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 ..."

Comments

Superiority of the Free Market.

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

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.

Re:Superiority of the Free Market.

[Saunalainen]

Or maybe, just maybe, it's that these coutries have: A: Higher population density B: Government OFFERED internet access (As opposed to regulated, as you stated)

From the CIA factbook: Sweden: land area 410,934 square km, population 9,016,596, so density=21.94/sq km ; USA: land area 9,161,923 square km, population 298,444,215, so density=32.57/sq km. No, internet access is not `offered' by the government.

In any case, it's the population density in the cities which matters. I'll leave it up to you to figure out whether New York City has a lower density than Stockholm.

Perhaps you should check your own facts? Nah, much better to make them up based on your own prejudices.

Re:Superiority of the Free Market.

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

A: Higher population density

I can't believe how often this is used as a legitimate justification for the US's crap broadband.

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?

Re:Superiority of the Free Market.

[malsdavis]

Liberterians often miss out an extremely important point:

When you have massive corporations dominating an infastructure heavy industry like telecoms then it is often not the government who 'meddles' but the corporations themselves.

The reason the UK has such cheap and high-speed internet is because the government forced the main telecoms company who owns all the "last mile" wires (the ones going down your street and into your house) and exchanges to allow other companies to install equipment in their exchanges and use their "last mile" wires.

It is almost completely due to this "unbundling" that internet in the UK is now so cheap and fast. Believe me, 6 or 7 years ago, before this was done, internet in the UK was slow and crap.

Re:Superiority of the Free Market.

[fitten]

It's also a matter of pure area. The USA is just over 22x the size of Sweden, for example, in both land area and population. In fact, the USA is larger than all of Europe put together. Europe, as a whole, has a much higher population density than the USA. I imagine that Sweden's population is highly concentrated around the southern portion of the country with it being very sparsely populated to the north, and then typically in isolated pockets of towns. How many people who live in Sweden do not live in a large city? Wikipedia link Coincidentally, large cities are much more apt to have the infrastructure and market to install higher speed networks. The 15th largest city in Sweden has about 100,000 people living in it. The 10th largest city in the USA is larger than the 1st largest in Sweden. I'm not throwing rocks, just pointing out facts and how/why it may be easier to give most of the people in Sweden better Internet access than most of the people in the USA.

Re:As expected

[Shivani1141]

So Does Canada, But I'm still paying $30/month (cdn) for 10mbps down, 2.5mbps up ADSL.

Re:In defense...

[clickclickdrone]

There was a story either on TWiT or Digg recently that noted that the US providors had been given tax breaks and so on to the tune of several hundreds of billions to ensure they provided fast internet access for all. They had failed to meet all the requirements and deadlines but naturally got to keep the money.

grass, greener

[m874t232]

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.

Re:As expected

[ComaVN]

78% of the US population lives in urban areas (2003)
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.pdf

Density

[Henriok]

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?