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We Don't Need No Stinkin' Broadband
Ant writes "eMarketer has an article on The Yankee Group's analysis on why some Americans aren't feeling the broadband love. It was based on Ipsos Public Affairs. 45% of Americans say it's simply too expensive. 30% say that they just don't want it. 14% say they feel dial-up is adequate for their needs. Less than 10% are not able to get broadband access in their area. Five percent insist broadband is "too complicated". Another 5% aren't even sure why they don't have it..."
29% of broadband users needed to refresh Slashdot more rapidly so that they could obtain a first post.
I mean, if all you do is dial up for 5 minutes each day to download your email, I guess a 5 buck a month service suffices. But I imagine that in 15 years, such a meager usage would be almost unimaginable.
You have to have a reason to require broadband. Websites load slowly with dialup, so that's not a convincing argument. Things like video blogs that use online recording through the browser don't work with dialup - while many people won't care about this, a new mom trying to send video of her kids to family members only to see choppy images with no audio may be convinced by such an argument. Some people won't have a killer app, won't upgrade, and - even though I make a living off of high speed networking - I can't say I blame them. Some people just don't need the newest technologies, and likely never will.
Mooniacs for iOS and Android
is that once you try it, you can not go back to dialup.
If you haven't had broadband yet and only dialup, upgrading doesn't seem necessary. But once you've experienced the speed of broadband and the convenience of not having to dial up and log in, you'll never want to go back.
'For we walk by faith, not by sight.' II Corinthians 5:7
I'm still on dial-up, as I have been for the last 8 years (at this address.) I see offers come and go, but they still boil down to an eventual rate of about $50/mo. I only need that speed now and then and it's hard to justify.
It's about the same with me as it has been with cell phones. I've had those 3 different times and always cancelled because I was shelling $35+/month and using the phone for less than 10 minutes a month. Only when seeking a new job or apartment do they seem genuinely necessary. I've got a pay-as-you-go plan now and I used about 20 minutes a month for each of December and January, so this is much more to my liking of ~$10/month. For service.
I'd like high speed for downloading Microsoft's bloated patches (why are these things always 15 MB? for a "few" fixes?) or the latest virus scan patterns (again, why are these things 5-10 MB?) Seems there's always a hell of a lot more than seems necessary, but I suppose developers of today didn't grow up trying to maximize 8K and could care less how much shit is in things as it's not their problem. For the most part, I get by and that's all I need.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
It's all a matter of priorities. I'll bet that of those people not willing to pay $25 or $30 for entry-level broadband, a good portion of them spend $50, $60, or more on cable or satellite TV.
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
14.4k was for the rich, and we were lucky enough to even own a computer! Harrumph, these techie-wizbang whipper snappers...downloading everything in sight, always wanting things FASTER and FASTER!. Harrumph I say.
Yeah I noticed that too, but you need to realize that some of the percentages overlap. The article page shows two separate graphs. Unfortunately, the /. editor decided to include percentages from both...
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I'm from semi-rural Alaska (though I go to college in New England), and in my neck of the woods, it's usually cheaper to get broadband access. There are a couple of phone companies who service the area, and if you catch one of them at the right time with the right promotion, you can get DSL + new phone service, or cable + cable modem, at the same price as dial up, or maybe slightly more. My family did this, if only so that we could be online at any time without tying up the phone lines. That's what was the most painful about dial up, not being able to use the phone at the same time. Long download times are a pain, but can be delt with; missed phone calls cannot.
We recently got DSL access to my house, and as soon as the option was there took it, since they were only letting a few households from the area on at the time. However, now that I'm out of the house, I think the only good thing about my family having DSL is the phone issue: otherwise, we have a lot of bandwidth going unused. But at least when my dad "screws up the internet," I can call and walk him through getting it working without having to hang up every time he wants to check to make sure it works.
Homer Simpson: "Oh, people can come up with statistics to prove anything, Kent. 14% of people know that."
