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."

Comments

The United States is big

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:The United States is big

[RazzleFrog]

Forget just smaller in inhabitable size - the populations are much smaller (from CIA fact book):

South Korea - 49M
Taiwan - 23M
Canada - 33M
US - 293M

20% of the US is a greater population than any of those countries.

Re:The United States is big

[cyber0ne]

We've got a LOT of ground to cover.

Exactly. The Asian countries listed are about the size of one US state, but with much higher population density. So high-speed lines run through a town there will reach far more people per mile of cabling. (Not to mention the labor force to roll out such lines is much cheaper.)

As for Canada... Last time I checked, the population density of about 85% of the land mass was between 0 and 1 person per square kilometer. Put up some high speed networks in the southeast of Canada, stretch them west along the US border, and you've pretty much hit your entire population.

The US, on the other hand, has metropolitan areas (ranging in size/density of course) dotted across much of its land mass, with vast spaces of land in between. And not nearly as much of that land is as sparsely populated as Canada's northern wilderness. It will take a lot more work to reach as much of a majority of homes.

Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but the US has a much larger, older, and more complicated communications network in place than just about any other country in the world. It takes time to roll over to new technologies without disturbing the existing infrastructure.

Re:The United States is big

[Doc Ruby]

And we've also got a lot of people, money and technology to cover it. The country's landmass is already crisscrossed with fiber. The obstacle is marketing, the problem is no competition. Broadband doesn't cost the equivalent of $40 in S. Korea and Canada and other countries, but it delivers >10Mbps in many of them. And the salespeople know how to market it, unlike the US, where there's little marketing beyond the occasional lifeless RoadRunner ad. In countries with no telecom competition, their governments have required broadband deployment for international competitiveness, or they have achieved American rates of adoption. Welcome to North Mexico! Can I get you a DVD?

Re:The United States is big

[topham]

You can get high-speed Internet in some very remote places in Canada.

While it has taken time to become available I personally know a few people who love several miles from the nearest town that now have DSL. (and I mean small town).

The companies installing Cable or DSL broadband are getting incentives to do so, but so what, companies in Canada and the U.S. get tax breaks for more useless reasons.

Re:The United States is big

[Technician]

We've got a LOT of ground to cover.

That's only part of it. The other is price. For those who just use it for getting the news and checking E-mail, $50 + per month is a little steep. The cable company has the trick of calling a extra fee a discount if you also have cable TV.

We have lots of ground to cover as you mentioned, but most of the population lives in cities. There are not that many people in the woods in Montana, in the deserts of Nevada and Utah, and in the plains of Oklahoma and Wyoming. Even in those states most of the population in clustered in cities that have broadband. Having a large country does not mean it's population is away from population centers.

All it really amounts to is if you are not subscribing to pay TV, they charge an extra chunk of change to provide broadband. Not everyone is buying it.

The phone company tries to do the same thing in many areas with DSL to combat the consumers fleeing all the tack on charges on POTS. It used to be cell phones were expensive. All the tack on fees on a landline have leveled the playing field. Now many people don't have a reason to keep a landline and landline subscriptions are down. (I think I heard about 20% of US households no longer have a landline, but use cell service as the primary phone.)

Between the two jacking up the price with all the fees for not also getting other services, I simply am priced out of broadband. I use broadband at work to get my latest distro and use dial-up at home simply because a year of broadband is about the same price as a new PC. One option many take to beat the high cost is wardriving. I'll deal with the e-mail speed and get the new PC or laser printer instead.

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.

Many countries have affordable broadband. In some cities the city can provide the entire city with broadband for almost an order of magnitude less per household than a connection here. Here the rollout is slowed by the desire to please the shareholders. Too many markets have too few choices permitting the monopoly pricing of broadband to replace income lost to Satelite TV and Cell Phones. These markets have slow growth.

Broadband is not priced for mass use in the USA yet. 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. Now the ISP's are trying to figure out how to make a high bandwidth user not be such an expensive user. I'm still waiting for them to price it for the low bandwidth users.

Re:The United States is big

[ThePiMan2003]

Good but age of country != age of comunications infrastructure. If the telephone had been invented 1000 years ago you would be right, but I'm afriad you are not.

Re:The United States is big

[timeOday]

Exactly. The Asian countries listed are about the size of one US state, but with much higher population density.

OK, fine, so let's compare Taiwan to New York City - just the city. That should be population-dense enough for you. What do you find? US still loses.

