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."

Comments

Re:How can we change this?

[Skater]

Wait. Is it a problem? 10 times faster doesn't mean much to me, since almost all of the delays I experience now are the remote server being slow to respond rather than a pipe that's too small. I have 4 megabit download speed, with the option of going to 5 megabit, and I've never felt like I need it any faster.

I don't download large ISOs or anything very often, but maybe if I did I'd feel differently.

Re:Here the problem arises.

[LilGuy]

Believe it or not they're working on it. SBC is currently in the process of rolling out fiber to the home in Houston. They plan to have everyone in the city connected up to the new equipment within a couple years. I asked the technician that was out at my house how much they planned on charging for their new "limitless" connection and he said it was going to run the same as what we were currently paying.

I found it hard to believe at first, but now I see they really have no choice. DSL can only go so far, and Time Warner was running them out of the internet biz by ramping up speeds. So in the end everyone will end up with uber-fast fiber connections and pay about the same $40-$60.

Then again, that was Houston. There are quite a few cities nationwide that aren't nearly as cut-throat. Some that have only 1 "high-speed" option, that isn't really even high-speed.

But I'd say, once the word gets out about those new blazing fast connections, EVERYONE is going to want one, and the demand overcome the cost of all the telcos upgrading their lines and equipment.

All this IMHO

wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

I just came back from a vacation in france, at my parent's house, in a lost "village" in the middle of the alps. There are maybe 4 farms on a square kilometer. What do you know, over there I had 20meg dsl line with wireless hotspots. Their cost: 12 euro a month (around 15 bucks).

Why do I pay 40 bucks in LA for a crappy connection ? The US has guaranteed local monopolies to corporations who have zero interest in investing anything in infrastructure when they can bring it insane profits on obsolete products. Telcos in the US function like energy and healthcare companies. They are not a public service like in most european countries, it's a racket that gets blank support from politicians to milk a captive market as much as they can.

Re:wrong.

[glaucopis]

Rural areas in the US can have good connections, too -- most of Vermont, for one, pays less and gets more than those of us in urban areas.

VTel offers 1.3 Mbps DSL throughout nearly all of Vermont and is introducing 8 Mbps DSL into the state for $34.95 a month. Whether you get the 1.3 or 8 Mbps for the price depends on whether 8 Mbps is available in your area yet; you get the highest speed available. And they often offer promotional two year contracts at a substantially lower rate. Not as good as your French connection, but (depending on your location in the 1.3 vs 8 Mbps rollout scheme) either better than average or wildly good by US (urban) standards. And connections are available just about everywhere; my parents' summer place at the end of a gravel road on a lake 30 minutes from the nearest town and 50 from anything that could be called a city has access.

And note that Vermont is an extremely rural and extremely mountainous state, to the point where cell phone coverage is pretty spotty at any distance from major highways, and yet they still have excellent internet coverage. I think I heard that VTel got some grants initially to put in all the infrastructure, which explains the good coverage, but for some reason they persist in offering their service at a reasonable rate and in rolling their profits into actively upgrading that infrastructure. It seems almost un-American.

Re:I wonder

[revscat]

And if socialism works so well, why isn't Johnson's "Great Society" a reality today? The democrats had decades to implement plans to eliminate poverty, racism and social injustice from the federal level... so why isn't poverty eliminated?

Because the goal was to reduce it, not eliminate it. Poverty can (probably) never be eliminated, and outside of political speeches no serious student of public policy would ever make such a claim. This sounds suspiciously close to a straman.

Be that as it may the results of the Great Society are still alive and well, thank you. AFDC, WIC, Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start, etc. These have all been successes. Between 1963 and 1970 America saw a full 10% decrease in the number of Americans living below the poverty line; this was the most dramatic decrease in the nation's history.

This is where most liberals miss one of the key points of federalism. If you want to live in the Great Society, do it from a state or local level.

But you said it yourself: the economy of scale means that the federal government can do it more efficiently than the states can.

Fundamentally this is an ideological issue. Libertarianism works in theory, socialism works in practice. For evidence you need look no further than the world at large. And whereas it is nice to believe that we have fully earned every penny of our paychecks, the simple fact is that we owe our personal successes not only to our own hard work but also to the society as a whole and the government which set up the support structures, from educational systems to laws on corporate governance to SEC regulations and fair hiring regulations.

So to sum it all up, it's not just a cost/benefit issue. It's also a political, moral and "freedom" issue. Even if the cost/benefit analysis looks good your solution (for me at least) fails on the other issues.

So like the OP, you are willing to sacrifice personal (and even social) gain for the sake of ideological purity. You would reject something that works better for no reason other than the adjective attached to it.

Pardon me if I think that is... silly. What is the justification for a belief system if not the underlying belief that it works better?

Re:Some minor defenses...

[Erioll]

I have no doubt your numbers are correct, but at the same time can the 2/3 vs 3/4 difference in urbanization really account for the difference in penetration and pricing? I would argue not. While there has been a focus on greater communications infrastructure by government (just look at Alberta Supernet for a dramatic example. Services every community in the province with high-speed internet that has any of a school, a library, or a medical centre), IMO it definitely was the co-location and promotion of competition that made the REAL difference. Telus (as well as the other big incumbents in Canada) fought tooth and nail against co-location, but it NEEDED to happen, and it has succeeded (somewhat).

But this gets into a bigger discussion about government involvment in industry. Personally I think government's main role in the market should be to encourage competition, and BREAK UP monopolies, not encourage them. With almost-no exceptions, there are always better results from MORE competition, and MORE players in the market, rather than fewer. And when the "natural" market starts creating dominant giants, either introduce factors to break their monopoly with new initiatives (mandating co-location would be one example of such), or break the companies up (more extreme, and necessary only when the previous option fails). But above all they should be ENSURING that meaningful competition always occurs.

Governments have an essential role in economies completely seperate from government spending and federally (or provincial/state) run companies. More competition is almost always good, and should be the government's PRIMARY responsability (aside from money flow), not encouraging monopolies.