Old people.......have mod points too. Good luck.
Table-ized A.I.
Sites that work just fine at 56K:
The primary use of broadband is to deliver ads. At the consumer's expense. No wonder 30% of users don't want it.
Not everybody lives in the service area for PacBell DSL.
And not everybody is savvy or patient enough to get the $15/month plan.
I try to renew at $15/month , and the dumbass on the phone says I can only renew for $35/month. I call again, and I can renew for $25/month but only if it's the second tuesday of the month and my right foot wearing a shoe. What to non-techies do in this situation?
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
The reason for the lackluster demand is that animated gifs make perfectly good porn. Most porn is just back and forth movements of the same kind over and over. Animated gifs can repeat the same 10 frames over and over for the same effect. What is needed is to transform people into a species that has more varied sexual movements, such as figure 8's that morph into W's, etc. Butterflies have the right idea; they do it in the air in a frenzied dizzy kind of sky dance (although JavaScript may be able to mimic this without lots of frames). As usual, the real problem is the damned humans. Until the marketing department figures this out, they will continue to drive Honda Civics.
Table-ized A.I.
Th scrt to usng dlup efctvly is to skp lttrs. Tngs ld fstr whn u skp lttrs.
Table-ized A.I.
In Canada I get broadband and +70 TV channels for 80 looney Canadian dollars a month. Posters from other countries like Korea, Japan and some European countries have posted in the past about how, relative to U.S. rates, broadband cable is cheap in their respective countries.
So what's up south of the border?
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
Price was an issue until just recently. SBC/ATT dropped to $13, and Verizon dropped to $15/mo. That's less than large ISPs (Earthlink, MSN, AOL) are charging for dial-up, and only slightly more than most others (Netzero, Juno, etc) with crappy dial-up service and software.
The only excuse now is if you travel a lot, and need access all across the country.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Old people...
Maybe they don't want to pay $25.00 a month (Plus the FUSF fee, plus the taxes at $49.99/month, plus some sales tax for some equipment which you never used) to have the ability to browse an Internet full of advertisements.
Back in my day, a cup of coffee cost $0.50. Now it costs $2.50 at Starbucks and they burn the fucking beans. $2.50 for burnt coffee? And you get the pleasure of standing in line for 10 minutes, because all of the other coffee shops shut down.
"It's burnt coffee at Starbucks, let's be honest about it. If you get burnt coffee in a coffee shop, you call a cop. You say, "It's the bottom of the pot. I don't drink from the bottom of the pot. But when it's burnt at Starbucks, they say, "Oh, it's a blend. It's a blend." It's a special bean from Argentina....."
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
Repeat, 2 years in the making.
Also: I don't know what all the bitching is about (from the old story): Even President Bush jumped into the fray last month, calling for affordable, universal high-speed access by 2007.
I mean he *CALLED* for it people, and it's just one year away.
TK
Go ahead - try to send video of your newborn baby to your relatives across the country using 56k.
First step is using 56k to go to usps.com to look up shipping rates. Second step is using 56k to go to froogle.google.com to look up prices for DVD-R or DVD+R media. If it's that important, and getting broadband to your home would involve a $100,000 setup fee to move from the country to the city because of the real estate price difference, then mailing DVDs is cheaper than getting broadband to your home. If it works for AOL...
and non-internet options start getting really, really expensive.
What "non-internet options" are you talking about? And "really, really expensive" compared to what?
I can understand how non-broadband users wouldn't feel much need for it. I do think that broadband is one of those things that many people find indispensible only after exposure. Broadband has changed the way I approach the internet. Google is always there -- a question comes to mind and within seconds I can be finding answers. I need a phone number -- dexonline or company website. Internet radio is amazing for people who aren't interested in what is commonly broadcast on regular radio. I'm sitting here in my dirt floor pottery studio in the middle of a field-- VOIP, broadband, slashdot ... blah blah blah (I have a 400' wireless hop to a neighbor who lets me use his cable). Without broadband, I wouldn't have a phone out here -- at least not a price I'm willing to pay. My cell only works if I stand on a ladder, put the thing on speakerphone, and aim the antenna toward a cell tower. It's nice when I'm playing on work days -- my office can call me and thus, I can play more. Broadband is as essential to me as electricity anymore.
