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Internet Connectivity Outside of the United States
Ant writes "A Yahoo! news story says that nearly 60 publications in countries bear the PC World name, or are associated with it in some way. The editors at several of them were asked to report how their readers get online. Not surprisingly, the report indicates that many countries are substantially ahead of the United States in online access." From the article: "For example, in the United Kingdom, you can buy DSL service with a download speed of up to 24 megabits per second. In Denmark, some people have fiber-optic connections as fast as 100 mbps. And in Italy and Spain, broadband service is cheap, and dial-up service is free (except for the cost of the local call). Still, many countries have their own connection quirks ..."
As any libertarian will tell you, government regulation and meddling in a market can only hurt consumers.
It's for this reason that the United States, with fewer government controls has a superior and chepaer broadband, telecoms network...oh what? Crap.
Turns out for some things regulation is better - look at how a poor country like Cuba has better healthcare (with lower infant mortality rates) than the wealthy US.
Oh, and I note they don't have sweden on the list where (last I heard) you could get 100Mbps for something like 30 euros/month in a large city.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
You mean Americans don't have to bring an extra long network cord from home for internet access abroad?! :P
One of the things to keep in mind is the size of most of these countries that we're talking about. It's a heck of a lot easier to roll out high speed internet when you're doing it in an urban area, you can blanket a ton of customers with a lot less cabling...
In any major city in the USA, if you drive 20 minutes you're in the middle of no where.
It's just not feasable to provide high speed broadband everywhere.
Now... There is a lot that can be done in the areas that already have broadband... I agree we can see better speeds and for the most part most of the cable and DSL networks already support it but the providers are still in debt with the gear that they have so they don't upgrade the network just yet...
But whenever I try and test my connection it comes up between 1 ~ 5 mbps. Did you get those numbers from the providers or the people? And, most importantly, is this something that consumers experience world-wide or are Cox & Comcast raping me by the side of the road in a desert?
And, in rural areas, households can be miles away from each other.
Yes you can get 24mbit but very few people have access to that. Many are lucky to get 1Mb and many on MaxDSL are having terrible problems trying to keep their 4-6Mb connection stable. Those on cable are better served with 10Mbit being pretty cheap.
Almost everyone I know is on broadband but none are on 24mbit and most on 1Mb.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
So Does Canada, But I'm still paying $30/month (cdn) for 10mbps down, 2.5mbps up ADSL.
I like the "upto" 24mbps in the UK, reality is that only a small percentage of inner cities are currently enabled for that sort of speed. Dont get me wrong it's coming to the sticks but I live in a field and I want it NOW!!
They have someone run one of those tubes to their house!
This space intentionally left (almost) blank.
Where the hell is our inexpensive 100 MB internet connection?! I'm stuck paying $40+ per month for a semi-decent Road Runner (ick) connection.
If anyone actually has information on this, that'd be nice to know.
Here, if you drive 20 minutes, you're two blocks from where you started.
Precisely. But a lot of people won't get your point, so I'll spell it out:
Broadband in rural areas is expensive. It requires the same investment for a fraction of the returns, and often would be run at a loss for more than a decade. The US has a substantial rural population, and it's nigh impossible to get them broadband right now. Cable and DSL don't reach them, and the cost of running any sort of high speed service to those locations is prohibitive.
Even our cities aren't as densely-packed as those in many of the nations the article is comparing us to. Urban sprawl is rampant here because, again, we have the space for it.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
Sounds good - I could crank up by Dolby Digital amp above 1-2 without having to worry about upsetting the neighbours. I dream of Spinal Tap and having volume buttons that go to 11.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
You can get ADSL2+ in [some parts of] Denmark. You can get 10 Mbps/512 Kbps for 299 DKK (~52 US$) or 20 Mbps/512 Kbps for 499 DKK (~86 US$), and that includes free telephony...
I'm "stuck" with what my employer wants to pay for, which for the moment is 4096 Kbps/512 Kbps, which is not bad at all. I'd love to get 20 Mbps down though ;)
Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
Nothing about France's DSL in TFA.
That's strange, because France has one of the best European DSL, if not the best.
For 30 euros per month, you get the maximum of what your line can technically support (up to 24Mbits if you are near the ISP equipment), with lots of services included.
That's with the Freebox, a DSL modem made by Proxad, based on Linux. Among the free services, you have:
- unlimited net access (no quota)
- unlimited phone calls to land lines in France, and many lines in countries (it costs zero to call a mobile phone in USA for example)
- tv access if you are in a "degrouped" area (sorry I don't have the english term)
That's what we call "triple play offer". And they are now migrating to "quadriple pay offers", the new boxes are wifi, and a wifi-gsm phone can be bought.
Pretty cool, no ? I wonder why this is not in the article.
Yann
I live in the US. I have 24 Mbps service at home (unless it has gotten faster again while I haven't been looking). My city also has free wireless access, but I don't even bother.
You have to keep in mind that when people say "in Denmark" or "in the UK", that doesn't mean universal availability, it means that in some places, you can get that. You also have to keep in mind that nations like Denmark or the UK have a larger middle class than the US as percentage of the population, so that, across the whole population, they may be better off, but the actual group for whom things like Internet access matters, may be served about equally in both places.
i sorta like not having to pay 50-70% of my income in taxes even if my broadband bill is $20/mo higher.
Look, we know that many countries have better internet access than we do. However, they often have much higher population densities making it less expensive to roll out the network. Other countries often have better cell reception as well. Would anyone like to propose a solution to this?
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
The United States has more pure land mass than all of the countries listed put together.
Yes, but what about countries which who's land mass is large - but a non-pure alloy of some sort?
(Countries like Australia are a similar size to the US minus alaska, but with a population of only 20 million if you want to play the 'big open country' game).
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
According to about.com, Europe has 134 people per square mile, while North America only has 32 people per square mile.
Simple economics would dictate that for the same monetary equivalent, a provider could serve more people in Europe than they could in North America.
The North American ISPs aren't building out higher speed networks not because their customers don't want it, but rather the expense of extending those networks to their customers over a longer distance could not be realized in a reasonable time with the current pricing structures.
There are only 10 types of people in the world: Those who understand binary, and those who don't.
"Turns out for some things regulation is better - look at how a poor country like Cuba has better healthcare (with lower infant mortality rates) than the wealthy US"
I'm sure these statistics are very accurate, as Cuba is known for its open government information and the complete accountability and ability to criticise and evaluate government programs without any restrictions.
Where were you when the voynix came?
Do we have to have these comparisons thrown at us all the time? IE The United States vs The World, round N?
I'd love to have a better connection here in the States. But what does that have to do with the bandwidth in the UK? Am I supposed to use this information in some valuable way?
I just want to brag a little... :)
At my condo we have gigabit fiber to the house, and 100MBit to the apartments. All apartments can buy either 10Mbit (for 210 SEK, 22.46, or $28.62), or 100Mbit (for 399 SEK, 42.68, or $54.38). And those speeds aren't "up to", they are guaranteed.
/ The Arrow
"How lovely you are. So lovely in my straightjacket..." - Nny
Puh-lease, I can't believe France is not mentioned.
