Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
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.
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?
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
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.
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.
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?