once they hit speeds of about 20Mbps, they started focusing on services, as speed was no longer such a big issue. I hear many stories of video on demand for cheaper than it costs to rent a DVD in the US, online gaming flowing everywhere, and even basic education getting supplemented by this connnectivity.
Most importantly, its CHEAP.
Significant numbers of rural Americans said they couldn't subscribe to high-speed services because none was available. Most Americans who did not use fast connections said service was either too expensive or they did not need it.
1)Not Available
Many areas are not populated enough to get Cable or close enough to an exchange get DSL. Try getting either of these in Kansas, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, Alaska and many other states in the more rural areas. At least until the phone companies all go fibre like Verizon is.
2)Too Expensive
As soon as the phone companies start competing with the cable companis the prices will go down. Until you have both options available in your area you are stuck with high prices.
3)Not Needed
This is the most overlooked. Who needs broadband when all they do is ocationaly send and recieve email and do light web surfing for at most an hour a day? I'll agree that this isn't most slashdoters, but most of our parents are probably like this and probably our grandparents as well. Assuming that they even have internet much less a computer.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
i forgot: i had to upgrade as i telecommute, which is great, but requires the extra bandwidth for extra connections. The Vonage setup will have 2 lines and those will have 3way on each, so the outbound can climb pretty quick...and extra "headroom" is needed to still allow the remote connections to still work well. Also, the gf is a graphics/design student, so she has to have access all the time too ... and make calls.
So after spending all day yesterday watching Scott Mcnealy and Larry Ellison streaming video I upgraded to Road Runner Premium here in New York.
.iso images in half the time, giving me more time to experiment. I expect my service to reach 10mbps down soon enough.
It's double the speed of the traditional broadband service offered (6mbps down 512k up) vs (3mpbs down 384k up).
So now I get 6mbps down for $69 a month. Money well worth it. As said before I shouldn't be lumped together with the Low End DSL lines or even ISDN for that matter.
Now I can download all those shiny new Distro
I have ordered and prequalified for DSL from Verizon 7 times. Each time it gets canceled because they say the CO isn't DSL capable.
Go figure! It's only that the populations of South Korea, Taiwan, and Canada are concentrated in a relatively small geographic area, making it much easier to establish and maintain broadband infrastructure.
We've been over this many times before. It's not really news anymore.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
DSL and Cable are just overpriced in America if they really want to beat dialup the services will need to compete with the cost of Dialup. 1MBS Up and Down (W. Email address and basic ISP Stuff) should be $20 a month this would be a fare price Which would be the same price as AOL but without all the Bells and Whistles features of AOL. So you exchange Bells and Wistles with Speed. Slower Speeds like 512kbs should be around $10 a month. With prices like that then High Speed internet can really grow. But these companies want to package us all the bells and wistles so they can charge us more.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I currently have 6M/640k ADSL to home and I'm in Australia, which costs me an arm and a leg. However I normally get around 500kb/s to international sites and if I'm lucky 5Mb/s max to Australian sites. So I might as well have 512kb/s shdsl for 1/2 the price. As some other Australian ISP admin says "over 512kb/s is a pipe dream" but maybe just in Australia
meridian at tha.net
My first thought was that maybe the gubmint should do too broadband what they did with the home phone market. There are two issues with broadband to the home:
- it's still to expensive (my Comcast connection is still ~$45/mo, but my wife will only give that up over her dead body)
- some areas are still too remote (my in-laws can only get bidirectional satellite service)
Could the gubmint make providers charge business more to subsidize rollout and support of the full cost of service for residential users? Or are there other issues that don't apply to POTS?
That said, giving broadband to Joe Sixpack may not be all that great of an idea... Just imagine the field day phishers/worms/other nasties out there will have with unwary users with those big pipes. If casual home users (with no immediate relatives who know how to support PCs) want to get this service, they ought to be made to take a quick course and a test to make sure they know how to protect themselves.
Sanity.html - Error 404 not found
I am not sure I understand the "disappointing" aspect of this. The USA is a vast, sparsely populated territory and it's simply unreasonable to expect broadband penetration similar to that of small, densely-populated places like South Korea and Taiwan. And I bet that large metropolitan areas (NY, DC, etc.) are far more wired individually than all of the mentioned countries put together. It's probably also true that in those countries Internet access is heavily government subsidized, and the outcries of Mr. Harris Miller et al. are aimed at getting some good old taxpayer money to play with. IMHO the Internet is evolving in the US just fine with less and less help from the government, and that is as it should be.
I'd argue that the USA by far leads the world in the meaningful use of the Internet - the real e-commerce exists in the US and not in South Korea, and the reasons behind it have little to do with broadband, but with the banking and business practices. In the US people really bank, shop and do many other things on-line, whereas in most other countries they don't. How do I know? Well, we don't even accept payments from South Korea and Taiwan because it's been all fraud so far in our experience. (Canada's alright though :-) )
Some people don't want broadband, and just need something now and then to connect to their e-mail.
Or perhaps some people can't get broadband because they live out in the boonies, and don't wish to spend the 500$ for a satalite hookup, then another 80$ a month for access.
Or just maybe some people don't give a damn about getting online.
Just a thought.
Little of those "random taxes" are going to service upgrades, they are mostly going into the pockets of government regulators. Line upgrades are mostly paid out-of-pocket by the companies themselves, and there is little incentive to fund lots of upgrades for last mile issues for light suburban and rural areas.
Articles like this wondering why people in the US haven't switched to broadband really piss me off. I have a simple reason for not switching. There is nothing remotely close to broadband available where I live. My choices are dialup, and getting hosed by a satellite company. So I pay the cash to the satellite company, but its far from broadband.
I'd be curious what local usage rates are. We're kind of lucky in Cincinnati to have TimeWarner and Cincinnati Bell slugging it out. Both are around $40 for broadband. I forget what TW is offering at that price. CB is 3M/768k. And Cinergy, our power company, is thinking of getting in the business.