/. itself many a time.
24 Mbps (ATM, 19.6 Mpbs IP) in all towns from 20K residents up, 150 free worldwide television channels (some of which HD), rock bottom prices for extra private channels, free VoIP plug-a-regular-phone-in communications to 28 countries including most of the western(ized) world and even mobile phones in the US (15 hours on the phone to a female friend in Australia ? 0.00 !)... and no catch in the contract.
All that, for 30 ($38) per month, with at least 4 different ISPs doing it, so the price is rapidly heading down to 25 if not 20.
Seriously. http://www.free.fr/. Not called "free" for nothing.
OK, so I guess this is not mentioned in the article because there is no PC World publication in France (apparently), where the IT magazines market is pretty saturated by some big press groups already. But really, this is information which has been cited on
I just came back from travelling through Guatemala and Belize. There were quite a few internet cafes that advertised as "hi-speed" but connections were so slow that it often took more than 5 minutes to upload a 2 meg photo to US servers. I had the same experience in Northern Belize. I hear the south of Belize actually has fast connections though...
78% of the US population lives in urban areas (2003)
f
42% lives in urban areas with more than 1 million people (2005)
compared to Italy (67%/20%), Spain (78%/23%) and Norway (76%/?), it doesn't look like there's an inherent disadvantage.
source: http://devdata.worldbank.org/wdipdfs/table3_10.pd
Be wary of any facts that confirm your opinion.
[astroturf]
Just let ISPs and Telcos charge more than once for each packet, depending on where its going and what its for. That way everybody's connectivity slows down, nobody really gets anything faster, and they pay more for that improvement.
That should fix things up nicely.
[/astroturf]
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
While that Australia has 20 million people and a whole lot of space, that vast majority of the population is located on the east coast. Most of the country is quite literally empty.
...and similar service is available in many areas in the US. I'm going to venture a guess that you're in a metro area where there is competition for the broadband market.
I do have to ask, though...does your government subsidize that? Canada has quite the reputation down here for taxing heavily and subsidizing things, and I'm genuinely curious whether you're paying more for that connection than you realize.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
many countries are substantially ahead of the United States in online access.
The USA were the first ones with access to the Internet. Every other country got their infrastructure built later. When the more recent infrastructures were built, they used the latest technologies available, which are obviously better than the early ones. So the result of this study is not surprising in my opinion.
Some countries who are building their Internet infrastructure these days are going straight to wireless. I'm thinking of African countries here. What is at stake for them is not performance, but cost. It's much cheaper to plant a few antennas than pull miles and miles of cable to reach each house. The USA is a large country, so they would have done the same probably, had the technology been available at the time.
For example, in the UK there's only a tiny number of people who are close enough to an enabled exchange to actually get 24Mbit/s connectivity.
Further, in spain my personal experience is that ADSL connectivity is more expensive than in the UK. Granted, there may be some offers available in major cities that make it look cheaper in absolute terms -- but then take into account the average wage in these countries and the real cost is higher.
To sum up: don't take these headlines and get paranoid, they are as misleading to what real people actually get as any sales brochure.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
I moved recently from the US to Spain, and I can't begin to tell how bad broadband providers are in this country compared to the US. It is WAY MORE EXPENSIVE (in absolute terms, but even more when you factor in the fact that here salaries are smaller), WAY LESS RELIABLE and the customer service is so BAD that congress had to pass a special law to deal with these very specific companies. For example, in most of the cases they charge you when you make a customer service call beyond (and I'm not talking about the cost of the local phone call, I mean that they actually make money out of this, even if the problem is on their side). And there is more, much more...
I have not read the article, but as far as Spain is concerned, I can tell it sucks.
Though the availability and affordability of broadband internet may be greater abroad. From my experiences traveling, internet culture seems to reside in the US and UK.
You may see better connectivity options in the EU, but you'll also see fewer personal computers actually connected to the internet.
-makoffee
You have to calculate that in other countries wages are higher. Also a lot of people here complain because is not covered by ADSL and it won't be for a very long time.
However It's about 6 years I have an optical fibres connection with 10 megabit bandwidth + 6 hours free phone calls. I spend 60 euros a month, but my connection is behind a NAT so I'm sort of limited.
These actually are accurate statistics about infant mortality. You have to remember that just because the US is closed off to Cuba, doesn't mean the rest of the world is not actively involved and able to investigate such problems. Any political activism would be dealt with harshly, Its time US understands that the embargo is harmful, and our lack of relations only helps Castro stay in power, since he can blame Cuba's poverty on the embargo.
DSL in the UK is alot better than it used to be, we got bumped up to 8Mb/512kb a couple of months back, and with a decent server I can usually get a sustained rate of over half that. Plus, if there are any bandwidth limits I have not managed to hit them (being trying my best with BT. The only time they contacted us about our connection was when someone (no names) got owned and started spewing out emails.
Then again given we are 200 yards from the telephone exchange in a rich London suburb, bring on the 24Mb 8-).
Come as you are, do what you must, be who you will.
Welcome to Paris, France, where the national Telco is testing FTTH (fiber to the Home) @ 2,5 GB down and 1,2 GB up...
4 ,39362365,00.htm
Cost is announced @ 70 Euro / month, no caps...
http://www.zdnet.fr/actualites/internet/0,3902077
Right now I have a 24 Mb DSL for 30 Euro/month. I regularly max up the connection.
In September the fiber offer will be available in my district, I will have to upgrade to PCI-x or something and get a 2 GB fiber card for the router. 4Gb cards are still too expensive, and that network is not scheduled for 4,5 GB internet till 2010.
Sad, no, when the most recent and speedy computer in the room is your router...
Well, I'm ready : Bring on the Pain !!!
I might even re-think about providing a small web-hosting solution to friends and customers...
Da5id
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
I'm just glad that I'm not limited to only 2GB of traffic on my ISP like a lot of them on that list. I probably use 2GB of traffic a month just on YouTube alone! Okay, maybe that's an exaggeration... Or maybe I owe YouTube a lot of money.
that vast majority of the population is located on the east coast
The people of Perth called, they just wanted to say hi.
It's obvious why the USA has such slow connection speeds: the pipes aren't wide enough! I'm going to write to Senator Stevens, the plumber of the Internet.
What we need are bigger trucks to dump our data on...
Whoops, I forgot the lesson Senator Stevens taught us. The Internet isn't made up of a bunch of trucks, it's made up of a bunch of tubes.
What we need are bigger tubes to dump our data in.
Well, the Swiss largest telecom company (Swisscom) has had a lot of flak
:-)
in the past year, because they where not increasing the speed fast enough,
accouring to IT professionals and journalists . We currently have 2400Kbps in
download speed, across all the installed ADSL lines (unless the owner
request less speed for less rent).
But what Swisscom has been trying for the past 5 years, is to cover the
largest share of the country possible. As of the end of June there are
1'253'000 ADSL lines for 8 Million people. Now that's coverage
"... It's just not feasable to provide high speed broadband everywhere..."
It is feasable, but it is going to be expensive.
Pretty much everyone I know (living in cities) have 100Mbit/s with five IP-adresses, option for fixed ip-adresses instead of from DHCP. About $40/month. Some houses have cable-connections for a bit less, but also a bit slower unless you pick some "fast" option.
