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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.'"
It's the role of the government to ensure competition in a marketplace. Y'know, the free market.
Competition reduces prices by eliminating monopoly/oligopoly pricing structures.
The current FCC is ruling in favour of monopoly/oligopoly pricing structures, since big telecom companies want government to ensure appropriate return on investment. Y'know, the antithesis of the free market.
If that was the reason, you'd have the same excellent communication infrastructure at least in your major cities and associated suburbs and satellite communities.
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compared to the United States, a large country with more vast, unpopulated areas than any other industrial nation.
Again this idiotic notion buried in the American psyche that they are first at everything. Canada has far more vast, unpopulated regions than the US could ever possibly hope to have.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
France uses existing coper line for ADSL2+ (where adsl was already working before) and for 30euros/mon you have 10Mbps to 25Mbps depending on the distance to the dslam, VoIP and IPTV, a static IP and a reverse lookup with some provider (I'm using free.fr in France). Here in USA (yes I also live in USA .. the joy off having 2 places and being able to compare), I pay over $100 for 6Mbps downstream (768Kbps up) with 5 IP, no reverse lookup, no VoIP and no IPTV
In both case I live a a city of a descent size where "high speed broadband" is available using regular coper line. So no need to add extra line to hardwire everybody ... so problem is really the non competition between provider in USA and the FCC doesn't relay help....
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.
As someone who lives in Canada and frequently travels to the US, this data is no surprise. Broadband coverage in the US is awful, as compared to Canada, but also as compared to places that I have traveled to and would not have expected to
be better - Israel, UK, even major (and not so major) Chinese cities.
The authors are clearly biased however, and do not acknowledge the problem of low population density.
For example, here in Canada, even though the country is huge and the population small, cities are relatively younger and much more dense than US cities. Americans like to live in very large houses, in very distant suburbs, and terrible bandwidth is an unsurprising outcome.
In the city where I live, and where both DSL and cable have been available at every address for years, a 50' x 120' single house lot is considered huge, and more common are apartments, townhouses, and 35' x 80' lots.
I guess it just boils down to: If you must live far apart from your neighbours, then you must pay the price in gasoline, traffic time, poor bandwidth, etc. I can't imagine a magic wand that government could wave to make these costs go away.
A lot of people are perplexed at why broadband sucks in the US. They blame the government. They blame the size of our country. They blame the market. But look who's primarily behind broadband over here: Phone companies and cable companies.
Let's start with phone companies. Does it really benefit phone companies to have great and cheap bandwidth? Not when everyone switches over to VoIP killing their high profit long distance service. Not to mention that businesses pay for EVERY call they make. If broadband was great and cheap, the phone companies would disappear.
Let's move on to cable companies. Pretty soon you'll be able to watch movies via broadband. E.g., Netflix is about to offer movies. In a few years you'll probably be able to watch any movie and any TV you want with a simple clicks. Does this benefit cable companies? Nope. Because they make tons of money, nearly all their money, selling premium movie channels and content via pay-per-view. In other words, if broadband was great and cheap, they'd also be out of business.
Thus, the ONLY way we're going to get real broadband in the US is by wrestling control of it from the current status quo. That's why I'm really excited about broadband over power lines. The power companies have nothing to lose with broadband.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.