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The Problems with Broadband in America
Tenken writes "Salon has an article about the state of broadband in America. After seeing what many other countries have accomplished with their broadband markets, namely Japan, Korea, and (gasp) even Canada, the current state of affairs in the U.S. is looking pretty dismal. I'm sure I'm not the only one tired of paying $45 a month just for cable internet." From the article: "Across the globe, it's the same story. In France, DSL service that is 10 times faster than the typical United States connection; 100 TV channels and unlimited telephone service cost only $38 per month. In South Korea, super-fast connections are common for less than $30 per month. Places as diverse as Finland, Canada and Hong Kong all have much faster Internet connections at a lower cost than what is available here. In fact, since 2001, the U.S. has slipped from fourth to 16th in the world in broadband use per capita. While other countries are taking advantage of the technological, business and education opportunities of the broadband era, America remains lost in transition."
Free American broadband!
In France, you can get super-fast DSL, unlimited phone service and 100 TV channels for a mere $38 a month. Why does the same thing cost so much more in the U.S.?
By S. Derek Turner
Oct. 18, 2005 | Next time you sit down to pay your cable-modem or DSL bill, consider this: Most Japanese consumers can get an Internet connection that's 16 times faster than the typical American DSL line for a mere $22 per month.
Across the globe, it's the same story. In France, DSL service that is 10 times faster than the typical United States connection; 100 TV channels and unlimited telephone service cost only $38 per month. In South Korea, super-fast connections are common for less than $30 per month. Places as diverse as Finland, Canada and Hong Kong all have much faster Internet connections at a lower cost than what is available here. In fact, since 2001, the U.S. has slipped from fourth to 16th in the world in broadband use per capita. While other countries are taking advantage of the technological, business and education opportunities of the broadband era, America remains lost in transition.
How did this happen? Why has the U.S. fallen so far behind the rest of its economic peers? The answer is simple. These nations all have something the U.S. lacks: a national broadband policy, one that actively encourages competition among providers, leading to lower consumer prices and better service.
Instead, the U.S. has a handful of unelected and unaccountable corporate giants that control our vital telecommunications infrastructure. This has led not only to a digital divide between the U.S. and the rest of the advanced world but to one inside the U.S. itself. Currently, broadband services in America remain unavailable for many living in rural and poorer urban areas, and remain slow and expensive for those who do have access.
For instance, when farmers gathered at this year's Iowa State Fair to discuss their policy concerns with U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns, the topic on the minds of many was broadband. And for good reason. Twenty-five percent of Iowa's rural communities have no access to high-speed Internet service, and over half of the remaining rural communities are serviced by only one provider. Those lucky enough to live in areas served by Iowa Telecom can pay as much as $170 per month for a DSL line.
President Bush has called for "universal, affordable access to broadband technology by the year 2007," and Federal Communications Commission chairman Kevin Martin recently declared broadband deployment to be his "highest priority." Martin recently took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to tout "the dramatic growth in broadband services." In his editorial he boasts of "fierce competition" among broadband providers and tells us we're "well on our way to accomplishing the President's goal."
The facts tell a different story. Today, major cable companies and DSL providers control almost 98 percent of the residential and small-business broadband market. This trend is the direct result of FCC policies that fail to encourage real competition among broadband providers, giving free rein over the market to the cable and DSL giants. The corporate giants are also vigorously fighting to stop cities and towns from building "Community Internet" systems -- affordable, high-speed broadband services funded in part by community groups and municipalities -- even in places where the cable and DSL companies themselves don't offer service. Yet, like rural electrification projects in the early 20th century, today's Community Internet projects offer the best hope of achieving universal broadband service.
Like so many other challenges faced by the Bush administration, the response to the growing digital divide has been to redefine success and prematurely declare victory.
