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U.S. Broadband Access Falling Behind
EpochVII writes "FreePress recently released a report(PDF) detailing the woeful situation of U.S. broadband access. From the press release: 'By overstating broadband availability and portraying anti-competitive policies as good for consumers, the FCC is trying to erect a façade of success. But if the president's goal of universal, affordable high-speed Internet access by 2007 is to be achieved, policymakers in Washington must change course.'"
Australian Broadband is much worse...
I live 50 km from a major capital city and I cannot get broadband due to cost saving due to RIMs. It sucks royally.
If I point out that you are incorrect, making me a foe does not make you any more correct.
The article takes issue with the FCC calling anything over 200 Kbps broadband.
/. readers) that's a pretty typical usage ratio.
Maybe I'm just alone in this, but I've always thought of pretty much anything faster than 56K dial-up as broadband.
Sure, 200 Kbps isn't super-fast, but it's certainly not dial-up.
Another issue they have is that a lot of "broadband" is upstream limited to as little as 128 Kbps and thus they don't think it should count.
While I decry providers who don't give people much upstream bandwidth, it's a bit much to claim something "isn't broadband" if it's say, 1.5 Meg down and 128 K up. For a lot of people (the less techy amongst us, not
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
i'm an optimist. the market will grow to hit this goal. i think the only thing that can get that kind of market penetration (not government sponsored) would be over the only wire that goes to every damn home. broadband over power lines.
wow, wouldn't Google put themselves in a pretty little position if they were the company that could hit that goal, *and* could get the feds to throw in the cash to hit that 07 deadline?
heh heh. =)
These countries were once behind the US in terms of broadband adoption, speed, availibility. That gap has almost disappeared - having worked in the industry for some time on both sides of the Atlantic, it is obvious that the US is falling behind. Take the price of a 6 MB DSL line with VOIP included in France - you can get the whole thing for $30 (~20 euro). In the US you are lucky to see $30 for the VOIP alone, and my total bill with a 4MB cable connection is over $70.
While they push on with triple-play products in Europe to include Video and bump speeds up to the 20MB range with ADSL 2+ Verizon are bumping people to 2MB.......
South Korea is a world leader in broadband penetration and they started from zero just s few years ago. They're government made it a vital policy to get broadband to everyone, and it worked. The US Government needs to wake up, something needs to be done - and quickly before the US becoes a comsumer digital backwater.....
https://comerford.net
Residential and commercial access appear to be slowly but steadily improving. Despite the progress that the US has made, the future looks somewhat mixed.
I'm worried about College and University connections. Usage limits and even outright censorship are the norm on High School networks. I'd like to change this, but for now, it's just a fact of life. University networks, on the other hand, have been the most unrestricted and fast ways of getting online since the birth of the Internet. My old High School class is starting college right now, and I've talked to a few friends about their school's network access. The bandwidth is usually good, but a lot of connections are filtered, firewalled, or otherwise limited. All of them so far have been behind an IP masquerading device. End-to-end connectivity has been a core principle of the Internet, supported, for example, by the Internet Architecture Board. NAT is a detriment to the Public Internet. Is your school even providing "Internet" service if hosts on the Internet cannot initiate TCP connections with you? Asemetric data rates and private IP addresses could make the Internet just another TV network, a medium where passive users consume content that only big rich corporations can provide. Hopefully the demand for p2p will keep upload rates up, and more users will become technically competent enough to host other services. Let's keep the Internet democratic and egalitarian!
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
I'm not trolling. These are fair and honest questions. The Net is a great informational tool, but are that many people unhappy with their bandwidth? Is broadband *that* important for enough people that this should be considered a crisis?
Where's the next revolution here? Is there one? Content delivery? Whoopee. How's that improve my day to day life? How does that make the mundane drudgery of existence smoother.
Someone compared us to South Korea. If you can't see the problem with that comparison, I mean, geez... (hint: population density) But still, are the Koreans experiencing some sort of magical Vinge singularity?