Add home phone and unlimited cell phone and you can get it all for $130 month here.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
I'm using one to write this, and it totally works gre
Connection timed out.
#
I moved into a new area where I couldn't get ANY high speed for a few years. Once I could get it, I only had the choice of cable or ultra-expensive IDSL. In the few years since more choices were made available I've seen growth of leaps and bounds in the speeds I can get. Currently I have 1.5 MB DSL, while people less than a mile away can't get anything because they are served by a different company who sees no potential ROI in upgrading their CO.
Canada, well, that's Canada. :)
In our country we are highly invested in an antiquated infrastructure that keeps providing profit to companies regardless of upgrades. They target areas for upgrading that will give them the best return on investment.
Until we are liberated from the clutches of those who control the last mile, and we have a true wireless solution, we're going to have more of the same. It will just be different companies providing the same services to the same neighborhoods via different pipes. And given the documented struggles of Verizon in Florida, I'm not sure how thrilled I am about the prospect of anything new in my yard!
[insert sig file here]
Experts are disappointed? Gee, that's too bad. I guess they aren't making as much money as they expected. I truly feel for you guys. Really.
"In urban areas, 40.4 percent of households used fast connections; only 24.7 percent of rural users did."
And urbanites voted for Kerry, while rural residents voted for Bush. Maybe the Red voters just didn't get the email?
--
make install -not war
Any /.'ers from canada or elsewhere, please post how much your broadband costs and what speeds you achieve.
Given the increased amount of shopping, advertising and paid downloading that can happen over broadband, it should be much more heavily subsidized than it is. I spend so much more now that I have broadband, and someone else should be footing that bill. The big guns need to see the forest for the leaves.
This same thing is happening all over the country. Verizon has no competitive worries any more, you can forget broadband in PA.
Wifi will be as fucked up as cell phones. Ever try to use your TMobile phone in a rural area with GSM? Doesn't work. Urban GSM is 1900MHz, rural GSM is 800MHz, and TMobile disables 800 in all their phones. Sucks to be their customer.
"Experts are disappointed though, because even though 12 million households switched to broadband, the total amounts to about 19.9 percent of all U.S. households, lagging far behind countries that include South Korea, Taiwan and Canada."
Not only that, but the quality of the broadband in the US lags way behind the rest of the world. Cable here is 3mb/256kb for $50, while in korea you can get 20mb down for about the same price.
And it has nothing to do with the population density either. Here in iowa it's apparently not worth while for comcast, qwest, et al., to provide service. So the people took matters into their own hands and started broadband co-ops. The result? Rural iowans are better connected than their urban counterparts.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
D__i__a__l__-__u__p ____ w__o__r__k__s ____ j__u__s__t ____ f__i__n__e ____ f__o__r ____ m__e__.
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
I'm currently looking to move in to a house in a more rural part of my state, but one of my must haves is high speed access. Unfortunatly, realtors are clueless to the fact that broadband is a major selling point, and its up to me to do all the research in determining if an address is broadband available. Most do list CableTV as a selling point, but it'd be great if they'd just go a step further.
For many a house without broadband is a worthless shack.
My parents live in northern Michigan and they don't even have access to dial-up without paying long distance charges!
The US is very large and its population is spread much more thin than in Asia.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Gee, I wonder why? Maybe because in my neighborhood (suburban Washington, DC - less than 10 miles from the capital building) the only broadband I can get is a $55/month cable modem through Cox cable.
I'd jump all over $ 29.95/month DSL but I can't get it because Verizon has not bothered to update the equipment that services my local loop (I'm about 2 line miles from the CO).
. there used to be a sig here.....
Dial-up service in the US is very cheap and the cost differential between dial-up and high-speed is rather large. If you pay less than $10 a month for dial-up, you may make do with it instead of moving to the $40 a month high speed service.
I would be interested in knowing how expensive dial-up service is in these "competitor" countries.
You really wanted the government to be your ISP? I think I rather have a competitor company come in and set up instead. I am surprised that a special law was required to prevent this.
This story is very familiar ... http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/12/174204 &tid=215&tid=103&tid=95&tid=1
I've repeatedly offered to help many family members get broadband set up... I break down the price of the modem, router/AP, service costs, all versus their current phone and internet bills, show them how much faster it is, offer to completely install everything for them, and tell them I'll fix their computers while they sleep via RDP... and what screws it all up? They want to keep their AOL e-mail address. And they can't afford to keep AOL with broadband thrown in. Sigh.
perl -e 'foreach(values %SIG){$_="IGNORE";}while(){}'
You want greater penetration? Unbundle internet from phone/cable/etc. Currently you can't get DSL without phone service. You can't get a cable modem without subscribing to Cable TV. This artificially inflates the price of data services and adds additional taxes most people don't want to pay.
... Trouble is, they won't build it. I, along with millions of others, would gladly jump on the broadband wagon, IF IT WERE OFFERED. A sizable percentage of people (along with myself) live in rural or semi-rural areas where broadband is just simply not available. And likely never will be, at least in my lifetime. And I don't want to hear the standard Slashdot reply of "Just move" because if I could "Just move" I'd "Just done it" a long time ago. Some of us are married. Some of us have kids in school. Some of us simply can't move for other reasons, at least not just for broadband. Until wireless broadband matures/becomes reasonably priced, satellite quits FAP'ping their overcharged users, or some other hithero undiscovered technology becomes available to bypass the "usual suspects" (Telecos, cable providers) the large rural segment of the United States will be left in the digital dark with just the flickering candle of 56k to go by.
I pay around $50 a month for 3000/384 cable internet access and its worth every penny.
This is a case of people wanting something for nothing (or super cheap). Its like the people who complain about gas prices incessantly.
Now I can see the issue that high speed access is not available everywhere. THAT should be remedied, and quickly. No excuses from the phone/cable companies.
Don't you see that Fast Eddie can't be bothered with broadband in Pennsylvania? He has to be out there discussing TO's newest end zone dance.