In the 1996 Telecommunications Act, Congress directed the FCC to oversee the timely deployment of Internet services that "enable users to originate and receive high quality voice, data, g
With FITL, it's fiber optic cable from the central office to a "lightspeed box" in your neighborhood, where it gets converted to copper wires to go to your home. If you're lucky enough to be in a FITL neighborhood, the best you can get is IDSL (aka ISDN). The Megababy Bells insist on putting the DSLAMs in the central office, when they could put it out in the lightspeed boxes, thus creating IFITL (Integrated Fiber in the Loop). By pushing the DSLAM out to the neighborhoods, a vast majority of people could get broadband... but that means opening up the lines to competition, which I know Verizon doesn't want to do... thus the concept of FIOS... which takes advantage of a loophole in the law, allowing them to maintain total control/access of those fiber lines because they've put brand new ones out there from the central office to your home.
Since nobody other than your local power company, local cable company, and local phone company can put lines up on the phone poles (or in the conduits, if you have underground lines), they're going to kill off the broadband companies.
OCO is Loco
Canada, the largest country in the world, has much better internet access even in remote communities -- communities that would make what Americans consider remote seem down right cosmopolitan.
...and they brazenly go along with it because that's what the market dictates to be the best value for their campaign war chest...
I moved from a job in NW Ontario where I provided service for the Hudson Basin -- towns that were hundreds of miles from roads, hours by plane -- these towns had better broadband access than most of rural Wisconsin.
The average household in NWO has better access than the average household in Chicago... but of course, they had broadband available many years before most people in Chicago. The difference is the politicians, both local and national, see the value of providing their citizens with connectivity.
Finland had a much higher percentage of landline-less communities a little over a decade ago. They responded by building one of the best cellular networks in the world. Additionally, they saw the value of broadband and integrated that into their infrastructure too, despite very low population densities and long, cold distances.
Whereas in the US, politicians seem to find it better to leave it to the "freemarket", as dictated to them by the deep pocketed telecoms and media conglomerates who tell the elected official what is best
"Last I heard, most of these countries have per minute phone service, and bandwidth usuage caps as low as 6G per month. Also, in the US, High speed internet is considered a luxury. Of course, I also know of people who spend $100(US)+ but the extra $25-30 for Internet is too much."
*Gasp*
Here in France, we have unlimited phone service, unlimited 20Mbits bandwidth usage, 100+ TV channels.. ALL for 30 Euros / Month.
No extra charges.
Oh, and the modem is given for free, and is a wifi access point.
Alexis 'jeriqo' BRET
Sure... lots more area to cover, though
France 2004 gdp: ~1.7T
USA 2004 gdp: ~11T
France sq miles: 211k
USA sq miles: 3537k
France gdp/sq mi: $8M
USA gdp/sq mi: $3M
Why should Verizon be forced to sublease below market value the lines they invested money into, digging up streets and putting up poles.
First problem, Verizon (well all the bells together before they were broken up) did not pay for all the digging to put those lines in, that cost was heavily subsidized by taxpayer money. The other problem with this argument is that the cost of putting all this copper in place was payed off a long long time ago, and it's dirt cheap to maintain.
Then further there is a very serious problem with this one part of it
sublease below market value
It's just not true. Quest for example sells basic phone service for 12.50, they then sell the raw copper loop for $15. And that loop will only be able to serve DSL and thus make it profitable and worth while for the CLEC if they are within range of the CO. Most are not, and since the FCC just took away all access to the ILEC metro fiber assets (because they deemed them unesesarry) only phone service can be offered to customer out of range of the the CO, so the CLEC's and ISP's were forced to resell the ILEC's DSL at tariffed prices (this also means they can have that customer for phone service). With DSL, Quest sells 1.5M/768k DSL for $19.95 for a year and then $39.95 after that, the "below market value" price for just the loop (no email, bandwidth, tech support, etc.) that a competetive ISP must pay is $19.95 (a big discount from $19.95 as you can tell) for a year and then $33 after that. Oh, and then they have to pay for the ATM trasit of customer bandwidth at $250 per Mbit, plus port fees. That and the FCC just took these off of the tarif rates, next year, Qwest and all the other ILECS will be able to set the prices to whatever they want, and customers will be completely screwed because they will have very little choice.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now. - Ed Howd