Or is it just more fucking plastic gadgets?
Perhaps because the free market has been futzing around for the better part of a decade without much real improvement. Sure, we have a variety of platforms and a variety of providers, but somehow, they just aren't competeing.
Amazing how they're all priced within a dollar or two of each other, isn't it?
The problem here is there isn't a profit motive for lowering prices. So long as all companies involved accept the current price, consumers are stuck paying it. And they've found a price to penetration level they are happy with and don't appear to be moving.
Meanwhile, countries like Japan and Korea, who made it a social priority to have cheap, ubiquitous broadband have lapped us.
I recently moved from Tempe, AZ to Downtown Chandler, AZ, because I graduated college and now work at Intel (which is in Chandler). For those who haven't been to Phoenix, downtown Chandler is in the boonies. The area has only been seeing intense development over the past year or so (some roads are still two-lane farm roads, and they're only starting to widen them). I had a 1.5M down, 896k up DSL line when I used to live by ASU in Tempe. I get my service from Qwest. Ever since I moved here, I've been having connection issues with my Cisco dropping train and then refusing the retrain. They say that line attenuation is too high. It got better over the months, but it still does it again. I only found out about the attenuation when I tried to bump my speed up to 3Mbps. Distance from the central office has a lot to do with it as well. Apparently, it may become better over the next year as we get more subscribers to the service from this area of chandler. But it still sucks though.
So I guess how far you are away (for DSL, anyway) seems to matter, as does how many people subscribe (which will give them incentive to put in more optical fiber or whatever). But if prices aren't attractive, how many are going to subscribe?
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
The Pres was working with information you are only now become aware of... Broadband was never *for your use*, like the highways and roads, it was for commerce (and military).
When gasoline hits $5.00/gallon and your heating bill goes through the roof, urban dweller or otherwise, your newspaper subscriptions, trips to the movie rental, delivery of paper by the postal service, movement of goods and services, trips to the parts store, or other movement will become extremely unbearable. Until we reinvent our country and work and transportation systems, once again, the US will need something, anything, to prop up the U.S. GDP. Bits on a wire, whatever product or service it is (say movie rentals, music, distance workers, whatever, can be taxable.
And, we have the Boomers to tax the hell out of until then - they are the ones with the money they want - the rest of us will suffocate.
Now, my birth mother in Lance Creek, WY, well, they'd probably have to use satellite-based service. If you know where Lance Creek, WY, is, you'll understand why cable, telco DSL, 3G, et al., will NEVER reach a good third of the US physically (i.e., between the front range of the Rocky Mts and the Mississippi River, not withstanding major metropolitan areas like Denver or Kansas City.
That's because the population density in the areas you mentioned can't justify the exorbitant expensive of implementing the Last Mile solution for getting xDSL or cable modem broadband access into your home or business. This is where 802.16/802.20 WiMAX technologies will become very useful, since out in rural areas you can put up WiMAX antenna arrays on top of hills, up the sides of mountains, on top of grain silos, etc. so you can cover a large swath of area with a single antenna array. This will allow for isolated mountain communities and small rural towns to finally get broadband Internet access.
Why is it the role of the federal government to ensure cheap broadband by 2007?
It isn't, and no one but you seem to be claiming that's the goal. I don't know where you got the word cheap, certainly not in the article summary or the article itself. The goal is universal affordable broadband. I see this goal much like rural electrification that started in the 1930s.
The nation as a whole has an interest in broadband internet access being available to everyone. This is no different than roads, power, and phone service. Why is that so hard to understand?
AccountKiller
But, by our traditional and very libertarian American standards, it's getting worse. The most dramatic example is the arbitrary placing of left-wing activists, including a nun, who have nothing to do with terrorism on no-fly lists. There is also good old Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act (the infamous "library clause"), which despite reports otherwise has been used. There have been the expected right-wing media attempts, aided by John Ashcroft, to equate dissent with terrorism. And, finally, there is the renewed effort by Bush's Justice Department to crack down on anything it deems pornographic using whatever means occur to it.