To quote a frequent troll here, "My God! Get some priorities!"
Some experts said growth was disappointing, far behind countries that include South Korea, Taiwan and Canada.
Which experts would that be? The "expert" consultants who negotiate sales of user access solutions for Time Warner, Comcast, and OptOnline?
Personally, I'm happy that the number only doubled instead of tripled or quadrupled and saturated the already oversold local lines.
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
Besides, what's so bad about dialup? Speed? Shouldn't that be up to the consumer to decide? Why are experts so "concerned" about it being only 20%? If they want high speed, what's stopping them?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
That's in Paris and most French cities, through Free. New subscribers as of this month get ADSL2 at 15Mbps/1Mbps.
Sadly, our being behind is fuelled by corporate interests who seem to like the status quo solely for profits.
I urge Americans to visit Sweden, Norway or Denmark in order to see how a "near perfect" system works.
No wonder, trends on technology are now being "dictated" on us by foreigners, who seem to be way ahead of us on a number of fronts including the all important Mathematics.
Cb..
Reading the comments in this thread so far, most Americans seem to be whining that "Broadband's too hard" in America, compared to urban S. Korea. Grasping for reasons why "we're not lame", though we're losing. It's not that hard - and even if it were, what happened to the famous "Can Do" American spirit? We raised skyscrapers, dammed thousands of rivers, put a man on the Moon... Oh, right, that was our *parents* and *grandparents*. They already did the hard stuff, made America #1 forever, right? Why should we work hard now, and ignore all the advantages to be lazy and cop out that our ancestors slaved for?
"Forces of evil on a bozo nightmare
Ban all the music with a phony gas chamber
'cuz one's got a weasel and the other's got a flag
One's on the pole, shove the other in a bag
With the rerun shows and the cocaine nose-job
The daytime crap of the folksinger slob
He hung himself with a guitar string
A slab of turkey-neck and it's hangin' from a pigeon wing
You can't write if you can't relate
Trade the cash for the beef for the body for the hate
And my time is a piece of wax fallin' on a termite
That's chokin' on the splinters"
- Beck, "Loser"
--
make install -not war
Every home that's used a dial-up modem has used broadband.
-b
myselfmusic
I used to live in Rapid City South Dakota and you were quite lucky if you could get 56K connection typically it was only 28.8K due to the archaic POTS equipment and patchwork of new digital equipment. The typical answer to when are we going to get broad band was "next year" (Never). Then the power company looking to expand it's business took advantage of the fact that they owned the right of way (the power poles) to eveyone's home in North Dakota, South Dakota, Eastern Montana, Nebraska, and Minasota. For $100 a month they offer VOIP based phone, all calls on the network were local (really pissed off the local bells and the state (no fees/taxes for local and regular long distance), cable, and broad band. When the phone company tried to cut them off by refusing to sell them any more bandwidth, they just simply expanded their network beyond the reach of the telco and found someone in a different region who would.
Well suddenly "next year" became "now" since the cable company, the phone company, and the local crappy ISP didn't want to get shut out of their respective markets. The cable company and phone company tried to sue to stop them, but got nowhere so they were forced to put up or get out. Now Rapidy City locals have quite the collection of choices for their cable, phone, and ISP service.
The same occurred in my current town of California City (why do I keep moving to shithole USA towns?) DSL came in and then proved to be less profitable then they liked so they began to pull service with plans to cancel it completely. That is up until a retired IT guy signed up for a few T1 lines and set up a wireless network here in town and quickly took over this town and two more nearby and began to add more bandwidth. Well the phone company did an about face and expanded DSL service. Too little too late the local guy offers twice the bandwidth for half the price, doesn't require a phone line, and if you have a problem you just drive to the office and talk to him.
Competition is a wonderful thing. They need to shake up things by deregulating the cell, cable, and phone services even more.
Its the interstate highway or rural electrification of the 21st century. Delivering 10Mbs or greater broadband to every residence or town no matter how poor or remote should be the governments primary domestic project.
Why outsource to India if you can outsource to Arkansas?
Seriously you can get cheap $$ per square foot space, lower cost of labor and a higher quality of life in rural or pre-industrial states. A $80K per year job lives like a King in Arkansas while it only gets by in LA, Atlanta or NY.
If they are counting 'subscribers' they are missing a large number of broadband users.
The house next door to me has 5 apartments in it and one 'subscription' that is shared by all 5. My house has an apartment and the tenant shares my BB conection.
I know one apartment management company that is serving 7000 units as an amenity. I doubt these people consider themselves 'subscribers'. The internet is there, just like the water.
I suspect that urban penetration, if the functionally illiterate are not counted, is closer to 70% if you include households using broadband as opposed to those who have service 'subscriptions'.
Now I'm the grandest Tiger in the Jungle!
Although one may be suprised to find out that in Canada (at least alberta) Broadband penetration seems alot higher then in the US. Every little craphole town seems to have DSL.
The town I currently live in has one viable broadband option: SBC DSL. While the service and price is pretty good IMO (I'm currently paying $36/month for 3mbps down/384kbps up) another choice would be good...
About a year ago the local cable company got bought out by Comcast. Comcast is now promising cable internet by the end of the year.
I'm hoping this will cause a little competition resulting in lower prices and/or improved service.
If you count the homes in which you can find a wifi hotspot, it's way over 20 percent.
most if not all DSL providers here in ontario offer either 3.0mbps or 4.0mbps down and 400-800kbps up. for a range of $35ish-$70ish canadian if you own a modem. rogers offers there HS and HS extreme 3000/384 and 5000/800 respectively, for $45 the later requires a one time $80 fee to buy a docsis 2.0 modem but i the case of my significant others area are really sucking at upgrading their equipment to support their new docsis 2.0 stuff and the speed is really bad. plus 10-20% packet loss. yes rogers sucks.
Why are "experts" disappointed? Since when are we in a race to get everyone on broadband? Even though this information is interesting, it's not like it's an economic indication.
