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America's Not So Up to Speed
indiejade writes "According to The Broadband Life, the U.S. has quite a way to go before catching up to countries such as South Korea, Japan and even Canada when it comes to percentage of the population enjoying high-speed internet access. 'In 2000, the U.S. ranked third in Net users connecting at high-speed among the top-30 world economies. The next year it fell to fourth. Now it's 11th,' the article said." Commentary on this is also available at Foreign Affairs and The New York Times.
I live just south of the border so I get to see how two different countries do it on a regular basis. In Canada internet access seems to be treated like any other public utility, broadband is easy to access, and it is priced affordably.
Compare to this part of the US where companies charge around $50 per month for broadband and act like they are doing us a major favor by only charging double what I pay for phone service or water and sewage on a monthly basis.
The point the GP was making is that the US has a higher percentage of it's population living in sparsely populated regions. It's relatively easy for Canada to bring a higher percentage of it's population broadband because a higher percentage of those folks live (relatively speaking) right next door to each other.
If 5 million Canadians moved out into the prairies, the population density of Canada would not change. But it be a lot tougher to bring them broadband.
Every time one of these "US sucks at broadband" threads comes along there's the tired old argument that the United States is big and the people are spread all over... We just can't reach them all.
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Pish-posh. In the months coming up to every war US'ians are heard saying, "yeah, we'll kick all their asses! Glass parking lot! We got teh tech!" But given a crack at wide broadband distribution the techies all cry, "wah, it's just too hard!"
Finally, after five years of rural broadband drought someone comes up with the simplistic idea of an antenna on a blimp. Whoa, geniuses they were. But wait... It was the Aussies that "invented" that. And as simple as the idea is and the area that it covers, five years after the idea WE STILL DON'T HAVE IT!
It could be done TOMORROW. You can make up your own excuses why it won't be.
I'll give you a start
Regulation
Capital distribution
Personally, I live 10 minutes from the 11th larges city in the US and couldn't get broadband (aside from that high-latency high-dollar satellite crap) until 2003. If the people in this country keep giving our turds to every other country on earth hoping that they'll polish it to our expectations... well, once again, make up your own excuses.
Lower standard of living? Interesting assertion.
What's your prime metric? Percentage of encarcerated adults? Deaths due to firearms? Bankruptcy due to medical expenses?