I would not be surprised if Cindy Sheehan is never able to get on an airplane again.
Not every state.
Here in South Dakota, every school - yes, every school - is tied into a state-run network, and every school has been wired internally so that every room, yes every room, has access to that network. Sure, it cost quite a bit to implement, but that was the Governor's pet project for years.
1. Too many left-wing activists have been put on the no-fly lists for it to be accidental. I've seen reports of a baby or two, and never of a right-wing activist, but there have been at least 20 cases of left-wing activists on the no-fly lists.
2. I cited John Ashcroft because, in 2001 when he was Attorney General (did you forget?) he dramatically and famously equated dissent with terrorism. But the right-wing media that echoed his posture did not stop when he left office.
3. Sure I cited an obscenity case. The hallmark of both the Ashcroft and Gonzalez Justice Departments' approaches to porn has been to systematically attempt to expand the obscenity exception to the 1st Amendment until it covers Janet Jackson's nipple. "Obscenity" should refer only to that material (such as child and snuff porn) that constitutes evidence of a crime.
And, no, I don't want to take away your gun. /rolls eyes
I'm more libertarian than leftist reactionary.
While not really considered "broadband" I am testing my "National Access" via my verizon cell phone service. On the average I get 16.3kB/sec, not too shabby, about 3X the speed of dial up. A friend of mine has EVDO service, while not the be all end all it's still better than nothing.
The biggest thing I hate with US phone and cable service providers is that they try to make you think they are doing you a favor by giving you sub-standard service. I won't be truly happy till I get 100M/bit full duplex access to the Internet via fiber, cable or some sort of UW-band data service.
Since I live in a real rural area (no cable Internet or ADSL) dial up or cell phones are my only choice. I know there is satellite but low latency is a must. So in the meantime I am posting this via my cell phone service...
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
Then why can 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 farming/logging 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 3.5 hours away!
My mother, who lives on a farm several miles outside that town cannot currently get broadband, but it's supposed to be available soon.
You're right, the vast majority of the Canadian populace is concentrated along the US border, but that by no means implies that broadband isn't available in a very high percentage of the country. There are very remote areas that don't have good access (ie, the territories), but the country is pretty well covered considering the population density.
I think the "vast, unpopulated areas" surround the sparsely populated areas.
The majority of the PSTN was written off long ago as capital expense. It was bought and paid for through the tax policies designed to encourage investment, and the invenstment has long ago paid back the shareholders. Just look at the dividends and salaries that have been paid out. I'd argue that the general public paid for the R&D for current comm technologies through the same mechanism.
Perhaps it's time to require the "shareholders" give something back to the commons under the same rationale that allows land to be grabbed. We could "publicize" the PSTN lines and provide univeral phone and reasonable internet access via 256K DSL. This would allow univerdal educational use and basic fixed point voice service. No one would miss the copper.
The private companies could use their compensation to build out the fiber network and compete for the High on Speed, VOD entertainment/porno-freak customes while every household in the U.S. could have basic phone and DSL provided by at cost. At least that way the general public would get something in return for their "investment" in subsidizing whorporate amerika cha-cha-cha.
I'm also waiting private libraries to replace those provided by the government. Those public libraries are for losers and eggheads.
Andrew Carnegie founded over 1,689 public libraries in the US, and hundreds more in other English-speaking nations. Of course, funding from state, local, and federal government is essential for their continued operation. But many of these communities would not have been able to build a library without him.
This kind of philanthropy of the rich is often much more effective than a government bureaucracy would be. But on the other hand, I certainly don't expect the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to be funding broadband for the typical American.