It would be nice if the rest of America could enjoy the same FTTH 10M up/down I'm getting from Surewest, but I had to wait 5 years for cable modem service, so it'll happen... give it time.
We just recently saw a report that had broadband usage at 51 percent in the US. More on google.
76 percent of all statistics are made up on the spot.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
It's only natural that the United States have less of a percentage demand for broadband, because a large percentage of our population doesn't live in cities (or even suburbs, for that matter.) So, why should we be concerned about whether Jim-Bob out in the boondocks of rural Idaho has broadband, when he'd only use it to check the daily farm report anyway?
Many Bothans died to bring you this sig.
I have been on 10mbps residential LAN for the past 8 years here in Vancouver. How can anyone use the Internet on 56K dialup? I see those Netscape ads on TV for the dialup service they are pushing. Say what? Is it 1994? lol
I have a Comcast cable modem. But I would hardly consider it "high speed" with the uplink is capped at 256k (or worse at times!).
Until they figure out that consumers like to share stuff as much as they do download things, they'll have sluggish uptake.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I was in Chinhae(excuse the spelling), South Korea in April of 2001. During this time, the locals were running 8 MB DSL lines to every home in this "small town" of a few hundred thousand people, who have open sewer systems running through their streets. Now, this was a decision that was made by the government of South Korea not long before this time, to work towards making their country a technology powerhouse. If officials are disappointed that our country doesn't have as much broadband users, then they should work at pushing regulations that can help that, such as getting monopolies like Bell South here in Tennessee, to drop their rates, and allow other providers to use their lines. Just earlier this year, all the 3rd party offerers such as AT&T and MCI had to stop offering DSL because the government sided with Bell South in line use issues. Our DSL runs about $45/month for 1.5 Mb/s. Cable isn't much better, because there is no competition. For myself, the speed is worth the price, and I pay it. However, for the common user, that price isn't worth the bandwidth.
According to our ministry of comm. the penetration rate in Israel is 43%.
Clearly small countries have the advantage of smaller and simpler network infrastructure.
...some people DONT WANT IT. For instance... My grandfather, and two uncles. They don't have any interest in more than a 10-hour per month, dialup connection. That's all they need. There has to be a decent percentage of people who just are happy living life not being so damn connected. I know sometimes it bugs the hell outa me.
-- Liberalism is a mental disorder.
Here in the southcentral US (think wal-mart, tyson, jb-hunt, and a sax-playing, bj-gettin prez) it's $54 for 5mb/768k ... after your cable bill. I've not checked on dsl lately here though. i hear it's up around $40 for 3mb down (unsure of upload on that package though).
... ridiculous expensive though.
Business links are
Why are so many people seeing this as an attack on the States? It's just a bunch of facts and numbers, yet many comments are getting really defensive by trying to justify it or discredit it.
First off, it's NOT a distance thing. The US probably has an order of magnitude MORE fiber bandwidth potential than it can use right now. Since the 1980's carriers have been laying fiber to ensure that it's a once a century kind of investment. And fiber doesn't care about distance, not from any meaningful economic perspective.
One could easily send broadband to everyone in West Gopher-stan if one wanted to.
But carriers don't really want to do that because they can make too much money from crappy analog services. This is the same reason why WIRELESS 3G services are decades away from common use in the US. Carriers simply make too much money now with the crappy service they offer. This is why spectrun auctions were so expensive: carriers bought up all the available spectrum they could, not to use it, but to put it on a shelf so that no one could use it.
Next, it's a regulatory thing. At 20% the numbers don't easily add up for the government to bother regulating it. But when that number soon reaches whatever tipping point they have in mind not only will broadband be regulated it will be taxed. As soon as it becomes economically nonviable for customers to sqwap out is when utilities become taxed. The government expresses this in terms of a stable market which no longer needs to promote competition.
So in the long run service in the US will actually get worse not better. As more people use it, it will actually become more degraded and more expensive once you bundle in the end user taxation.
Sleep tight, Georpge Bush's America will make sure the invisible free hand of commerce will FIST you.
The only difference between government services/ products and privatized is that private employees make less money/benefits with less job security and some exec somewhere is raking in cash on the bogus notion that the exec took all the risk. Quality and cost to the consumer is about the same (except for natural gas!).
At least with public employees you can arrest the corrupt ones sooner. In the corporate world they get book deals, movies and jobs as lobbyists(sp?).
No incumbents, not no where, not no how.
Vote them out every term.
The argument that the US is so large may work for Korea, but Canada is twice the size of the US and has only a fraction of the population. Our entire country has only 30 million people.
Rather then take offense to this and think that it's an attack on the way the US does things, why not realize that the US did not do a poor job, however, Canada has done a good job. As we have some government owned phone companies, they did what was best for the area, not what was cheapest.
In Saskatchewan, Sasktel (the government owned phone company) installed phone lines that were much more poweful then necessary 30 years ago, so it was an easy switch when the internet came around. We don't have the costs of digging up old lines. We also try to improve the lives of everyone, rather then make a profit, so we have farms with high speed internet, and small towns of less then 1000 people with internet.
So, we did something right, and size has nothing to do with it. The province of Saskatchewan has less the 1 million people and is six times the size of California.
Your excuse of size is useless, just admit that someone else did something well.
Contractors broke a gas line this weekend laying cable in Tampa. At least it wasn't sewage this time.
Syntax of above headline Yoda 1000 percent.
If X is the new Y, and Y is "X is the new Y", solve for X.
Sometimes early technology adoption can stiffle a country's development. For example France promoted a custom national network (minitel) which fell behind the more open and dynamic general InterNet. On the other hand the expense of land lines in China forced it into cell phones earlier than the states.
Why not 2 way satellite?
http://hns.getdway.com/ for example.
Or do they not meet the fabled "clear view of the southern sky" requirement?
...unfortunately no one can be told what The Mat^H^H^HGoatse is...they must experience it for themselves...