That was a lot of tangent -- anyway, my point is that broadband is one of those things many might find they can't live without only after experiencing pervasive access.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
I need broadband because I'm used to it and I don't want to waste my time with dialup. For many, who don't use the internet for their jobs and don't see how the cost can be offset by the supposed benefits, it's hard to justify spending another $20 or more for broadband. Maybe we just need to get everyone an "earn a fortune with your ebay business" package they'll subscribe in due course.
Not all areas have the same deals that the metropolitan areas have. I wish I could get DSL for less than $30/month. Check this out:
http://home.shentel.net/DSL/cost.cfm
It doesn't help that this one company runs the telephone, cable TV and internet access for the entire county, and they refuse to offer internet access via cable for faster speed.
Ramen
It's still not fast enough for quality video and too expensive.
,overpriced.
Blame BIG business and their conspiracy to kill munibroadband. Yes, real conspiracies do exist . FTTH should be everywhere but it's not because the cable and phone companies are cherry picking and they want to keep prices HIGH. No good to shareholders selling inexpensive broadband to poor areas. Might anger the people on the other side of town.
As long as Bush and republicans are wine and dined by these people it wont matter. There is no REAL competition. It's just like Cable Tv
The normals don't want "broadband". Just like they don't want "cable". They want sports shows, movies, cooking shows, 24 hour news rotations. Cable is just a means to an end. They didn't want "the Internet", either, or even "the Web" - just email, porn, or whatever their personal favorite websites happen to be. When broadband is a necessary means to some end, some killer app, they'll want broadband.
Markets are driven by consumer demand, not by producer supply.
--
make install -not war
I still use dialup and have watched as many web sites have become completely unusable, due to 500k flash files needed just to navigate around. Furthermore, web site designers seem to have completely forgotten about dialup users -- Yahoo mail for example refocuses the cursor on the username login box AFTER it loads tons of stuff. The end result is that if you use dialup that might be 30 seconds after the page started loading... viola, you are typing elsewhere and the focus is suddenly stolen from you and you find yourself unexpectedly typing in the login textbox...
I know it's hard for the /. crowd to understand because network is typicaly more simple to jack into than dialup. It's this whole PPPoE thing sold by the likes of Earthlink and other ISPs or worse yet AOL Broadband that gives the impression of something rather complex that makes broadband so much so less attractive, esp AOL with slow DNS servers that make the net look like "the slug.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Clickity click click...
Not any more.
BOFH ( comcast )
emt 377 emt 4
The savings to companies and organizations that come from putting information on their web sites are huge. Printing costs a ton, even today. People at desks to talk to the public cost more. Actually keeping less-sold items in stock across the continent instead of just shipping them when wanted is incredibly expensive.
More and more companies will reach the point where it's almost impossible to get your business done without using the internet. How long will companies accept resumes on paper? How long will banking without the internet be reasonable? When will doing your taxes without it become impractical?
Even beyond that, in fifteen years most of our traditional communication systems will be on the net. Telephones and television will be run over the net whether you know it or not.
The net isn't a single medium like TV. It's more like electricity. I don't have a television, but I can't see how I'd run my life without a net connection. I'd have to go so many places to pick up pamphlets and forms, sit on hold for hours so much more often, order unusual items I'd like to buy at the store and wait a week for them to be delivered to that location...
The people who don't use the net at all are literally dying off. The people who do use it won't be able to comprehend the lifestyle of the small minority who still don't, any more than I can really comprehend people who don't use ATMs. The bigger and more capable the net gets, the less sense it makes to maintain a whole separate infrastructure just to support the holdouts.