Re:The United States is big

[cyber0ne]

Wrong. Unless you are comparing the US to countries like Israel, Taiwan and Kuwait, but you weren't, you where comparing the US to just about any other country in the world. The US is a very young country when compared with just about every country in the world. Come back in 500 to 1000 years, then we can talk.

Are you actually suggesting that other countries have had comunication networks comparable to the ones in the US for longer than the US has even existed? Given that the telegraph wasn't even invented until decades after the US broke apart from GB, that's pretty impressive.

I realize that the US is a very young country when compared to the rest of the world. But what does that have to do with wired communication networks?

Re:The United States is big

[JUSTONEMORELATTE]

The issue is commonly referred to as the "last mile" problem. Yes, there are backbones that reach coast to coast, border to border.
When we speak of population density, it's not so much at a macroscopic level, but block-by-block. Getting a connection to each living unit is expensive. The Bell System got there with subsidy dollars. The Cable Companies got there with subsidies, but also operating at a loss. (Many now-bankrupt cable MSOs can testify to this)
Our hunger for better net connections hasn't (yet) pushed us to the point of approving government subsidies for 100Mb connections to each house, and there isn't a business model that will justify private dollars paying for the infrastructure.

Yes, most major Japanese cities can get 100Mb net access for US$100 or less, but the cost of connecting to the living unit is spread out over the hundreds of apartments in that living unit, and the cost of reaching that building is only a small step up from the cost of reaching that block of buildings.

--

Re:The United States is big

[clarkc3]

The US is a very young country when compared with just about every country in the world.

Maybe so, but their wired communications network has been in place longer than just about anywhere else in the world, so I fail to see your point

Re:The United States is big

[cyber0ne]

OK, fine, so let's compare Taiwan to New York City - just the city. That should be population-dense enough for you. What do you find? US still loses.

No, New York City loses. When you subtract the rest of the US from one side of the equation, you should subtract it from the other side as well. I realize it's fasionable to hate the US these days, but at least make sense about it.

Now let's also take into account the fact that NYC has a much more established communications grid than Taiwan. Where is the need to upgrade? Most people there just don't see it. Consider also the sheer cost of adding to and/or replacing this grid in New York. It's a lot of work on a lot of expensive property and has to be done without disturbing a single important transaction, without disrupting traffic, etc. It's just more of an undertaking than Taiwan and with less demand to back it.

Re:The United States is big

[Doc Ruby]

I live in NYC, even more dense than Japan overall. How come we don't have broadband adoption rates here like the do there? We've got money, and an appetite for media.

Re:The United States is big

[Sepper]

Maybe but while the combined population of all these country is about a third of all US population, The total broadband users of these 3 combined is HIGHER than the number of broadband users in the US.

I would blame the large distance to cover in the US but it still doesn't explain why Canada a pourcentage twice higher...

Hell, I live in Montreal, and i only know one 'household' without broadband...

Of course we all know these number are just that... numbers... You can make statistics say almost anything :)

Re:The United States is big

[Qzukk]

Its easy to pull out the "ooh look, we're a big country" card and play it, but it completely ignores the reality of the situation. In Tokyo, you can get 100Mbps to your apartment for about as much as I pay for 1.5M/256K DSL. Is anyone even offering 100Mbps for $150/mo in New York, NY? 10Mbps?

So yeah, our coverage is shitty because of our rural areas (which is really a lie too, another post mentioned that someplace in Iowa formed a co-op and brought broadband to their homes in the middle of nowhere.) but the service provided at any given cost is shitty across the country too, and your "too big" card has no play here.

As long as companies and government worship the holy dollar its not going to get fixed, and companies will continue to petition state governments to hassle co-op developments, even in areas their sorry brand of broadband will never reach.

Re:The United States is big

[SETY]

So? This proves zero. So since USA has 8.8 times more people than Canada then it takes 8.8 times longer to have DSL rolled out.....ummm no.

You can argue things like population density being a factor, but overall population numbers are really irellevant after you hit a certain critical mass. I suspect population densities in US and Canada are comparable.

What would make sense is to see what percentage of households have broadband available to them and see how many of these people of subscribed to
broadband. Price and value can then be argued here. I didn't RTFA, so maybe they did this.

Why 100% of households don't have broadband available to them is something to do with phone/cable deregulation and population densisty. If you can prove there is a shortage in DSL/cable equipment you might be able to argue that the USA's larger population comes into play, this is not the case.

Re:The United States is big

[BMazurek]

• The US, on the other hand, has metropolitan areas (ranging in size/density of course) dotted across much of its land mass, with vast spaces of land in between. And not nearly as much of that land is as sparsely populated as Canada's northern wilderness. It will take a lot more work to reach as much of a majority of homes.