Yes, I'd LIKE to have broadband. But, after work and family time are accounted for, I'm left with maybe one hour of 'free time' a day (if that). I stare at a computer all day -- the last thing I want to do is sit back down in front of a computer again.
When I do need to sit down and find something on the net from home, it'd be very nice to have the speed, but I can't justify $50 a month for a few moments of convienence.
Sweet informative mod.
Would not the demand be higher in rural communities since there is no provisioning for broadband than in a city that has broadband, so the demand is not as pronouced?
One would think that in rural communities that having internet connection would be more valued since anything requires travel time and/or extreme effort while in cities everything is more accessible and/or in walking distance. (Unless you live in Atlanta and LA then you drive *coughs*)
People out in the countryside and/or their kids usually enjoy online activities since they have more access to other people in the world since they don't have as much interaction as they do in a city. At least for the online gaming.
Dialup comes free with the US$9 per month telephone service. 3M/0.5M broadband comes at around US$15. 6M/1M comes at around US$25. Its much, much cheaper in Hong Kong. And everyone uses broadband. Like.. everyone. I don't have any numbers, but consider this: I live in a flat, in a building with 25 floors, 8 flats per floor. I get 20 b and 3 g wireless networks covering my bedroom at any time. Helps when wireless routers cost US$50...
It isn't yet a law, and it is probable that the governor will veto it.
3 05 34.htm
http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/local/102
Woe be on to them, all who rise against poor people, shall perish in a the end. Buju Banton
Yes Canada is larger, but look at the population distribution.
Most of our population is in a narrow band along the US border. The actual area to be wired to cover most of the population is small.
Look at the urban/rural ratio too, it is no surprise why the US is taking longer with this.
A second consideration is the level of technology acceptance, Canadians tend to be a bit more open to new technology, this is probaly pulling it along with it.
Why is it a couple months ago Slashdot had posted a news story about broadband now reaching abouit 45% of US internet users??? Now it's back down to 20%? Who's news reports can we trust for accurate figures????
And they raised the price from 25$CDN.
Speed? 700Kb/s most of time... OKb/s from time to time...
When I get out of here, i'll probably try http://www.istop.com/
I live in Soviet Canuckistan you insensitive clod!
Cable Modem services charging in excess of $50 a month and inconsistent in performance.
DSL availability is limited and also very expensive.
The US DSL high speed network costs are generally higher than most other nations.
It's expensive and oppressed with corporate rules and regulations of what you can and can't do with it, your selection of OS, the networks you can access, and the protocols you are allowed to use.
Government also has no competitive pressures to innovate or operate efficiently. The best solution (in my opinion) is for local government to own the access lines and have private industry provide the service. The last mile lines should terminate at a government building where space is leased out to the service providers for their equipment. Much like the city owns the roads and business uses the roads to get to your house. This is the only solution that provides a relatively level, competetive field for large and small service providers while minimizing the role of government.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
The problem isn't the vastness of the US or monopolies, or the lack of competition, its taxes. In a speach on CSPAN a few years ago the head of Comcast when asked why the cost of cable keeps going up, said "80% of your $42.00 basic cable cos have nothing to do with Comcast as a business, running a cable to your home, or providing content. It is city,county,state and federal taxes." In my area to get cable it would cost me $42.95 plus $3.00 a month for modem rental. Added to my basic cable costs, it would be $87.95 a month. Not only is it too expensive, 80% of this cost is taxes. How can they expect the poor to pay such outrageous taxes? And while some of these articles mention the cost, they never mention why the costs are so high. Now I belive that taxes must be paid to fund services, but when a service like internet access is taxed to the point where average wage earners can't afford it is foolish. Perhaps someone can write a truthful article about the true costs instead of strawman arguements.
Once people switch to broadband, they become capable of launching servers of their own which is in one way making more use of their bandwidth and in another way a step towards freeing their digital data like email accounts, photo albums and webpages from outside and gathering it all inside their own house and taking control of them. With the constantly dropping price of Personal Servers such as the Axentra Net-Box, way below the affordable price range for home appliances as well as the easy maintenance and the vast feature set offered by such products there will be a second wave following this migration and that is the wave of people considering a server to go with their high speed connection. It seems that Personal Servers are looking more and more like something that can fit into the basic set of home appliances just like how a high speed connection is becoming a need in parallel to one's electricity and phone line subscription and that means there is a HUGE potential market for these products.
Given that approximately half of voters voted for GWB, perhaps the GWB voters consider the Internet the "devil's work" with its vast pool of information about things like science and other religions. Never underestimate the stubborness of a racist ignorant uber-righteous zealot who self-selectively labels himself a "Christian".
-- "Makes Little Debbie look like a pile of puke!" - Moe Szyslak
I live out in the country about 60 miles from Fort Worth, Texas, USA. There is dial-up at about 24K bps. It is all very MS Windows oriented; period! Satellite will cost about $400-500 to set-up and another $60 a month. There are caps on speed and amount. I can pay about twice the monthly rate for some more speed and more flow per hour. There is some wi-fi in the area but I happen to be in an area not served. It is about the same price as satellite. Maybe we will get 802.16 out here in the wilderness. DSL, FTTP, or cable are so far out in the future as to be unimaginable. At about 50 years old, I may well be dead before these last services appear at my abode.
Is this counting all the people that are just sucking it off of their neighbors?
I'm a Korean, and I currently live in Seoul.
Why broadband could success greatly in Korea isn't just because there was competition, or because most of the Korean population lives in cities with high population density.
Another big reason is because unlike the broadband market, the phone network were monopolized by a single giant Korea Telecom. Since there was no competition in the phone market, dialup was horribly expensive (approx. 5 cents per 3 minuite translates to $1/hr).
It was completely nonsense to use dialup instead of broadband even though broadband costs more than $50 per month. (Now I pay $25/month for a 100meg Ethernet connection directly to my home) I used broadband as soon as it was available in my town, since the dialup costs were already somewhat around $100 per month. (that was something around 1998, I remember)
Though it looks wierd, broadband was the cheap alternative of dialup.