My parents live in countryside and have to make do with 24 with one IP adress, for a bit less/month.
The same situation in most areas in Finland, although it seems they have more cable in the cities, and better DSL in the rural areas.
I notice no differentiation is made of current contracts and what is available to new subscribers.
At least in the European Union, new broadband systems are being deployed at an incredible pace. I expect this is the case in all developed countries. The speed bumps are quite phenomenal, while 768 Kb was the norm a few years back; most contract holders are now running 2-6 Mbits.
For instance: In Germany the normal offering for DSL now is 6 M download/1 Mb upload and in cities they are offering the new DSL2 with 16 Mbits download!
However most contracts run for 24 or at least 12 months; so it takes some time for a significant portion of the population to update to the new contracts and the faster speeds that are available.
Cheers, Duncan
Lets just take urban locations then, you know, places with lots of apartment blocks. Places where the population density is similar to the more dense parts of Scandinavia. Think of NYC New Jersey and LA. The lines already exist, and American telecom companies are already producing all the hardware (routers/switches) required.
Its still stuck at 1997 prices.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
Nokia, out of Finland! of all places, was able to capitalize on European regulation.
I would also argue with the point of free market efficiency- Are miles of dark fiber and bankrupt companies that installed them really more efficient?
We can't really have a free market economy until we can keep the Enrons and Archer-Midlands and Microsofts from cheating and manipulating the market.
right, but 50% of australia's population lives in 5 cities - 75% in 15 cities. in the u.s. 6% of the population lives in the 5 largest cities. not only do you have to look at land mass but also population distribution and localized density.
always mosh clockwise
Statements like this only hold for population centers, I live within 5 miles of a major UK city center and can't get either the heavily contended >10Mbps ADSL service or a more sane 2Mbps SDSL. I expect it is like that everywhere.
...
I'm paying $40 american for 3G/768M. What gives with that?
Fucking... I'm moving to Canada.
110100 1101000 1101000 1100110 0 1101111 1101000 1100011 1
PS. The table also shows the prevalence of dial up connection (most probably categorized as "Other") and the need to support it in Linux (yes, this was out of topic, but why else would I use "PS").
The problem isn't having a small or a large country, but how many (potential) customers you have per square km, right?
:-(
:-)
, 8.073578&spn=0.282005,0.553436&om=1
I.e. in a small country with a mall and distributed population, the average cost per custumer will be much higher than in the US.
Here in Norway it is friday afternoon and I'm about to drive up to our small mountain cabin for the weekend. At this cabin the local power company (Rauland Kraft) _by default_ pulls along an optic fibre (or at least a pvc tube where they can subsequently blow in the fiber) on every new installation.
The result is that I have IPTV over a 300 Mbit/s connection, but as of now I can only use up to 10/10 (up/down) Mbit for regular Internet traffic.
If you want to check your maps or GoogleEarth, you'll notice that Rauland is located in the Vinje community on the central mountain plateau of southern Norway: This is one of the least densely populated areas in the entire country, but we still get fiber to every home & cabin.
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&z=11&ll=59.698935
Terje
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"
Australia is way behind the broadband eightball, largely thanks to the dominant telco Telstra. Telstra owns the exchanges and the local loop, so has been the principal wholesaler of DSL to other service providers. They do so at a MAXIMUM connection speed of 1.5Mbps down, and 256kbps up. Many plans are even still at slower speeds than that. This is an artificial restriction of potential ADSL speeds (which are up to 8Mbps even with ADSL1, and would be up to 24Mbps if they got off their arse and rolled out ADSL2+).
Fortunately, some other ISPs including tpg and iinet are beginning to roll out their own ADSL2+ DSLAMs in the captial cities. But most people are still firmly stuck in fraudband territory.
On top of all that, Telstra has just scrapped plans to roll out a national fibre-to-the-node network, so the status quo isn't likely to change anytime soon.
I do have to ask, though...does your government subsidize that?
No.
Canada has quite the reputation down here for taxing heavily and subsidizing things
Yes, almost as much as the US has for taxing and subsidizing things. (The US oil companies are one that comes to mind.)
Make that upto 5000Kbps :-/
"Infant mortality" has different definitions between _states_ in the USA. Was it a miscarriage, or did a baby die? It depends on which state you're in. Comparing between countries will give you some real apples and oranges. This is maddening if you are in a state with a broad definition of "infant mortality" and your hospital is getting bad quality outcome numbers because of the definitions your state legislature made.
a lth.html
Also, one would expect that infant mortality would be highest in a country with the highest risk obstetric patients, wouldn't we? Let's see. A country where women with careers wait until their 30's to have babies instead of their teens and twenties. Where, as a result, infertility treatments and therefore multiple gestations (twins, triplets, etc) are common. Where, as a result, the neonatal ICUs are crammed with babies from about 30 weeks gestational age (having been in the uterus for only 3/4 of the celestial committee's recommended stay.) One could easily make the assumption that the more money a country is willing to spend on medical care, the higher their infant mortality would be.
The actual numbers, sampling biases, etc are much more complicated than this, but anyone who thinks Cuba's medical care is better than that in the US is a bit confused or deliberately misleading others in my opinion. I wouldn't want to be a 30 week gestational age infant in Cuba.
Here's an article that gets into a little more detail, but really the whole socialized medicine argument is like debating creationists. You aren't going to change their belief with any evidence. I just get sick of the infant mortality / longevity comparisons which are so obviously inane.
http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA547ComparativeHe
"Ignorance is not innocence, but sin." --Robert Browning
the downside of the article, it is missing out one of the most competitive broadband markets in the world; the netherlands!
-- for undocumented cisco commands, take a peek @ dotu
...who is sick and tired of all the comparisons to the US? Country the size of a pea and lacking in cultural diversity is better able to spend its resources than the U.S., film at eleven. Seriously, how relevant are these comparisons really?
You're paying WHAT for WHAT?
The market in Sweden is not that regulated and we could tell you that it's the former State Monopoly that holdning the brakes. They are refusing access to telephone stations, they are keeping the prices up, they are the last to implement just about anything (cable, dsl, wireless, fibre, GSM, 3G, and so forth). They are more expensive and offer less flexible terms. The only redeeming factor is that they are large, and have much larger coverage of the population.. They still have monopoly to "the last mile" out in the less densly populated areas, and in the suburbs of the larger cities, and the adoption of broadband are considerably slower in these areas. This would seem quite strange since it's wehere the richest people live and those in the most need of fast Internet access, but it's due to the fact that independant companies doesn't have access to this market, the former Monopoly does.
However.. I must say, after RTFA that Sweden is _miles_ ahead of most countries, even our close naighbours, Denmark and Norway. I would've guessed that they would have been in front of us, but they're not. I cant say why really. We've had some pretty vocal individuals/visionaries in the late 90s who really have set the stnadard of the market an made policy. 100 Mbps for everyone is the goal. Perhaps this was a necessity?
- Henrik
- when the Shadows descend -
I have figured out a solution to the US's low population density, and the solution is already being implemented.