Most Americans without broadband could easily afford it if they wanted to. When big bucks are spent to improve society -- whether from the government or from philanthropic tycoons -- they ought to be spent where the payoff is greater.
Public education, disease prevention and treatment, college scholarships, famine relief... this is where more money should be spent, and much of it should be spent in the third world countries where it is needed most, and where the payoff for the human race will be greatest.
You're explaining the symtoms but not the cause. *Why* do you have huge cities. *Why* do people drive miles to work. I live in a city of a million in the UK. I live four miles from its centre right on the end of suburbia and there are green hills and villages beyond me. I have a choice of two cable companies and ADSL. I have 2Mb ADSL (because I wanted a fixed IP and unrestricted usage). I drive ten miles to work across the country side and it takes me half an hour from door to door. I can go for a walk along a nice canal at lunch time to get some air.
When I worked in LA for a short time it took the same time to drive to work. Most of that was on soul destroying freeways. I couldn't walk anywhere and I had crappy broadband and smog. The nearest countryside was many miles away. Why do you put yourselves through it?
That one is almost laughable. For example, we all subsidized telephone service in those areas. Granted, it started as party lines and then moved to private lines.
But we still subsidize much of rural America to this day. Yet they continue to get squat. I don't have to wonder where all the money is going.
While it would be all well and good for the FCC to really examine its own rules and procedures, a more fundamental shift has to happen. Sadly, it is a shift that might have to come at the point of a gun.
The biggest error ever made in the U.S. was giving a corporate entity a voice and essentially making it equivalent to a person. Until fairly recently, once you were incorporated you were pretty much shielded behind that corporate fiction. But what is being done now is simply lip service. For example, the recent energy bill is nothing but a gift to energy producers and transporters.
If you consider that Japanese got themselves a new government some 60 years ago, while ours sat and festered you can see what I'm getting at.
Sometimes wholesale regime change is a good thing. It keeps politicians honest.
The original subject suggested the President wasn't going to meet his stated goal of broadband availability. Might I suggest he follow the excellent idea of Tony Blair and his New Labour govt who made the same promise? Once you realise you haven't got a cat's chance in hell of delivering what you promised, re-define the word broadband to include ISDN.
Problem solved!
Mike
I've lived in Britain, and it's quite easy to see why the cities are built differently.
LA is not really representative of the US. I live near the edge of a 1.5 million metro area, and have a 15 minute drive to work, 20 minutes to the beach, 40 minutes to the next state. It's not all like LA.
...if you are not American, anyways. Less competition... so go ahead and hamstring yourself all you Bush lovers. Cash in on your future! :-)
The rest of the world benefits when the US administration (or it's policies) do not actively improve the technology knowledge of the population.
* This is after all an administration that OPPOSES municipal broadband. Why should any region provide nonprofit broadband when everyone benefits from the jobs created by paying extra funds to monopoly providers?
* This is after all an administration that OPPOSED equal access by non-baby bells to the nationwide DSL network. Why should we have anything except 1 DSL provider per region? Anyone who wants to compete in DSL should string up their own lines, dammit!
We also benefit from the US 'hands off' approach to education, which has poor cities footing the education costs, and 'standardized tests' that will keep marginal students in the 7th grade for 3 years in a row (at least until they drop out and enter the low wage job market).
With the push for 'Creation Science' in schools now, the fanatics are guaranteeing a further slide in the US standing in the academic world. The shift for R&D has already happened.
The US is in a self induced decline, so sure their way is right even as they fall further behind in economic and academic might. If only India and China and Malaysia played fair, and ensured college is only for those who can afford to borrow...
The irony is, many of these 'capitalists' and 'free traders' are themselves foreign capitalists, pushing for policies and tax codes in the US that they would never DREAM of inflicting on their own beloved country.
America was right... capital should roam. All the short term profit takers are providing enough incentive for it to roam elsewhere...
I think the worse Americans make it for themselves, the more they'll reason like a Kansas firebrand preacher.