Then explain to me why my brother, who lives almost 8 hours north of the US border, 1.5 hours away from the nearest "city" (city of 5,000 people) in a town of less than 1,000 people can get broadband access, and how all these centres in the US cannot? Hell, the largest city in our province is about 200,000 people, and that's about 4 hours away!

Brad

Re:The United States is big

[avronius]

Just a little debunking of the Canadian communications infrastructure myth.

We advanced technologically *with* the Americans. We installed telephone systems along side the Americans. We upgraded to digital telephone systems as well as the Americans. We Implemented our cellphone networks on the same types of systems as the Americans.

From every little hamlet, to every major city, there is telephone connectivity. We had an infrastructure that dates back to *shortly after* the invention of the telephone.

At each major technological evolution, our infrastructures were replaced - just like the Americans. Of course there were always some hold-outs - I think that rotary service was still available as recently as 8 years ago (still available as special service where required, at added expense).

The argument of "it's costly to roll over new..." doesn't wash, as Canada has a lower population density for areas that it delivers signal to, and yet still manages to introduce the technology / replace the outdated gear, and provide the new services. Sure, there are still areas where ISDN is the highest speed available, but we have a large landmass, and a small population. We'll get to them when we can. :)

The *real* reason that high speed connectivity isn't as available in the US? Corporations aren't interested in spending money to replace an infrastructure that the bulk of it's customers aren't willing to pay extra for. Perhaps it's time to use the enormous power of your population to force the mega-corporations to offer the services that you want.

As an aside, our towns are not *mostly* restricted to the American border, as we have communities dotting our countryside - similar to the United States. And, while it is true that we have a major trunk that runs coast to coast connecting the larger cities, we have major branches running north/south into each province (and subsequently, the territories) to provide coverage for as many of these communities as possible.

Your infrastructure will only improve when you demand it. We did.

Re:The United States is big

[ADRA]

Canadian Telecoms/Cable are still regulated, so it could be said that the government regulates the price / service levels to acceptible levels.

Anyways, assuming the american/Canadian dollars are even, its still cheaper to buy into (>2Mbs down) broadband for half the price of US counterparts.

Re:The United States is big

[slam smith]

I think the people in other countries are paying for their broadband. They just pay for it indirectly through their taxes etc.

Re:The United States is big

[Carnildo]

The US, on the other hand, has metropolitan areas (ranging in size/density of course) dotted across much of its land mass, with vast spaces of land in between. And not nearly as much of that land is as sparsely populated as Canada's northern wilderness. It will take a lot more work to reach as much of a majority of homes.

I live in the US, in the downtown area of a metropolis of a quarter-million people. I have exactly one option for broadband: 3Mbps residential cable. If I lived in a slightly different location in the city, I might have a second option: a 768kbps T1 line. And if I lived in one of the newest or oldest parts of the city, and was very lucky, I might get a third option: 768kbps residential ADSL.

That's it. Three options, only one of which is available throughout the city. There's no option for commercial high-speed. Most of the city has no access to low-cost 256kbps ADSL. Heck, much of the city has no access to 56kbps dialup -- the best you can get is 33.6. And this is in a city of a quarter-million!

Re:The United States is big

[Peaceful_Patriot]

There is an easier way to achieve nearly 100% internet access in the US. Univeral broadband seems like a wonderful goal, but lets start by getting everyone basic (dial up) access.

Add a small amount (say, 1 dollar) to all land-line phone bills. In return, provide dial up access as part of the phone package. Presto! Instant universal access. If everyone pays a small amount, the prices stay low. No more 'digital divide' among low income groups which cannot normally afford the additional monthly bill. This seems like the easiest, most cost effective way to provide everyone with Internet while we wait for universal broadband.

Of course we can't compete!

[garcia]

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?

Re:Of course we can't compete!

[jrumney]

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.

Added to that, you get free local calls in the US, which makes it harder for broadband to compete with dialup on price. Here in the UK, I'd have to pay around £10 a month for "unlimited" dialup access (which is actually limited to evenings and weekends and I have to redial every 2 hours), while I can have broadband at 10x the speed for about £15 with a 2GB cap, or £20 unlimited.

Re:Of course we can't compete!

[ajayvb]

Costs is one thing, monopoly-forced bundling is another. Verizon does not provide DSL to my area without me getting at least a basic landline. I don't need one - my cellphone suffices. I am paying around $12 / month more for my phone line (min plan possible + taxes + a few dozen service fees.). So $30/month for 1576/768 DSL is hokum. Plus, add bandwidth throttling, and we have service that sucks a%$.

