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The U.S. Falling Behind In Broadband?
prostoalex writes "Michael J. Copps of the FCC has published a column in the Washington Post describing the United States' Internet disconnect as far as broadband: 'The United States is 15th in the world in broadband penetration, according to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). When the ITU measured a broader digital opportunity index (considering price and other factors) we were 21st — right after Estonia. Asian and European customers get home connections of 25 to 100 megabits per second (fast enough to stream high-definition video). Here, we pay almost twice as much for connections that are one-twentieth the speed.' To be fair in comparison, USA is 2nd in the world as far as number of broadband lines installed."
Help, help ... the sky is falling! Oops, sorry ... same plot, wrong story.
Seriously though, the author completely ignores the vast geographic differences between the US and other industrialized country when categorizing the US as falling behind in broadband acceptance. The US has an average population density of ~30 people per square km, industrialized Europe's is ~100, while Japan's is 336. The higher the population density, the less cable is needed (and hence, the lower the cost) to provide broadband to all these people.
In addition, the US is HIGHLY suburban, with the vast majority of broadband users living in sprawling neighborhoods with relatively large amounts of land (e.g. 1/4 to 1/2 acre+). Compare this to Europe/Japan, where a larger proportion of broadband users (and the population) live in densely populated cities. As an example, I live in a typical suburban U.S. neighborhood where almost everyone has broadband. To hit every one of the 100 homes, it would take 1.3 to 2.6 miles of cable (depending on cable location). In a European city, this same amount of cable could easily cover 2-10X the # of families living in typical apartments/condos.
Also, I don't see how large-scale adoptance of broadband in the US would help the economy by the stated $500Billion (a whopping 5% of GDP). The only people I know who don't have broadband either: don't own a computer (lack of money, interest, or live on a farm), are worried about their kids hitting the porn sites, or are grandparent types who just have no clue what the internet is and have no desire to learn. If we got all these people surfing online watching YouTube videos, searching for nudie pics, playing solitaire, and creating myspace pages, how would the economy grow by 5%?
Crack - Free with every butt and set of boobs
Michael J. Copps is nothing but a faker.
A Multiplayer Strategy Game for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux
Now someone like, say, China or Russia having incredibly high broadband penetration? That would be damned impressive.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Not only does the article NOT have a chart, but it doesn't even bother to list who the OTHER 14 countries are?
Also, I love how they mention ESTONIA with a tone that suggests we are somehow more "backwards" for falling behind them on some list. I'd be offended if I were Estonian.
Seems like every rating like this completely ignores the fact that the US has a significantly lower population density than nearly every nation above us on such lists. What's more, they also don't account for the ratio of rural to urban homes in nations.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
I am not an American, but enough already. I travel the the US a lot. There is no shortage of broadband in most areas if you want it. Not everyone wants it. I have seen enough of these stories on Slashdot (and other sites) relating to poor penetration of boradband into the US last year that if I didn't know better I'd believe they were all using 14.4K dial-up. It simply ain't so...
And in the 21st century, that's a bare minimum of gigapop IPv6 Internet to every home.
Just as we've fallen massively behind in scientific research (US scientists leaving to go to Singapore, only 8 percent of NIH grants accepted compared to 20 percent in 2000), so we are falling behind on every measure that dictates what a First World country is.
But, hopefully, our long national nightmare will be coming to a close. The stock market (a predictor of future investment) seems to think so.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Well, what exactly can we do to turn this kind of situation around? Whine to congress to resurrect the Broadband America Bill? I don't see that happening. "Teach them telecoms a lesson by not buying it?" It'll never happen, we don't have that kind of organization and too many groups depend on what the system does provide. So what, pray tell, do we do? I've got no idea, but plenty of complaints. How about some proactive solutions?
Demented But Determined.
Geographically, a single US state is as big or bigger than a lot of those countries. For example, Texas alone is 691,030 sq km, while the entire country of Japan weighs in at 377,835 sq km.
I'm sure implementing a powerful network infrastructure would be quite a lot faster, cheaper, and easier, if everyone in America lived in Texas.
In how many of those countries is the government creating the broadband infrastructure, or sponsoring it in the form of direct contracts or new monopoly grants, or in the form of an existing molopoly telecommunications giant?