Global warming! Global warming will raise sea levels, thus reducing the amount of land on which our people can live! We'll have less land and the same amount of people, thus, more population density, and thus better internet connections. Go global warming!
Is the size of the cell phones. They're like house-bricks compared to what you can get in Europe.
Is Perth WA the astronomer's paradise I've always imagined it must be?
Japan - Bullet Train
Everywhere else - Choo - Choo's
Japan - 100 mbps for $36/mo.
Everywhere else - You get the idea...
Oh, wait.... Americans still think their VGA camera phones are bad ass!
^^
2Mbit packages hardly exist anymore.
8Mbit DL / 512Kb UL packages are the minimum standard.
24Mbit DL / 1Mbit UL are fast becoming the standard (and get be gotten for 50$ a month)
100Mbit DL / 10Mbit UL fiber-optic packages are becoming ever more widely spread, with the full network to be in place by mid-2007. You can find these packages (where the service is already available) for around 75$ a month, or far less if the connection is via your apartment/house complex.
He is correct that Spain is not the poorest western European country. However, I do find it amusing that the only thing he complains about in your comment is the one thing that has no relevance to your argument.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
As an aussie, I must say that broadband in this country sucks.
Generally, the main problem is the cost and (depending on exactly where you are, rural areas especially) the availability.
There is a fair bit of competition but ultimatly everyone has to pay up to Telstra. The government doesnt want to pressure telstra over broadband because they are selling off their remaining stake in the telco. The ACCC (the relavent regulator) cant really do anything because telstra has maintained that it cannot charge lower prices and still make money.
Oh and if there were more links (= more competition = lower prices) across the pacific to the US (or cheaper prices on the links we have now), that would probobly help too.
Broadband connectivity is getting cheaper in Costa Rica, where I live, because of competition between ICE (the government telecommunications monopoly) and its own subsidiary called RACSA.
Cable modem access is available by 2 private companies (Cable Tica and AMNET), using RACSA as an upstream provider, and costs $35 for 512/128, $50 for 1024/256, and $70 for 2048/256, with unlimited bandwidth. Availability is limited to higher-density areas, but some of the beaches have connectivity via cable.
ADSL is a newer option and is provided by ICE, the telco. Costs are $19 for 256/128, $25 for 512/128, $38 for 1024/512, $62 for 2048/768, $72 for 1536/768, $91 for 2048/768 and $169 for 4096/768. Availability is limited to proximity to the telco's CO, and ports, but they've installed ADSL ports throughout the country, including more rural towns and beach communities.
Just recently, RACSA launched a pilot program for WiMax in one part of the Central Valley. Costs are $29 for 512/256, $74 for 1024/512, and $244 for 2048/1024. Once this rolls out throughout the Central Valley, I hope to try this out because my house is just a little too far for cable modem or ADSL availability, but the 5-mile radius of WiMax and the great view I have will make it possible.
Is Perth WA the astronomer's paradise I've always imagined it must be?
Checking out this map of light pollution taken from space, I doubt it.
But I guess it would be easier to drive from Perth to somewhere without light pollution then say western europe, india, or either of the US's coasts however.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
After reading all these speeds/prices I have to say I feel rather cheated. Living in a rural section of the United States and I have to pay 55$ for 6 down 768 up...What a sham when people are getting 2X+ that for half the price...
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. ~Albert Einstein
Here's why - population. If an equal amount of bandwidth is distributed upon different numbers of nodes, what has to change is bandwidth/node. The US is geographically larger than most countries as well meaning things like simple interstate circuits have to be long-haul. You can use LOS radio to link the whole of South Korea together - (Yes, I've done it). Try to do that across the Rockies.
I'm paying 69 euros a month for my crappy 2MB DSL connection in Spain. It is from Telefonica, and granted, some portion of that is actually for the phone line, which I don't need or want, but is required for them to sell me DSL.
That should work out to about 80 US dollars a month, which doesn't sound very cheap to me..
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
No, it means that the figures overlap. The 42% who live in urban areas with more than 1 million people also happen to live in urban areas. So the percent that live in urban areas with 1 million people or less is 78% - 42% = 36%. Also, the figures are from different years so they won't add-up exactly anyhow.
I'll spell it out for you - no, no, and no.
I am in a rual area.. I'm sitting in a CO (Central Office) in a town that has maybe 850 people. I provide SIP, MGCP, ADSL/ADSL2+, soon Video, etc. We have a Metaswitch (http://www.metaswitch.com), and we use Occam gear (http://www.occamnetworks.com). We have fiber that links a bunch of local towns around here, and everywhere in between we stick little remote terminals to feed people with highspeed internet access. I can get 27mb DSL service here. My buddy that is 6km outside of town.. literally by himself on a farm, can get 7.6Mbps down.
You see, the problem in the USA is not that you have too much land, or any other excuse that you want to make up (do you guys all work for Verizon, or AT&T or something?). The problem is that your country is mainly run by a handful of LARGE CORPORATIONS that control the telco networks. They don't give a shit about rural customers because they can just concentrate on the cities. We have that same issue here in Ontario, Canada.
I work for an independent telco. We are a co-operative, so I guess I'm not comparing apples to apples. Whenever I see an area that does not have access to highspeed services, it is almost always run by BELL CANADA. Bell is the major telco for this province. They bring DSL into a small rural town, but kill it at the edge of town, so people may only be 3km from the office, but they cannot get service - this is due to load coils. Bell could replace these coils, but it costs money. Not too much money to be profitable, but too much money to care about.
When companies grow to the size of Bell Canada, everyone suffers - except the people in large areas. I challenge anyone to ask a Bell customer if they have ever run into ridiculously shitty service with Bell Canada - my experience is that 100% of the people I ask can rhyme off a horror story to me right away. The response time is horribly slow, services are expensive, and things break often. Support is a nightmare, every department is horribly unorganized and slow to respond, and there is utter conufsion when any department attempts to communicate with any other department. Orders get lost, or the wrong data gets entered - in short, the whole thing is a nightmare.
This is what I think is wrong with the state of communications in the USA. The telcos simply don't care about you rural folk, and if you had, or have an independent telco, it will was either bought, or will soon be purchased by one of the large telcos. Small town customer service will be replaced with one of a handful of national offices where you can't actually go and make a complaint. You will be kept at a distance so they can provide you with shoddy service, and not see your face in their office. People have different needs in different areas, but you won't get that service any more. They will strip down their services into bundles, which you either take, or pay through the nose for individual services. Everything will be a "1-size fits all" mentality. There are no "tailored" services for certain areas anymore.
Any other excuse that you give, in my opinion, is false. This is simply a market that is slowly being amalgamted into a stagnant industry that provides the bare minimum service to you, and nothing more, because you simply can't get service from anyone else.
You create your own reality - Leave mine to me.
78%-42%=36% live in urban areas with less than 1 million people.
Do you really need 24 or 100 mbps????? Are you really downloading that much porn that a meager old 1.5 mbps won't get the job done? I would find a figure of "X% of the population isn't' using dial-up (read as broadband)" to be much more meaningful.
"Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it." Mark Twain.