The closest match to this situation today would be Japan. Can you get by in Japan without a cell phone? Maybe, but I doubt the average Japanese person would have any idea how. That's "unimaginability" for you. They couldn't imagine it.
Yup. It should be cheap as hell and everywhere.
The U.S. is determined to make itself obsolete - and sooner rather than later! That's why the looting is so fast and furious these days. Eventually we'll end up just one more population of rioting people demanding economic parity like other third world labor countries are doing right now. Just watch how the U.S. becomes irrelevant during the next century thanks to our inability to innovate thanks to laws that favor the few against the many.
It's all about the price of labor, and driving that price down, down, down...
A lot of technology gets talked about on Slashdot is ultimately pinned to what some shmoe worker at Kwik-E-Mart can afford, and if s/he cannot afford it don't expect that technology to become ubiquitous.
this tells me one thing - lots of people wont pay for a connection when they can get what they need done on somebody else's network...
45% of Americans say it's simply too expensive.
30% say that they just don't want it.
14% say they feel dial-up is adequate for their needs.
10% are not able to get broadband access in their area.
05% percent insist broadband is "too complicated".
05% aren't even sure why they don't have it..."
===
109% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
Why would it be "almost unimaginable" that there will be people who won't make much use of the Internet 15 years from now?
It might not be uninmaginable that there are people who don't need broadband access to you, but it could be to people trying to run a dialup ISP. Just like there will always be a market for albums recorded on audio cassette, but at some point no record label will care.
After a certain point, there are simply not enough subscriibers in an area to justify having a local access number in a town. And when that happens it becomes more cost effective to have broadband instead, even if you don't need it. The cable company I work for has cable modem service at 256Kb down/64Kb up for $24.95 a month. Most people would not even consider such access "high-speed internet" but at a cost of only a few dollars more than AOL or Earthlink and speeds of up to five times faster than a modem with an always-on connection that doesn't tie up the phone line, it's a no brainer. The only real drawback is the service isn't portable if you're away for home. I expect low end service like this to eventually replace dialup ISP's, but I expect it will be wireless-based to cater to the buseiness user who needs access from anywhere.
Keeping your OS (at least Windows or Linux) up to date and patched pretty much *requires* broadband. I think that's the reason there are a lot of vulnerable machines out there.
I have asked several people who are still on dial-up how they keep their systems up to date, and every one of them has said that they "turned that damn update thing off!" because it was so annoying and made it impossible to do anything useful.
Unless you are geeky enough to care about patching and manage your limited dial-up bandwidth, you are not going to update over a dial-up.
When I was still on dial-up, I compared the cost of keeping a Debian system up to date over the dial-up to the cost of DSL, and it was a wash. That's what motivated me to get broadband, it cost the same as far as keeping my system updated, and I could use it for the rest of the month at no extra cost.
But most folks don't care about staying updated, so they see no need for broadband.
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
NO! That's completely UNTRUE. It's trivially easy to go to Verizon or SBC's website and verify this, so it's really ridiculous you got modded up for saying something so easily disproven. It is a 12-month commitment, but that's not a big deal.
I'm willing to bet you've never had DSL. Cable companies are fond of "renting" you a modem perpetually, but DSL companies almost always give you one for free when you sign up (minus $10-20 for shipping).
And, like dial-up, you can walk into a store and buy a DSL modem if you chose.
I would have, if that were the case, but IT'S NOT. You're just oh-so-wrong.
If you keep your eyes shut, you won't see much. Try LOOKING, and you will see them.
http://www22.verizon.com/ForHomeDSL/channels/dsl/
https://swot.sbc.com/swot/dslMassMarketCatalog.do
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
But while I'm not at all surprised by this, I think the fact is that the US will eventually have cheap broadband like it or not.