For the most part, the US has none of the above. Perhaps in this case the free market doesn't see sufficient justification for high-speed access to justify the costs, since people don't seem to know they can't live without such access until they first have it.
I think this is a matter best handled at the local level. Either let businesses fight it out, or, if a local community considers it a useful monetary investment, let cities sponsor the broadband infrastructure. I see nothing wrong with the government creating the networks on which commerce can be done, but because the internet is such a new commerce network (compared to, say, roads), not every community will see it in the same way.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
back when the internet was considered a truck. Taking UPS and FedEx out of the equation really hurt.
I did feel that someone should point out that the graph purportedly showing us as have the 2nd highest number of broadband lines installed actually shows us as having the second highest number of broadband connections added in the 2Q of 2006.
Unless you somehow think there are only 2.5 million broadband users in the US, in which case we'd be far lower than 14 on the penetration list...
That is becuase in many areas, there is only one (i.e. local monopoly), provider of broadband. In in some cases, those providers are telling their customers that they have to pay for their other services whether their customers want them or not. In other words, they're going to charge you an extra, say, $50 a month for service that may not even want.
Government regulation is usually good for businesses because it keeps the competition away and it helps comanies keep their prices high - broadband is a fine example of this.
Wouldn't "gigabits per mile" make more sense as a metric to take into account how much more area there is to cover in the US veruss South Korea or Japan?
Coding with assembly is like playing with Legos. Coding an application in assembly is like building a car with Legos.
Lies, damned lies, and statistics.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
Every time this topic is discussed, I hear the same excuses. Mostly, people claim that the US is too large and with too many rural areas. It's a load of crap. We've paid billions subsidizing the laying of lines, more per person than numerous other countries and we still have much slower and more expensive service than those countries. Sweden has been the model of how to do this right. Despite government corruption and favoritism on par with the US, they have managed almost complete saturation, for less per-person government subsidy, and with a population density almost the same as the US.
The truth is, the US has combined the worst elements of several models. We don't have a free market to drive competition because of local telcom monopolies and failure of the FCC to enforce fair use. We don't have the benefits of central planning and widespread coverage of a socialist system, because the government just hands out money in subsidies and then does not even blink when that money does not go to the projects we were supposedly funding in the first place. So we get crappy coverage and service and high prices.
The US has high labor costs, declining manufacturing, and not a lot of unique industry. The information economy and exporting intellectual property may be our best option for maintaining a real role as an economic powerhouse. For that to happen we need two things, education, and technology. We shouldn't be 5th in broadband or 10th, we should be 1st. That two trillion dollars we blew in Iraq would have run a fiber connection and provided free internet connections to every house in the US for years to come. Heck, just the money we spent already subsidizing telecoms would have provided a fast connection to every home if we'd actually just spent it on that instead of giving it away to monopolists.
Have you seen China's network backbone diagrams? They have a beautiful three tiered full mesh that came out of a textbook. I know there is a lot of prejudice against socialist projects in the US, but we're falling behind very quickly. We either need internet and phone networks treated as a public utility and run by the government or we need to remove the local monopolies, stop politicians from taking the telecoms bribes, and have a real competitive market with equally huge subsidies given to any new players that want to build a complete competing network.
The time has come. Suck it up and invest in the future of the US with hard cash and reforms, or be left behind the rest of the world. Most Americans are blind to how some other countries are now technologically superior. How their gadgets work everywhere and are more advanced than anything sold here. his needs to be corrected now.
I don't define what most of the country currently has a Broadband...10/5 and perhaps we can talk, but really we should be closer to Asian speeds.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
These type of polls really amaze me. Oh noz!!!... we're falling behind on a medium primarily used for entertainment (or worse). Seriously, who the hell cares? The information is still accessible, just not as quickly and the quality and veracity of the information (which in many cases is questionable to begin with) does not change because of the download speed. Let's worry about more important things like streamlining healthcare, reducing pollution, whirled peas, etc. and leave these types of comparisons to middle-aged under-endowed guys and their sports cars... k?
Compare us to Japan? How about to Canada. You know, that huge country just to our north with similar... well, almost everything.
An easier comparison? Compare our big cities to theirs. We still lose. By a LOT.
And then remember that WE (the tax payers) gave them $200,000,000,000 for broadband deployment.
So is the situation better in densely packed cities like New York? Or is the problem that the incumbent carriers are dogs in the manger?