I get so tired of hearing about the high infant mortality rates in the US. The truth is hiding in the nature of the statistics, which so many people conveniently ignore.
Bottom line: the US counts premature babies that die into the infant mortality rate, while nearly every other country counts a dead baby only if it is a full-term birth. If you compare apples-to-apples, the US has one of the lowest infant mortality rates.
But only if you live close enough to the exchange, and the wires between your modem and the equipment in the exchange are good enough.
I have an 8Mbps/512Kbps service, and currently actually achieve about 3Mbps/440Kbps according to my router. Actual download speeds depend on the method and server (of course), but rarely get that high.
If you actually want as fast as you can get, you have to choose where to live very carefully. (Not that it matters that much to me - I get 100Mbps at work)
It's official. Most of you are morons.
...this hasn't been my experience. I live rurally and I have a fairly honkin' broadband connection.
Part of the difference may be that here in Freedomland the government spend lots of Canadian Tire money over a couple of decades wiring us up from stem to stern with fibre-optics and phat cable. When broadband Internet became a market the infrastructure was already there.
In Canada's case, centralized regulation forced the telephone/data/media companies to co-operate to achieve this goal.
These stories are free but worth money.
I'm tired of this crap saying America is behind in broadband. What is "behind"? What is "broadband"? Ya gotta give me some meat to make this a real argument. What if Americans simply don't want broadband as much as the rest of the world does? What if we have a culture that's simply different than what the rest of the world has? What if a sociologist came up with a convincing theory about how Americans are so saturated with media sources that they don't need the Internet as much as the people of other nations? It's okay, people, don't give yourself an aneurysm. If you want broadband, pay for it. Don't put your "behind" on to the rest of the nation.
If aspiration is a virtue, achievement cannot be a vice.
Has the UK changed its currency again?
Amazing how clueless online news sites are about character set issues.
Sweden: 2005 = 83.4% of 9.04 mil
...
United States: 2005 = 80.8% of 298.21 mil
At the end of the day, I don't think it does any good to have a pissing contest between the United States & Europe over internet connectivity, especially since we're arguing over an unscientific poll... What we really need to do is confront the US cable companies over why there is such a delay in trickling down new technology
Where I live, the 12345, if you want fast residential broadband your option is RoadRunner at ~$45 per month for a 5MB line or to go directly to the ISP for a fracture of a T1. The reason for this is that Time Warner has a negotiated deal with the city to allow service, where verizon does not have a similar deal and is unable to offer fios for instance. This deal with TW is a known political football in the city since TW pays for the local cable access channel. When TX allows the contract to expire for the public access channel and refuses to pay any further the city officials remind TX that there is now competition in the area and that they will cut a deal with them unless they pay for the public access channel. I am sure I am over simplifying the issue but you can get the gist of the broadband situation and competiton here in the 12345.
A hand up and a foot on every chest...
You're absolutely right. I thought I made it pretty clear throughout my post that the single thing keeping it from happening was the lack of profitability for the companies. They don't wire rural areas because there's not enough money in it for them. There are a lot of areas where it would cost them so much to upgrade that they would spend years just trying to break even, and there are a lot more where the small profit doesn't justify the expense. If they can stick the money in an investment account and make the same or better profit, don't expect them to bend over backwards to extend service. My point still stands, though: the US has a lot of rural areas, so it's harder and more expensive to extend broadband to the same percentage of the population as many of the nations listed in TFA.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
The technology is widely available to provide DSL to as few as 16/24 customers at the exchange and get a sensible ROI. Perhaps you should ask the phone company why they won't provide it?
What part of Canada are you living in? And what is your ISP? Because I have the hardest time finding something better than 5mbps for more than that price. And I live in downtown Montreal. Are you with a 1+ years contract?
I'm on cable; been paying the same price for a while now, but I've seen a few real upgrades in my plan, purely due to market competition. 512->1meg, and 2meg for a while now. I'd say the high end is still encouraging the low-end to be better, which is great.
Every exchange in my county is DSL capable now. Nearly 35% of the population still has no broadband availability due to line distance from the equipment.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
Yeah I agree with you, though I seemed to have had a bit of a snotty attitude at the beginning of my post.
I still think that rural service can be profitable (or they wouldn't have phone service). Yes, its a loss at the beginning. Yes, it may take years to recover. In the long term, they will break even, and eventually make a profit. As they phase out ADSL (for ADSL2+) in the cities, they could be moving out more ports to rural areas.
The main point of my post was just to say that there's not enough "heart" in the communications industry, and that's really to bad. It shouldn't just be about the business. I can see that with selling , but not with communications. Communications allow people to have better education, more creativity, explore more interests and desires, etc. It sucks when companies just decide to exclude a huge portion of the population.
Sorry for the previous defensive post.
You create your own reality - Leave mine to me.
we can get 5000Kbps downstream if we are behind a "New" DSLAM but for the price Swisscom ask for a 5000 (75 Euro) you wonder why not everybody is behind a "New" one.....
AT&T, back when they were SBC (the name change still irks me, I hated AT&T but have always had positive experiences with SBC), was pushing a project that would have made rural broadband a much more profitable venture...they were pushing for a state-wide license in Texas to distribute television programming over their system. The more they can deliver to each household, the more households they can afford to reach.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
As much as I'd like that to be true, when the high-minded theory of efficient allocation of goods interacts with humans, it generally fails. As another post points out wealth-seekers quickly become the inefficient party in an economic system. Telco's are the perfect example. Corn production (ADM) is another example.
Finally, your perspective is quite narrow. Viewing an Internet connection as a luxury item, is quite short-sighted. Instead, try viewing it like the highway system. Highways are something that all can use to make the nation more efficient productive and supposedly making citizens better off. On the weekends, you can get to the country quickly.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
We're in Australia staying at my brother-in-law's house for awhile. He has cable modem service (Optus) and after a few days of using a Slingbox to get our Stewart/Colbert fix from back in the USA, we've maxed out his monthly allowance! Yes, there seems to be no such thing as "unlimited" broadband here. Both DSL and cable are sold on tiered plans with a maximum download amount, beyond which you get clamped to below-dialup speeds... And the prices? Back in California we got unlimited 1.5mbps DSL for USD$13/mo (with a choice of providers) - our host is paying AU$50 for 2 gigs/month max download, and the top-end plan is $80 for 20 gigs! DSL's not a lot better, from our research. Maybe that's why almost nobody seems to have heard of BitTorrent hereabouts?
Perfectly Normal Industries
What the article says about Italy is not true.
I don't think we are ahead of US at all.
In Perugia (a middle sized city in the centre) we have only DSL, no fiber.
Fastweb offers DSL service at 40 euro per month.
The download it reaches is 2Mb/s.
I think only few cities can reach 10 Mb/s.