The problem with broadband for many Americans is that they don't see the advantage in it. Many Americans can afford to pay for many of the things that people in other countries might only be able to get by downloading them freely off the net. So, in a way Americans have blinders on with regards to the possibilities of the Internet.
An excellent, and I would even say profound, example is academic journals. An American could be forgiven for thinking that all universities across the globe have libraries with stacks and stacks of academic journals just like the local state university library does. In fact, that's not the case at all. In many nations, broadband is enabling a great leap in educational quality that gives millions of students the chance to study meaningful cutting-edge research for the first time in their local academic history. Americans naturally have a hard time imagining what that means or how important it is because they already have practically free access to these things. Anybody in the States can use the university library after all. So, for an American, the issue of getting journals on the Internet seems somewhat irrelevant.
So, broadband is definitely something that the US is only going to accept reluctantly, but slowly or not it is most certainly going to come even if the US is the last place on earth to get decent broadband penetration which I could easily imagine having just visited there and having been forced to use a modem on a number of occasions.
In that time, I'm amazed at how many services or features on the modern OS X Tiger Mac are network-reliant. All those cute Widgets pull in data from the net and really cease to function without internet connectivity.
This was illustrated for me vividly when my parents moved from a well-served community in Florida to rural South Carolina. They live near a lovely little town with miles of scenic cotton fields (Elloree is the town - tres cute), but there's only one internet provider in town. They have some crazy expensive 'business' DSL for the little patch of a town, but only a wireless microwave scheme for the rest of the surrounding area: http://www.ntinet.com/
So, they're on dial-up which is an insanely slow 33.6-ish and now she isn't really able to log on and use, say, iChat or Skype or even see my latest photographs ( http://homepage.mac.com/nevermore/ ).
My mum never thought she needed broadband before, but now longs for the day we can stay in touch quickly, easily and (fairly) cheaply. Broadband at $50 monthly isn't sooooo much, is it?
If you've had access to a connection with real bandwidth - something like the 1Gbit connections you get in good university computer labs - then you know what the internet can really be like: every loads instantly, videos play with no buffering or delay, 10Mb downloads take a couple of seconds, latency for gaming hovers around 20ms, and so on. But if all you've had is Earthlink or AOL DSL (which is NOT always on, but instead basically dials up via PPPOE on demand), then you've never really experienced broadband at all.
A-Bomb
People are stupid and scared of technology, nothing else.
that is all....
flamebait? me? never.....
What you must not forget is that while US area is bigger US population is also bigger. The correct measure should be population density.
:)
Sweden has a higher broadband penetration than USA while:
USA population density is 32 persons / km^2
Sweden population density is 20 persons / km^2
I say that one big difference is government spending / grants, etc. Local municipaty energycompanies diging down "city nets" over which private companies deliver internet, etc.
Also it feels like there is much more hype around broadband here and there are common uses that have a great appeal, such as piracy of music and movies. Almost everyone is downloading stuff from the internet for free ("piracy") (something like 80% of all visitors to the biggest newssite here, aftonbladet.se). We even have our own piracy party that is trying to get into the parliament this year
I said over ten years ago that the most important thing that the US government could have done is to socialize the internet connectivity across the country the same way that they have socialized asphalt connectivity by means of Interstate highway systems circa 1930-1940.
Same kind of approach plays in with the Post Office. Everyone gets mail delivery no matter how remote or how dense the population. Not all mail is gauranteed delivered in 3 days but it's delivered.
I think we, as a nation, could have done well to take that stance that everyone will at least have a standardized connection to their homes such that everyone has the capability of getting a modest DSL like connection into their home for a fixed fee (with no trimmings) much like you have garbage collection fees or road maintenance fees from the local government.
What the individual decides to do after this, higher bandwidth, ISP services like portals and email.. can all be managed in the consumer market. But at least you have the road available.