Re:Of course we can't compete!

[KontinMonet]

Then try Bulldog. I've just signed up unlimited 4Mb with unlimited free UK landline calling for one monthly fee. UKonline.net is rolling out 8Mb for 50% of the country and promises phone services in the future (not mentioned on their site, might have been on the Beeb). HomeChoice does 2/4Mb with all the (40+?) Freeview TV channels on demand (and it's not cable) and a phone service. There's plenty of others.

But anyway, you can always go for Internet phone system for about £5-00 a month making and receiving calls from any phone anywhere, eg: redtelecom.co.uk, sipgate.co.uk etc.etc. Calls are usually free to co-operating providers. Sipgate is free to about 10 others: FWD, Freenet, IAXnet etc.

Broadband's far from consistent, too

[PornMaster]

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.

Cost vs. Value

[jellomizer]

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.

Re:Cost vs. Value

[jbeaupre]

Actually, what you are describing is the difference between what you value and what others value. If $20 service gets them what they want at a price they want, then they are getting a good value. It's the same internet, just a different speed. I put more of a premium on speed too, so I have broadband. But my mom couldn't care less. She does email. $10 a month is more service than she needs.

Re:Cost vs. Value

[Jimithing DMB]

She does email. $10 a month is more service than she needs.

That's all fine and good except what I've found with my parents is that having broadband, particularly the always-on aspect, has caused both of them to use the Internet more often. Particularly my mom because she can just open up her PowerBook anywhere in the house and look something up. My dad uses it primarily for e-mail and to download his bank transactions. He did not like having to wait for the modem to connect.

My mom has made the comment to me several times that she has no idea how we got by without having the Internet instantly available. She's right. Having the ability to just look something up whenever one feels like it is very empowering. I recommend to anyone who can afford it to get broadband.

Re:Cost vs. Value

[pete-classic]

The article said:

U.S. households, lagging far behind countries that include South Korea

You said:

Americans tend to be more fix cost centric vs. Total Cost or Value centric.

I have lived in both the USA and the ROK. While the ideas you have about Americans may be quite defensible, I can categorically state that the implication that South Koreans have a more far sighted, value oriented outlook is not the case, and, therefore, not the reason they are beating our pants off when it comes to broadband deployment.

I don't know what the reason is, but I am certain this isn't it.

-Peter

Re:Cost vs. Value

[Anonymous Coward]

$30 or $40 for broadband? What planet do you live on? I pay $50+ per month for broadband via Comcast, which works out to $600+ per year.

I pay less for electricity. I pay less for all telephone services. Only my natural gas service (for heat) is more expensive per year (I keep my house nice and toasty in the winter)

The fact is, broadband in the US is only for the wealthy like me. With the government willing to accept unregulated local monopolies, there is no reason for the providers to charge less. Someone should bring capitalism to the broadband industry.

You're lucky

[Anonymous Coward]

Because in Spain is very far from that percentage... Maybe in 20 years more we'll be on a level with you...

Re:You're lucky

[syrinx]

Yeah, we still have an armada, too.

RIAA

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait 'till anything faster than 56k is banned. Those poor artists in their million dollar mansions are starving, you know.

It's the Cost!

[Enigma_Man]

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

Re:It's the Cost!

[also aswell]

While dialup goes down and down again. Most people I know are waiting for prices to come down on high speeds aswell. They are expecting and waiting for this to happen.

I'm still with my local dialup that I've had for 9 years (started with AOL) and they can't give me a deal, because the baby Bells refuse to give them any deals, and the local cable, Cox, isn't competitive unless I go with cable, phone and high speed. Until the small isps can give a price break, I don't see where the baby bells or the cable providers are going to compete.

What I don't understand is why the copper wire providers which were forced to share, don't get the same break using fiberoptics. If that were to happen then the prices would come down.

Until then I run a couple windows at a time on my browser and let one load while I check the action on the other. But I'm waiting for $25 -30 price range before I change.

I'm not disappointed

[Snowgen]

[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!

Re:I'm not disappointed

[KillerHamster]

And realistically, most Internet users have no need for broadband. You don't need tons of bandwidth to do email, instant messaging, and read your friends' blogs. Most people probably don't even know that it's possible to do things that require more bandwidth, like downloading movies or operating systems or running a huge Freenet node.

shou;ldn't that be 4002?