Japan is a fiercely competitive DSL market. The CEO of Softbank forced the government to open the market in 1999 and came in with a low price and faster service than the incumbent, NTT. Japanese users can get DSL with 50Mbps down and now 12 Mbps up for about $40/month. Because of the DSL competition, companies started rolling out fiber. In Japan, you can get 100Mbps fiber to your house for $50/month.
w ww.educause.edu/ir/library/powerpoint/POL0610A.pps +japanese+p2p+traffic+statistics&hl=en&gl=us&ct=cl nk&cd=14
The interesting thing is that the government there sees the value in having a strong, competitive market for broadband. Here is a link to a MITI presentation on Japan and broadband.
http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:fs0SbhXsEj0J:
In the US, I'm paying $50/mo (us) for 20Mbps down, and 20Mbps up fiber. My ISP also has 10Mbps down and 10Mbps up for $30/mo. I have fiber though, and I'm part of the minority in the US :-)
Try to get some clue and reread the posting. You might notice that the government likely does not subside four different ISPs who are said to be offering this.
Idiot.
I too live in Montreal, and I still pay ~50Can$ for a 5M/800k dsl line... so the 30$ for 10M/2.5M is not available Canda-wide...
x .page?ADV2=OFF_CDN_optimax_JULY5
Altough, Bell started offering Fiber to the home in Montreal... it'a a bit pricey at 60$CAN per month, but it's fiber to the home at 10M/1M...
http://www.bell.ca/shopping/PrsShpPromo_IntOptima
I live in Soviet Canuckistan you insensitive clod!
Isn't it obvious that we need to have more people betting on horses and playing inter-state lotteries? If we had more lottery balls and horses running through The Internets (TM) then we wouldnt be as slow.
You mean the wonderful health care in Cuba as demonstrated here?
Wow, regulation is wonderful...
Joe Dougherty, Florida, USA
The words I thought I brought, I left behind. So, never mind.
In some regions of Paris, they are testing out 2 Gbps connections (up and down) for 75 a month...Now THAT is speed, so much so that even your SATA drive would be hard pushed to keep up.
karem lore
When all is said and done, nothing changes...
Correction: 3M/768k
110100 1101000 1101000 1100110 0 1101111 1101000 1100011 1
One small example of this that is slighly off-topic: cable TV. How long and loud have people bitched about it? And how much has it changed? We're lucky there's other tech (satelite) to compete or you'd be paying as much for HBO as a car. Clearly, this is not in the common good, yet we continue to tolerate it. Morons.
Their are many reasons why articles comparing the U.S.'s x to N'sy come up more often-reforms about health care, what's worked in under roughly equivilant governement styles just to name a few. Technological developement is just one of the many issues that the US faces- what about other concerns, aren't you, the fellow slashdot reader, cerious about how nations such as Germany are at least looking at how feasable and affordable advances in transportation, healthcare and textiles realy are- What about other nations? Since America, as a culture, is much closer to Britain, and England- and their governmental style is closer than that of China- it then stands to reason it has very little else to dependable compare it self with. Interconectivity between places has relivance for more than just individial use- what about your hospital? your' Doctor, of your saftey officials? do you realy want them to sudenly tell you that a crook got away because their telephoe or radio connection to Headquaters failed? I think not.
If the United States was the size of say, the sate of Maryland (as is the United Kingdom), and had a state-run phone company, than yes, you would probably see broadband cheaper and more effective in the United States. The problem is, the United States is bigger than the ENTIRE continent of Europe, you have public phone companies who have legalized monopolies on area (its SBC in this area, used to be Southwestern Bell)and you just have old infastructure in the areas. Most telephone infastructures in Europe have been completely overhauled in the last ten years, or are in the process of being overhauled. Then you have states such as, well, look at Montana. Montana has roughly the same geographical area as the country of Germany, yet a population of under a million people. Plus, most of the state is covered in mountains. Is it economically feasable to run fiber to each and every person in the state of Montana? Problem is, with the exception of New England, your southern states and pacific coast states, the other, oh, 30 states in the United States are sparsly populated, and cover a HUGE geographic area. There are still areas in the United States that do not have cable television service, and are on the old rotary phone system. Could you imagine the cost of running a fiber optic cable 200 miles outside of the city to some little ranch? I am sorry, but I am willing to bet that, unless fiber becomes ridicoulously cheap, there are people in areas of the United States that will NEVER get broadband via a physical wire. Not saying there are not alternatives, but satelite is incredibly expensive. I was looking into it recently for my aunt who lives out in the country. Satelite Internet costs between $600-$800 to buy the equipment, then runs about $80 a month. The other option is broadband through the cell, which is becoming increasingly attractive. Cell phones companies (especially some of the ones such as Verizon and Cingular) have amazingly good coverage (unless you are in the montains), and now offer pc card adapters so you can get broadband through them. While its not dsl speeds, it is faster than dialup (in most cases).
I am sorry, but the problem here is NOT that the US is falling behind in technology to Europe, but that the country is more sparsly populated.
I'd say the problem is perceived demand.
I really doubt that there is anything keeping the cable providers from putting down broadband similar to Birmingham's in Philadelphia, except for cost. They're not going to do it, unless they think there's a market for it.
Let's say that a cable provider did put out a high-speed network like that: they started offering 10MB/s service or something. They'd have to recoup the cost of their infrastructure rollout somehow, so the new HS service would have to cost more than existing service.
There is a perceived risk there: if people don't value the increased speed, they might just refuse to pay the higher rates, and instead switch to come competing service which offers lower speed and is cheaper.
That's why you don't see higher-speed stuff in the U.S.; it's because too few people are asking for it. Most cable companies have several speed tiers, and the majority of people use the lowest ones. I think that it's widely held here that the first 1 to 3 Mb/s are really what sells, and then beyond that, the "average user" doesn't care a whole lot (unless they're heavy downloaders, which the networks don't like anyway).
It's impossible to blame on any one factor; obviously deregulation and the attitudes of the telco and cable companies are one thing, the vast size of the U.S. and "mass" are another, but I definitely think that you have to factor in that the demand for such services may be lower here (or are at least thought to be lower) than in other places, like Europe and Asia.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Dial up service is not free in Spain, the cost of the local call is how they charge you. This would be akin to dialing a 1-900 number to get "free" access to the internet.
In the long, it is standards and skilled people that works together makes the difference.
My hypothesis is that you need a long-term plan in the society and in peoples minds, and the free market does not provide that. This is easier in a country with smaller and more homigenous population. Without a common target, we get stuck in local minima and suboptimal solutions with wasted human and natural resources. By free market I mean "laissez faire" with minimal rules. No, the alternative is not communism.
I think this applies to broadband connections among other things. As an example, the "free market" (Yahoo DSL) managed to send us in total three DSL modems back and forth between California and Texas when all we wanted was a change in the name of the account holder of an already working DSL plan. There was no sense what so ever about how many hours and natural resources we wasted to effectively get a name change. Why is this?
For instance, look at the cell phone systems for instance; small countries like Sweden could early agree on using GSM (before that NMT) with well defined frequencies on and all the players in the ball park followed. In the US, it wasn't long ago that one cell phone wouldn't work in another state because different frequencies and different standards were used in the different states (maybe it is still like this), and finally the US (free) market is realizing that GSM is the way to go. I believe the market does not know its own good here. How many these hours from harding people could have been used for better things? Btw, it is funny to see ads from cell-phone providers saying "we've the lowest drop rate" - I can't even remember when a call drop on me last time back home. So, why is this?