This country experienced huge changes economically and socially as the result of the US Highway infrastructure. I believe that creating an analogy of an internet infrastructure would cause the same kind of impact on this nation. Right now we don't have such a mechanism. The growth of internet businesses and society is at a strangehold based on what you can afford to pay. It's economically restricted.
Hate to sound like a socialist, but sometimes I think there are some things that can be considered best if socialized.
NTT provides broadband access for a fraction of the price that we get it for in the U.S.
Maybe that has something to do with the fact that Japan was essentially reduced to mostly rubble 60 years ago while we in the U.S. deal with OSP that is both that age and has never been properly maintained.
But here is a good example of why most people don't get even DSL. I'll present two cases here, the first my own, the second that of a relative in the same state.
Verizon said that I was too far from the central office to get DSL. "That's funny" said I since I could basically throw rocks at the central office.
Did two go arounds on this until finally I got the bright idea to call repair and get them to do an MLT. Sure enough, MLT said I was less than half a mile from the CO. I asked repair to enter the distance into my customer record and then called Verizon DSL back. Lo and behold - I now qualified.
In my aunts case, the home had DSL before she bought it and the previous subscriber had the line disconnected. When my aunt tried to get DSL installed she was told by Verizon that they she was too far out. I told her to use the trick I'd discovered and sure enough, two weeks later she had here DSL.
I've since ditched Verizon entirely but this demonstrates that in the case of DSL, if you don't know how the system works, you're screwed.
I'm a consultant in central Illinois, USA. Once you're outside of Chicago with it's associated 'burbs, your options for broadband become pretty limited. If you're near Peoria, Springfield, Champaign, Decatur, or Kankakee, you have some options with DSL and cable broadband. Some of the small towns, populations > 200, also have cable, but it's typically only because some mom and pop cable company built it up and then. SBC offers DSL only within a couple of miles of town. There is a subdivision of more than 500 homes right outside of Peoria and Bartonville, both of which have DSL. Yet the subdivision doesn't. Until the cable provider brought in a couple of T-1's about 3 years ago, no options existed. Yet this is less than 3 miles as the crow flies from Bartonville. And there is a new switch and fiber (both less than 10 years old) running right along the road outside the subdivision. And we all know that SBC isn't readily doing any landline buildout for areas they "already cover." Verizon covers some of the towns in the region, like Canton. But guess what? You can't even get proper caller ID for your PBX from Verizon in that region. Antiquated equipment with no likelihood of change for a while. There are also numerous other telcos involved in the region, none of who provide services beyond basic voice grade lines if you're outside of town limits. Insight (ATT) provides high-speed services via cable, and they were doing build-outs in central Illinois, but they have a formula that they use to determine whether they're going to invest. They look for existing fiber, but will add as needed. However, more than 75% of the towns in the region don't fit their profile. If the town's population is less than 1,000, meaning a likely household count of less than 300, chances are you will never see cable. Insight even does a drive-though, counting satellite dishes if the numbers get close. If they see too many, forget it, they're not returning. Riverton has cable and DSL and is just 4 miles from the city limits of Springfield, the state capital. Yet if you live only a mile outside of Riverton, you have no broadband options. The list goes on. Effected population? Hundreds of thousands in Illinois alone. And they don't all have the option to "move to town for a better connection."
> Another 5% aren't even sure why they don't have it..."
What about the ones who think they have it but don't, and the ones who don't think they have it but do?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Keep in mind that the "keep it expensive" mindset in America's utilities corporations also means that the telcos are going to raise the price on dialup, through 2 means: periodic pushes to increase the costs (base price or fee) of basic service, and mergers of dialup companies producing a steadily more monopolistic environment.
A basic phone in the US is probably $20. On top of that, basic dialup is $15. DSL is starting to dip down to $35. And around here, the cost of basic phone service is going to go up again, perhaps a relatively large increase this time. For myself, I'll have to strongly consider making the change just to avoid paying more money.
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]