I live in a county with a population density of 71/(sq. mile) in southern indiana. my nearest neighbor is about 1/2mi away and the nearest stoplight is 12mi away.
this is common in the US, so there is no surprise that broadband penetration is like it is. it cost an absolute fortune to run the infrastructure here. the cable tv companies decided not to install in the area because everyone already has satellite. this is the most hilly part of indiana so wireless isn't a good option. cell phone reception is great, if you're with cingular so maybe you could get broadband through them, i dunno. satellite internet isn't worth the price.
seriously, whats the options?
Gone!
Asian and European customers get home connections of 25 to 100 megabits per second (fast enough to stream high-definition video). Here, we pay almost twice as much for connections that are one-twentieth the speed.'
Oh, c'mon! You guys get 1Mbit connections for 30 bucks/mo. In Brazil you pay more than that for a 256kbit link of poor quality. It costs something like US$35, PLUS you have to pay an extra US$10 for a useless "content provider" (it's really a tied coercive selling, allowed, or better said, enforced by the regulatory agency).
And you don't have to provide all your personal data to access the Net.
If I have a 100 million people in my country and 10% of them have broadband, that is equvalent of 100% of a country of 10 million people having broadband...that means nothing. The united states is a very large country with a very large population. As a statistics professor, Its not "being fair" to mention installed lines, thats like comparing the murder rate in a city with 10 million with 15 murders to a city with 100,000 with 10 murders and saying the city with 100,000 is safer because their are less murders 33.3% fewer murders!
In their list the UK has a lower score than the US and has a much higher population density. On the other hand Canada is 6th and has a very low density with probably a larger rural population than the states. These stats are more likely to indicate relative technology takeup rates by the population in general rather than any physical limitation. If there's enough demand, companies will lay cable.
Falling behind some guy in a dark room with 1 server and 2 clients, and a network connection running faster than light!
The US is fine, though I would worry if you reach New Zealand speeds,......its scary, just look at the plans and line speeds at full! (ADSL first version)
of which most people can only get 3000kbs, and even then its all traffic shaped so you can only go @ 30 - 40KBs
wheres the optics that where install 5 years ago?
Ok, so yes .. they in Europe do have an advantage over us because of their population density.
.. including those in rural areas anyway. And no playing online solitaire probably wont contribute to the economy (is that what you do?). But there are other things that might (stuff on arxiv.org, mathworld ..maybe even wikipedia etc). There's a lot to be gained from being able to easily cheaply communicate ..such as the capacity to contribute or build on others ideas. Isaac Newton said "if I have seen further than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants". How is someone to stand on the shoulders of giants without having access to the giant? Look at all the civilizations of past that thought they can rest on their laurels.
I think everyone should have access to broadband
So yes, increased communication and participation will pay off. And since everyone agrees we should maintain the technology lead America worked to acheive 100 years ago it's in everyone's interest that we improve broadband access.
Old news
... and even older
== With enough Will Power, one could move mountains. With enough Brains, one would just leave them where they are ==
Dammit, we need to build more tubes! Now! And tubes of varying shapes and styles!
I know TFA was about the percentage of broadband users, so the responses in most of the other posts are defending the US because of the population density factor. But the question I have is whether we're falling behind, not based on the percentage of broadband connections, but on the capacity of our broadband connections? Especially in regards to the price we pay for it?
I pay $40/month for my 4Mb/300Kb connection. My city owns a network that doesn't quite extend to my corner of town (I'm one block from the edge of the network). The ISPs on that network offer up to 10Mb Up/Down for slightly less, but what are prices and speeds in other countries in the world? I've heard numbers tossed around here on Slashdot that put these to shame, but I don't know how reliable those are. So what I want to know is how does the U.S. compare when it comes to our broadband speeds and prices (for residential users, particularly)?
Michael J. Copps is either faking it or has deliberately stopped taking his medication.
Slashdot: come for the pedantry, stay for the condescension.
Once the control is transfered to a UN agency by the world-friendly new Congress, proliferation of broadband will immediately sky-rocket in the US.
As Borat would say: NOT!
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Looking at the list, you notice two trends. (1) Cold northern countries are in the top 15... Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Canada etc... (2) Smaller countries with highly dense population centers are in the top 15... Korea, Netherlands, Denmark, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Iceland (Iceland which is both cold and small is at the very top)
That said, we probably could do better with increased compensation because we're so goddamn rich, and compared to other countries on the list, we have such a low penetration of DSL.