I've been living in California on and off the last 10 years and I must say that there actually not not impressed with the "free market" for optimizing technology/society. I think you have add other "rules" of the game to get where we want. I'm a little bit dual about this though, because big and skilled companies do pop up here, but I think that is also the case in other companies though here you have a kind of a magnet bringing the brands to the Bay Area. However, there are so many things that is lagging behind. For instance, the bank system, which somehow is fundamental for a free market, is hilarious and so efficient! Online banking is finally catching up here, but in the end of the day what is called online bill payment in many cases turns out to be sent as printed checks in the mail. That can not be efficient! So somehow the "free market" has created its own standard and its size is preventing it from adopting better solutions.
While writing this, I just received a scam call trying to cheat us into a free directory service using poor sound quality and asking me to confirm our address. Why is this?
Yes, I'm Swedish and yes my family had a Beta VCR for many years when my friends had VHS, so maybe that is why I'm so a-al about standards and working toward a common goal. Don't waste resources, don't be egoistic, realize that every hour counts, and good things will follow.
The fastest connection I've seen yet is 1mb for dsl... and you'll pay about $200USD for that.
I'm currently on a "broadband" connection offered by my apartment... oh how I long for a nice 56k modem right now.
Or economics either.
Goverment regulation can do great things, like reduce the number of hospital bed sizes from 53 to 1.
It can also guarantee a chicken in every pot, or fat data pipes into every hovel. Even for vegans or uninhabited caves.
If you don't get my point, even the gov't cant push more bits thru a cable than is theoretically possible, or lay string, copper, glass fiber, or semaphore towers at negligible cost. In fact, govt mandates oten end up building bridges to nowhere and fiber bundles to Baudette.
I don't see anything intrinsic to government that can give us all cheap wideband connectivity. Someone, please tell me how I'm wrong and how I can get hi-res pr0n faster by calling my alderman.
This is one of the least densely populated places in the US, and they get fiber to the premises, 1GBit capable service for about $85/mo.
The internet service is through a choice of regular ISPs, but the physical link is via the public power utility.
Power and bandwidth are so cheap here that the place has become a magnet for server farms. In a place where the rural economy is relatively poor, this has been a huge boost. The opportunity exists for other regions to learn the perils of granting monopolies on infrastructure, but the money interests are pushing the other way. Lobbyists, notably from Comcast and Qwest, got a law passed in the state to prevent government entities from building out information infrastructure.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Socialist countries buy more for their population than non-Socialist countries!!!
More at.... cccrrrrr....[broken transmission]
"Manhattan island is one of the most densely populated parts of the world. And Broadband is still expensive and slow. If population desnsity is the problem, why does this happen?"
Gee, you live in Manhattan and have to ask this question? Everything in New York is expensive. Even parking is expensive.
2 reasons:
1.)the current climate in the US is that of exploitation for profit. the ILECs and the network owners are not finished squeezing every penny out of dial-up.
They can actually get away with charging $120 a month for 6Mbit DSL. They constantly throttle upstream because they say that only PIRATES need that much bandwidth.
upstream is so expensive because if you could host from home or office, why would you pay for a hosting company?
you always have some idiot with who says he really doesn't use it that much, so DSL is too expensive to justify. He's either old and has plenty of time to waste waiting for those 6Mp pictures of his grandson to take 8 hours downloading, or he's from idaho and doesn't have a clue about the rest of the world.
2.)infrastructure.
Sweden has much less infrastructure than the US. so they can afford to upgrade it all to 2Gbps.
The US is all about passing on the cost to the consumer.
if the US upgraded their networks so everyone could get 2Gbps, we'd be paying $499 a month for DSL.
Think about network capacity, think about cost per user vs. cost overall. Think about how long it would take to complete a network upgrade in the US.
hardware manufactures can barely keep up with government demand for enough equipment to upgrade the US government's darknet.
They're using their grammar skills there.
Personally, I wouldn't think that population density is the main reason the US might lag in broadband. I think it's similiar to the reason we lagged in adopting the cellphone: we already had a large penetration of people using existing technology which was made to be replaced. In other words, we already had a large percentage of users who were on the internet using dialup and those users didn't feel the need to switch when broadband came to market.
I mean this is just my own personal anecdotes based on people I know who didn't adopt to broadband. People didn't even realize what broadband was or why it was better. In countries where internet connectivity wasn't so high, people are skipping dialup and going right to broadband.
Anecdotally, I can't say that anyone I know complains about their broadband. I mean would your average user really be able to tell the difference between 3mps and 10 mps? 56K to broadband is definately noticeable to a layperson. Most people I know wouldn't really care, they use their internet for email mainly and that's it.
If there was a huge demand for faster broadband, companies would be attempting to deliver such services. If there's one thing companies like, it's more money.
I setup DSL service for a very small ISP. Since Verizon was the local telco, they were the only ones we could get use for DSL service. The arrangement was that our customers would have to pay between $30 and $40 RIGHT TO VERIZON for only the DSL connection from their home to our ISP. THEN, the customer would have to pay us enough to take care of the actual Internet bandwidth, DNS, email, and web space. Oh, a little bit to put food on the table too. $20 was what we charged at first, and it was at a loss. The customer paid us $20 and Verizon up to $40, so up to $60 for 768k/128k on an overloaded T1.
At the same time, Verizon started selling DSL direct for $24.95 per month. According to the FCC, they also had to pay $30-$40 to a seperate part of the company, but the money still stayed in house.
It was a joke from day 1.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
Since unbundling was stuck down by the courts (forcing the FCC to change the rules--they did not want to), both DSL and cable modem prices have RISEN when you look at the actual cost to consumers. Don't look at the offers, look at the actual bills.
Take my bill for example. I have DSL service through Cavalier Telephone, a CLEC who still leases line access from Verizon. They offered DSL + phone service for $50/month, which I signed on for, and ended up paying about $60/month after fees. Now my bill is up to about $80/month, due entirely to the huge cost increase Verizon imposed on their line leases.
You will say: CavTel should build their own infrastructure. THEY DID, they have their own backbone fiber network up and down the east coast. But it's just too expensive to build out the last mile, and the government already subsidized it once. That's why unbundling was so right and so important.
Take a good look at ILEC or cable service and you will see that neither data rates nor costs have changed appreciably in the last 3 years for most customers. And why should they? There is almost no competition in broadband anywhere. The entire basis of market solutions is competition and it is almost entirely GONE in consumer broadband, leaving monopolies or duopolies.
The phone and cable companies have successfully convinced enough people that the basis for service improvement is the ease of investment. WRONG. Without competition there is no impetus for change, and therefore no impetus or need for investment. There is a glut of private capital on the world market right now. It would be comically easy for an established company like Verizon to raise huge capital to improve their service. But without competition why would they want to??? It's easier to sit still and collect the profits they are guaranteed through lack of competition.
Competition serves the consumer, not the company. Want to see what an efficient market really looks like? Look at the airline industry. Not THAT is a competitive market, and the advantages are obvious to consumers in the low prices that are available. But imagine if the government gave city-exclusives, so that only United and American were allowed to service Miami, for example. Think the prices would stay low? Not a chance. Yet it supposedly will work great for broadband.