KT still makes a lot of profit from the phone business, but it's getting smaller every year, and dialup is still damn expensive. I didn't use a dialup connection for the last three years.
The World Trade Center towers took 7 years to finish. The Apollo Project took roughly 8 years (from 1961 to 1969) to get someone on the moon. The Hoover Dam took 6 years to finish construction. Each of these (for all their majesty) were either constrained to a relative small geographic space, and a small amount of material.
Broadband has been available to the public since about 1997, and to be complete, requires running cable to every household in the USA. The only hard number I could find comparable for that was Miles of High Voltage Transmission Wire in USA, approx 160,000 miles for bulk transmission. On google, some renewable energy sites indicate that the US has over a million miles of wire for distribution networks (last mile connects). That's a lot of material to run.
The US Interstate system, designed in 1956, will be complete to the original spec in 2006, and that's only 46,000 miles.
I agree with your argument that we should never rest on our laurels, and strive to be the world leader, but let me just throw in that we can be the world leader in this field too, just give the industry a little time to get us there...
As it is, the cheap local calls serve as a disincentive for US households to switch whereas the expensive local calls elsewhere make broadband an economic solution for more than sporadic use.
Canada is only a bit bigger than the US. The land plus freshwater area of Canada is 9 984 670 square kilometres (or 3 855 174 square miles). Area of the US is 9,372,608 Sq Km (3,618,784 Sq Mi)
Capitalism's report card
========================
Capitalism is great at producing oceans of sugar water, mountains of bars of soap, and all the latest consumer techno gadgets you can imagine, A+
Providing vital infrastructures like roads, highways and utilities, well, not so good. D+
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
That number climbs steadily by about 12% per year. 40% back in late 2003, 53% this month, 80% around summer 2006. It's happening, and fast.
About 60% of US TV viewers have cable TV. It took the cable TV industry decades to reach that number, and they've been stuck there since the '80s. Broadband penetration will pass cable TV penetration next year. More people in the US have Internet connections (75%) than read newspapers (41%).
There's no need for a public policy change to "encourage broadband". It's happening faster than any Government intervention could make it happen.
Americans tend to be more fix cost centric vs. Total Cost or Value centric. They will look at dialup lines and see that they can have internet service for $10-$20 threw dialup vs. $30-$40 for Broadband
You're right. But Americans are no different from others.
In France, for instance, people are massively switching to DSL services not because they value Broadband more than their american counterparts, but because for several reasons the DSL market is terribly competitive : legacy operator France Telecom is forced by law to open its network to every broadband operators (and there are now more than a dozen of them, at least).
The competition is fierce and you can have 8 Mbps ADSL service for as low as 15 euros per month (http://www.neuftelecom.fr/). An other company (http://adsl.free.fr/) offers ADSL 2+ service (up to 15 Mbps download / 1 Mbps upload) for 30 Euros per month and that includes TV via DSL and Phone via DSL (unlimited local abd national calls). And you can even opt out from the legacy operator and you won't have to pay a fee to France Telecom to use their line (they own the last mile of copper) : the DSL company will have to pay a small fee to France Telecom to use the line, and most of the time they won't charge it back to you. So you have unlimited phone, high speed internet and Television via DSL, all for 30 euros per month, which is dirt cheap.
This have nothing to do with french infrastructure being more modern or anything : It's just the direct effect of fierce competition. I mean : even AOL offers 1 Mbps DSL service for 17 Euros per month (5 Mbps for 23 euros) !!!
It was the same a few years ago when 3 mobile companies battled over the emerging mobile market : prices went down and equipment rate sky rocketed.
The FCC, in wanting to promote privatization, allowed for corporations like Verizon to run fiber to homes and then not allow other service providers to access these lines. Instead, the FCC should have contracted smaller companies to run the fiber and then open the lines up to competition.
But hey, 54% of voters apparently support big-business.
A couple of comments:
The population density arguement is spurious. From an infrastructure cost perspective, urban density is directly related to reduced communications infrastructure costs but the fact that Canadian urban centers are mostly located in the southern part of the country is not really relevant. In terms of urban density, Canada and the US are comparable. Canada has better penetration and lower service costs because the cable companies have had better financials over the last 10 years and have been able to mount an aggressive challenge for high speed customers. In the US, most of the cable companies have just finished cleaning up their plant over the last 2-4 years and thus their high speed push has started later.
Second, note the different definitions of broadband. Last time I checked, the US broadband penetration figures included almost everything faster than dial up. In Canada, other than a cable service that competes with dial up, all other DSL and cable modem broadband services start at a minimum 1.5Mbps (downstream). Considering 256kbps broadband is stretching...
The US offerings will improved significantly over the next couple of years as triple play competition ramps between the telco's and cableco's.
Oh ya you got Megabit download speeds, just be prepared to share that with 100 other subscribers oh and forget running any game servers or we'll yank your service.
And yes DSL has contention ratios as well through a little gadget called a DSLAM.
I would be included in that figure. Coffee shops and my neighbors have free Internet, so why do I want to pay $500/year to some ISP?
I can't get broadband. :( I'll never be able to get it, either. Damned ISP.
Well, folks, it's your choice. Do you want big government to spend $40 billion for the recently launched f-ww jet fighter (designed to go to war agains the mighty Soviet empire) and another $200 billion for occupying Iraq (unnecessarily)? Or do you want big government to spend money on things that will build a more productive, prosperous society?
You can't have both.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
"Value centric."
That's the line a salesman uses to convince you to pay more than you want to.
And they wonder why a large portion of the gaming community is up in arms over Half-Life 2's requirement for internet connectivity? This statistic would logically indicate that 80% of the US population can only purchase HL2 retail, or be forced to wait for days for Steam to download the content. There is a common misconception among the technically savvy that a significant majority of the population has broadband, and this simply isn't true! Certainly the 20% is shifted largely toward the gaming community and the technically adept, however, with 80% of the country still on dialup or no connection at all, there must be a significant number of potential gaming customers in that portion of the market.