[CProgrammer98]

that the number of Americans using fast internet connections doubled from 2001 to late 2003.

2001 * 2 = 4002

Pathetic humur I know, but it might make someone laugh

Only 20% of American households have broadband...

[mattkime]

...but another 20% are logging into open wireless access points.

Does this really come as a surprise?

[zippity8]

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.

Re:Does this really come as a surprise?

[Stevyn]

Keep in mind though, that they started from nothing to broadband. Not from POTS to broadband. The same goes for cell phones in China. The test of which country can do better will be in 20 years or so when this technology is mature and the next form of communication takes off.

The US is usually slower in adopting new technology than developing countries is because we are upgrading while they are just getting started. We have to piggy back new technology on to old technology while they can learn from our mistakes and do it the right way the first time around.

Stating the Obvious

[Ironsides]

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.

Re:Stating the Obvious

[Daedala]

But you need broadband for downloading your Microsoft patches and service packs!

Re:Stating the Obvious

[Hatta]

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.

Try getting DSL in rural iowa. Chances are it will be cheaper and faster, because it's provided by a co-operative, instead of a screw-the-customer-all-that-matters-is-profit corporation.

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.

Yes it's too expensive. Again, it's because the providers care more about profit than service.

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?

Farmers are businessmen. Enough said.

Government subsidy?

[jtseng]

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.

Cause I can't!

[tigershark97]

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.

Red neck of the woods

[Doc Ruby]

"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?

Re:Red neck of the woods

[Hydrogenoid]

Oh, so basically there is a fair chunk of the population that is neither urban nor rural, to reach the 19.9% figure?

Worse quality too

[Hatta]

"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.

Don't care.

[GeneralEmergency]

D__i__a__l__-__u__p ____ w__o__r__k__s ____ j__u__s__t ____ f__i__n__e ____ f__o__r ____ m__e__.

Realtors Take Notice!

[Average_Joe_Sixpack]

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.

It's worse...

[Anita Coney]

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.

The AOL Factor

[mogrify]

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.

Re:Numbers for Canda, Taiwan, etc..?

[aelbric]

This report is a red herring. Although the percentages are higher in those countries, the actual number of installations in the US is higher.

After all, assume households of 4 people:

Population Households
Canada 32M 8M
Korea 48M 12M
Taiwan 22M 6M
USA 300M 75M

If the US penetration is 20%, then 15M households in the US have broadband. Almost 70% of the number of households in all three countries. They would need to be collectively at 70% of penetration to be over the US. Oh, and by the way, the US has 60 million to go wheras those three are at saturation.

Not the most scientific extrapolation, but I don't think I'm too far off.

Also, it's interesting to note that the person disappointed is "head of the Information Technology Association of America, a leading industry trade group in Washington." Need I say more?

Which experts?

[Tenebrious1]

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.

Way behind...!

[bogaboga]

We should not pride ourselves in this statistic because we seem to think that we are the greatest nation on earth, yet far behind on social issues and technology.

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..

Can't Do

[Doc Ruby]

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"

Phone /cable companies blow goats

[Charcharodon]

In the various places I've lived broadband access was based on either population density or compitition. If there was no compitition and a low population density then you saw no broadband, or it was very crapy expensive broadband.

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.

Broadband Penetration in Canada

[slashhax0r]

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.

Re:Ready, set, go...

[udowish]

igloos, sure another example of american ignorace :) face it Canada is just a more connected country, keep trying you'll catch up soon Froto. :) PS its not 20% exchange rate anymore, remember the yankee pasco? By the end of next year the Canadian buck will be worth way more than the us buck.

South Korea vs. United States

[heir2chaos]

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.

danger of early technology adoption

[peter303]

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.

In Hong Kong..

[neodude88]

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...

Re:The United States is crooked

[saider]

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.

Well, in Korea,

[ihavnoid]

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.

Free local calls

[janolder]

A much overlooked factor may be the usually free local calls in the US. Other countries charge an arm and a leg for local calls in addition to the ISP provider's fee: I used to pay roughly $100 a month for local calls to my provider in addition to the ~$15 ISP fee - for two hours of daily use. Fortunately, moving to the US fixed that.

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.

COMPETITION is the key word

[tajan]

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.

Guns or butter?

[nysus]

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.

Population distrubutions and broadband

[WebCowboy]

Population in Canada is actually much more concentrated in cities than US. They are all squeezed along the southern border where its warmer.

That is actually false. According to census data http://www.studentsoftheworld.info/infopays/rank/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.

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.