And don't even get me started on Net neutrality, which would not even be an issue if there were greater competition.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I Live in Saskatchewan, which is a sort of Testbed/Socialist State. We poineered the free healthcare, etc. My provider is Sasktel.
geh, forgot to include that i don't live in a major center, I live in estevan, Saskatchewan, which is pretty much a pointless town excepting the two coal power plants. Last time I looked, pop 11,500
You can cite a reputable source for that statistic - right?
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
What's that? Doesn't the world end beyond the horizon beyond Florida? Beyond that is the great dropoff to hell: evil communism and muzzies, and all that.
[right wing parody off]
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
You do realize that the US telecommunications infrastructure was heavily subsidized, right? People in socialist countries are getting better service for less money than US capitalism can provide. Doesn't it just burn when your favorite ideology is shown to be wrong? Can you feel your intellect shutting down due to the cognitive dissonance? The fight or flight reaction kicking in, anger building, thinking, "This can't be! there must be some reason this is false and wrong." The sense of self, so carefully built atop layers and layers of beliefs, now like Wile E. Cayote when he runs off a cliff. It feels like dying, doesn't it? To have one's beliefs yanked out from under one, one's entire sense of self called into question, who one is, one's place in the world, shown to be void, without meaning. It feels like dying.
The answer, of course, is to hold on to your beliefs even more rigidly. Yeah. That'll do the trick.
My brother and I were listening in and my brother shouted, "Yeah, well tell them to take their monopoly and shove it up their ass!"
We actaully hear the rep scream, "I heard that!"
Still, no phone companies seemed to be able to bring in DSL to the area.
I just called a local company and I can pay 45(american) for 4mpbs or something like that. BS. I live on my own, I can't afford that. Gotta have heat.
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
.....78% of the US population lives in urban areas.....
Some of our so called urban areas are larger than some entire countries on the list. This especially true in west coast cities. The cost of many services is less, the more customers are available in a given area. A better comparison would to figure out how many miles of wire it takes to connect people to the Internet even in urban areas. For US urban areas it takes a lot more wires and repeaters to service that population than in European cities. This means more investment per customer in the US.
All theory is gray
In the UK the upload speeds remain shocking. The US has, to my knowledge, DSL, wheras we are stuck with ADSL - I can download at 100kb/s and upload at only 22kb/s.
And I am seriously scared how much that 24 megabits per sec line would cost here...
That doesn't sound quite right. Recently the government decided to force Telecom to un-bundle the local loop as a response to poor performance. They may even force Telecom to split into two operations (similar to British Telecom). That sounds more like re-regulation to me.
FTA : A 5-mbps DSL connection from one provider, Shaw, costs Can$44, or about US$40 per month.
I am currently connected through Shaw. I am posting this right now through Shaw. And seeing as Shaw primarily provides cable TV, cable digital phone service, and cable Internet service with cable modems, I find it odd that they would be offering DSL services of any kind. Furthermore, the price is only $44/mo if you rent your modem. Buy it, and you're only paying $39/mo. And for $10/mo more, you can go to a 10Mb plan, 100GB throughput a month.
While it is true that most ISP providers give free dialup access, the cost of the local call is so high that you're better off buying DSL, unless you just use it to check email a few minutes a day. Heck, it costs me about the same to call my family in Spain (from California) than it would cost to do the same call from a phone across the street! And about the DSL price, yeah, 30 euros/month might seem cheap, but Spain has half the GDP per capita than the US. Think 60 euros (about $75) comparatively.
To do list for Windows
What the fuck are you complaining about? I pay over £20pcm for 4M/400K in the UK. That's less that half the price of a tank of petrol per month in my world. How cheap do you expect your connection to be? Coz I can pretty much guarantee that while it may get faster, it won't get cheaper.
My wife and I had to get this on our roof, and you don't want to know what it's costing us and what we're getting in return for all that money. Sorry, I just don't want to talk about it because it's so disturbing. The machine I left behind in the U.S. is on a 7Mbit/sec cable modem circuit!!! AHHHHHHHHHH!!!
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The alternative here was dialup at about 13 kbits/sec.:
http://cryptogon.com/2006_08_20_blogarchive.html#
New Zealand is a beautiful place in so many ways. Internet access, however, is a disaster. The recent bust up of Telecom NZ by the government won't change things in rural areas for the forseeable future. Even in the cities, broadband services are slow and the download caps make the offerings seem like jokes by developed world standards.
Are street lights really efficient? Even if they are, why would a private company actually want to provide street lighting for free?
...What does the form of government have to do with it?
Maybe they wouldn't (unless they could advertise), but the citizens who live nearby would. I'd agree to pay for a streetlight in front of my house -- it'd make it safer for me and my friends. And then I'm not paying taxes for a lot *more* such devices for other people. As long as The Government is paying for things like this wherever you live, people have no incentive to live more efficiently. What do you have against personal responsibility?
To the free market worshippers: the free market only works when not all people choose to be totally selfish and greedy. Once there are too few of those "salt of the earth" types, the whole thing starts falling apart.
Have we had a truly free market? I don't know of one. Your argument sounds remarkably similar to what people said about democracy 200 years ago.
To the strong government worshippers: a strong centralized republic only works when not all people -- either in the government or the citizenry -- choose to be totally selfish and greedy. Once you get greedy dorks in office, or too many living near you, the whole thing starts falling apart.
No matter what system you have, if you want something good from it, you will need good people.
Exactly! (Kind of weird for you to argue against free market, then.) And if any system would work, wouldn't you prefer one with less government? Look in the news today and you'll see many, many cases of the US federal government being too intrusive. If you admit that an intrusive government is not necessarily better than a small libertarian one, then wouldn't you prefer the latter? Knowing that selfish and greedy people exist, why create positions of power to be occupied, knowing that most of the smart and productive members of your society will have no desire to take those positions?
Here in Montana (usa) I pay $50/month for what started out a year and a half ago as a 1.5MB cable connection. It's been increased to 3MB, then to 5MB, and now supposedly 8MB without any increase in price.
Problem is, every speed test I run shows ~3.5MB. Highest I've seen was 4.1, which is still only half what they claim I should be getting. Downloads are only 30-350K (I once got 750K, but otherwise yeah, never seen it faster than 350K), usually in the 50-120K range. When I call them about this, their phone support (supposedly) checks and tells me that yes, I am connected at 8MB, so it must be the server I'm downloading from. I call BS, but really, what do I know?
I do a lot of downloding, so I would expect occasionally I would connect to a server that would deliver the full 8MB, or at the very least something over 1MB (I've NEVER seen that).
Colombian History and Culture in Three E-Z Steps!
Step 1: Rent Scarface.
Step 2: Fast-forward to that scene where Pacino and his friends try a coke deal with some Colombians. The Colombians want to take the money and keep the coke. They try to persuade Pacino to tell them where the money is by handcuffing him and his buddy to the wall, revvin' up a chainsaw and sawing off his friend's arms and legs till the whole room is so splattered with blood you can't see who's killing who any more.
Step 3: Replay this scene over and over. And over.
Congratulations! You have just learned the history and culture of Colombia!
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