I can tell you that I know of at least one household (that of my parents) that would like a broadband[1] connection, but can't get it because, despite living in the second largest city in Illinois, in the third largest (by population) metropolitan area in the country, neither DSL (17500 feet from CO) nor cable-internet is available.
The only things that *might* be available are wireless, of which at last check we *might* be on the very edge of two ISPs' coverage areas, although at least one has trees along LOS, and both cost about twice as much for the most basic plan as the cheapest DSL.
WTF? *THIS* is why only 20% of households only have broadband. At the very least, it ain't price; I've seen SBC running promos for their DSL service that would actually be cheaper than the dialup+second phone line we have.
[1] Okay, technically they do have broadband, since technically dialup is broadband, but...
Canada: Local calling is free (exempting the monthly line cost but you currently need that for DSL anyhow).
Not sure about other countries listed, but I doubt that the accessiblity of dialup is such a huge factor over DSL.
That'd be fine if almost all last mile connections for broadband to the home weren't piggybacking on existing networks. (Cable/Phone) There is no last mile roleout required for broadband so your point is moot.
No Comment.
Notice how many corporate apologists are all over this thread? Considering how many millions these MegaCorps with their virtual monopolies are able to spend on lobbying and controlling our govt and our media, you think they don't have people trying to shape opinion on the Net?
ANd they always seem to get the first post on these types of threads! The poor frist posters are getting bulldozed by these cyberpropagandists....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Population in Canada is actually much more concentrated in cities than US. They are all squeezed along the southern border where its warmer.
p opvil2.html just under 80 percent of Canadians live in urban centres....which is nearly the SAME as the US. The only difference is that in the US the population is coastal and around the great lakes instead of along the border. Despite that, broadband use is double in Canada. The difference isn't because of population density at all. It is because despite media content being somewhat over-regulated, internet access was never mired in government/monopoly regulation to the degree it was in the US. Furthermore, broadband in Canada for the longest time was 30% to 50% cheaper than in the US so it was more accessible to its residents.
That is actually false. According to census data http://www.studentsoftheworld.info/infopays/rank/
In regards to the latitude of settlement, one of the four biggest population centres of Canada--the Calgary-Edmonton corridor with over 2 million people--does not border the US and in fact runs perpendicular from the border. Despite Edmonton being one of the most northern major cities (pop. over 500,000) in the world its residents could get boradbant internet before pretty much everyone in the US. Another interesting factoid: The first commercial use of long-distance fibre-optic cable in the world was in Canada, and the longest functioning fibre optic cable in the world in around 1980 was in the Calgary area. The population might be "concentrated" but it is only compressed north-south in most places--it is still very long east-west, so communication technology in Canada became advanced out of necessity.
DMCA, Patriot Act, RIAA/MPAA hijinks, Microsoft and SCO... you're suprised the US is losing its technological edge? Shit man, 51% of Americans voted against stem-cell research 'cause they think it kills babies.
LilMikey.com... I'll stop doing it when you sto
Well, of course the US is behind Canada? What else are you going to do but be a PC potato in the frozen tundra of the Great White North, eh?
Statistics don't lie!
My parents live in northern Michigan and they don't even have access to dial-up without paying long distance charges!
Northern Michigan? You say that like it's the friggin North Pole or something! Michigan is not exactly remote or thinly populated. Try...ohhh maybe Norhtern Saskatchewan, or maybe Yukon or NWT. There are places there that you have to fly to in the summer because the roads melt and disappear into the muskeg. Astonighingly some of these communities have good broadband access (I suppose if you live next to a diamond mine the community can spring for it).
Heck you don't even have to leave your own country. I might not laugh out loud if you said northern MAINE perhaps, or North Dakota. But Norhtern Michigan? You don't know what remote is man...
Well, many posters here mention Scandinavia as an example for fast and good broadband connections.That's simply not true. Only a few buildings in Denmark have a real broadband connection which is 10 Mb/s in and out. 99 % of all internet providers in Denmark are selling an ordinary ADSL connection as a 'broaband' connection. They even sell 64 Kb/s ADSL or cabel as broadband connection. So, when you download something at only 6 Kb/s (which is a real speed for an 64 Kb/s) do you have a broadband? And guess what, most households in Demark have such 'broadband' connections between 64 Kb/s and 256 Kb/s. In Sweeden is situation better, but in Norway it is similar to Denmark. ADSL connections with 2 Mb/s and more are so expensive that very few people are wiling to pay for them. Most people in Denmark don't even know what a broadband connection is. They think that a broadband conection is when you are always connected to internet. I can also see that many Slashdoters think they have a bradband connection when they have 2 Mb/s ADSL or cable. That is not a broadband. You can't see a high quality stream in full screen when the real speed you have is only 200 Kb/s. You have to have minimum 7 Mb/s to call it broadband.
Of course, America invented broadband, and the Internet, and all this other cool stuff. I'm not talking about the attitude of the engineers (and managers along for the ride) developing the technology - they "Can Do", and "do do" :). I'm talking about the slackers in this discussion looking for satisfying excuses for failure. They're lame. Unfortunately, we're world leaders in lame slackers, too.
--
make install -not war
We pay 30$CND(~23$USD)/month for a 4.5Mbps cable connection. That's less than HALF of some of the prices described here. Maybe the USA isn't the greatest country ever like you guys make it out to be...
I would have broadband (and many others would too) if it was available in my neighborhood!!
But the cable company won't even run cable tv down a dirt road.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Very few businesses have competitive pressures. Most have shareholder/board pressures that usually mean cut everything (labor costs, quality) except the amount of money that they receive.
No incumbents, not no where, not no how.
Vote them out every term.
TWC wants to charge me over $25,000 (US dollars) just for CABLE installation.
They also cant get my address right, neither the town nor the zip code.
There is not another area left in the country with this problem!!
I live in Highland NY, with zip code 12528. However I pay taxes to Town of Esopus not Highland.
The houses with addresses on Swartekill Road numbered greater than 400 have
Time Warner Cable/ Road Runner. The houses with addresses under 100 have
Cablevision/Optimum online. Those of us between 100 and 400 on Swartekill Rd
have no CABLE TV (for 3 decades) and no chance of getting DSL either (too far from CO).
Survey's done by Time Warner are now over $25,000; but they are sent to wrong
address and list our town (100 - 400 Swartekill Road) incorrectly. TWC insist
we are in Town of Esopus at zipcode 12429. Our correct town is Highland NY
with zipcode 12528. Would you accept a survey result of $25,000 and hand over
that much money to a company that can't even straighten out their customer
database, and have the addresses correct?
Lastly, because our addresses are incorrect in their (TWC) database
our are requests are not being counted correctly - not being counted at all!
In fact, when I call TWC for service they insist that I am not in there area.
It takes several minutes to convince their rep that this is TWC area. I am sick
of this conversation. For 6 years I have been calling TWC every month and
getting no where. Everybody else can get high speed for free installation
or $59 installation charge, Why do I have to pay $25,000 installation charge?
and then have my address in the wrong town and zipcode yet.
I still on dialup - probably forever.
This is clearly a case of government regulation gone wrong.
Cablevision has informally told me over the phone
that they would like to build cable in my area
and absorb the cost (no mention of any money, not $25,000)
but that they cannot because they would need a franchise.
Who would create a franchise for 20 customers?
Before you suggest satellite internet with Directway or Starband:
I've considered satellite internet but I reject it as "fake" internet, for 2 reasons:
[1] VPN is required to access my employers corporate network
(in order to telecomute, work at home, whatever you call it).
VPN is a packet by packet encryption/decryption, which because it is
done per packet, slows down all traffic to dialup speed.
[2] The FAP (the terms and conditions) for both Directway and Starband
(current satellite internet providers) also restrict downloads to about
500 Megabytes in a 24 hour period, else they slow down the connection
to dialup speed. (500 Megabytes is less data than 1 CD)
[3] Number of simultaneous connections is limited 20-30 approximately.
Thus I feel, satellite internet is not for me, because I would usually (23 hours a day)
be slowed to down dialup speed. I already use 2 dialup lines at the same
I put up a sign outside my house visible from the
road that reads:
Time Warner Cable Sucks
A more telling figure would be how many of those broadband homes voted for Bush. I'll venture to guess that it would be far less than 50%.
You can buy 60 code monkeys or 10 expensive developers for the same money - make your decision. Lower price with higher quantity (not quality) always wins.
"Free" local calls require a local line, and that ain't free -- it's anywhere from $20 to $50 per month, depending on where you are. So it's more accurate to say you get unlimited local calling for a fixed fee, NOT that it's "free".
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
In my experience "can't get broadband" is NOT listed as an option. The only answers offered are "Too expensive" or "Don't need it." Out of the dozens of surveys I've taken on the subject, only ONCE was "Not available" one of the allowed responses.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
"That's only part of it. The other is price. "
There's one you forgot. People who had broadband and went back to dial-up because the economy tanked.
"Slashdot works fine on dial-up. I load a page ahead of time in a new tab and continue reading in my current tab. Dial-up is fast enough. I can't read any faster."
Squid in front with pre-caching on helps a lot.
"The providers are trying to cherry pick profitable consumers. Those willing to pay the price are those who tend to be heavy downloaders. The price keeps low bandwidth profitable users from signing up."
Which is why the "P2P revolution" isn't everything people think it is.
It is not just broadband internet. The overall quality of life in America is a lot worse than other countries. Many Americans are ignorant how far other countries have advanced. Living in America feels like living in 1980's taiwan.
here in ireland it cost 40 euro a month for 512up/128down with a 4gig/1gig cap
40 euros is 52 dollars
you cant get it in a lot of places
to get 1.5 megs cost about 200 dollars a month
be happy with what youve got!
The US has the third highest internet penetration rate in the world, beat by such "countries" as Sweden and Hong Kong. That's higher than Canada or South Korea.
If we ignore the pricing factor, we can consider these reasons for the fact only 20% of the US population can get broadband:
1. Too much legacy communications wiring installed. In order to expand DSL service, it means extremely expensive rebuilds of telephone wiring in almost every city to get everyone with 12,000 feet of a switch station necessary for DSL service.
2. Large sections of the USA are too rural to be within economic reach of DSL or cable modem service.
I believe that here in the USA, the way that broadband finally gets widely accepted is through high-capacity wireless connections, namely 802.16 WiMax and its related 802.20 mobile version, both of which should start becoming widely available from 2006 on. It's vastly cheaper to put up transceiver towers for 802.16/802.20 wireless servce than to upgrade telephone landlines for DSL service or extend wiring for cable modem service, especially in areas of low population density or where it's too expensive to upgrade legacy communications wiring.
Already, the physical infrastructure to get 802.16 started is pretty much place, namely by piggybacking on cellular telephone towers built in the last 20 years.
I have analyzed the traffic that goes through these super-fast connections.... and found that 99% of it consists of pr0n, music/video downloads and multiplayer gaming.
It also appears that 72% of young men there never leave the house, 56% never leave their bedrooms except to eat and poop, and 33% never leave their bedrooms period.
On the other hand, we have seen some amazing productive output from American geeks with just a 2400 baud modem and a shell account. :o
Yes it is. And sometimes the salesman has a point. Always buying the cheapest doesn't give you the best value. Lets say tools. You can go to Walmart and pick up the cheapo tool sets for a lot less money, then in a couple of years they eather brake or get rusted. Or you put some extra cash and go to sears for some Craftmans tools which if they ever brake for whatever reason will be replaced with a new tool, and normally the dont break that quickly. One has a better value then the other and if you are going to be using these tools then the higher quality one has better value.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
What happened to the report that was mentioned just 3 months ago that there was a broadband majority in the US?