Might this have something to do with the fact that we have a BIGGER POPULATION than those other countries? Tell me, now... which is more expensive:
1. A country with 300,000,000 (US) people of which a percentage (likely only the middle and upper class) have broadband and all the associated infrastructure (in a country with a tanking economy)
2. A country with 130,000,000 (Japan) people of which a larger percentage (even the lower middle have more money than the middle here in the US) have broadband and all the associated infrastructure (again in a country that has a better economy than the US)
I say the loser is the US!!!
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Europe has a much more demanding pr0n industry.
Right now, the telco's own the lines and own the services. CLEC's can lease space at a huge price that does not allow true competition.
What is needed is to split the ILEC's into services, and physical infrastructure. Require the PHY telco's to build-out the rest of the network so that at least everyone can get SOME kind of DSL, and have a long term plan to migrate to fiber. The services side (telephone, ISP) would have to compete with everyone else (CLEC's) and pay the exact same amount for "colo" space at the CO.
American's don't have high penetration of broadband because:
1.) We are more spread out than other countries
2.) Our internet is a complex series of tubes
It's all good.
... if I'm not mistaken, China may have added far more broadband lines, but those are federally funded - you know, the whole socialist thing - and heavily censored, at that.
It wouldn't surprise me if, in nearly all countries that beat the US in broadband penetration, those connections are supported much more by taxes than here in the US.
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
Somehow it doesn't sound nearly so comforting put that way, does it?
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
The telcos are the biggest problem to implementing broadband. I used to work for an Internet provider in a small (read: 12k population) town, but we covered several smaller towns in the surrounding areas. The local telco switch wasn't digital, so we had to offer 33.6k dialup or wireless (no inbetween, no DSL).
So, we start looking at starting our own telco service so we can put in our own digital switch to sell DSL. You start making phone calls, spending lots of cash for all the little fees in hooking your up-and-coming CLEC to the local ILEC (Southwestern Bell), and, what do you know . . . SWB starts offering DSL in our little town of 12k people . . . before even offering DSL in a larger town (read: 100k people) that's only 50 miles away. So, all the money we spent, and all the lawyers and consultants we had to have . . . gone. The telcos fight back and kill the small business CLECs.
To demonstrate how the telcos are, I heard about a CLEC in Amarillo, Texas that had been sued by SWB. The judgement was for $12 million, I believe. The CLEC couldn't afford the entire $12mil, so they sent a check for $7mil. SWB promptly returned the check and told them that the judgement was for $12 million, not $7 million, and to send the $12 million settlement to them. Needless to say, the little CLEC didn't last long afterwards.
The telcos and those who crave power (be it executives or politicians) are the problem, not the technology.
I don't reply to Anonymous posts; if you have something to say to me, identify yourself or I won't reply.
Here in france, we have a wonderfull provider : Free (iliad group) Read : - Broadband connection up to 25Mb/s (depending of distance from DSLAM) - They have introduced in france the "box" concept, an adatper that do VOIP (compatible with traditional phone, at incredible prices - generally free), ethernet switch, router, and initially TV output - now TV output is on a secondary device, connected to the main (linked to the DSL line) with a MIMO wifi connection. It provides HDCP connectors and all needed for HD TV. - the TV output features : numerical hertzian TV, DSL TV, Video On Demand, records channel, record channel while watching another one (40Go integrated Hard Disk, also accessible through FTP, to put and watch a DivX on, for example) - you can watch many of TV streams on your computer through RDCP protocol - the phone system can be used with SIP exactly as if you used the phone connected to the "box" More, they have recently announced fibre channel with a 70Mb _symetric_ line. All that at the unique price of ... 30. The offer depends of the kind of connection (ADSL2+, ADSL, direct connection to free network or not, and in near future fibre channel), but it's the same price. You can have all services listed above, or a simple 8Mb/s line with VOIP.
Is that even though the US has a low population density, the population is moving towards Urban centers rather than into the country side.
So in truth, if you just look at Urban areas, those are increasing exponentially towards higher density, while many people are moving from the rural the urban areas.
Eventually the US will have more citizens living in Urban areas in a decade or so and there will beno excuse for lack of broad band.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
I feel so sorry for all you Americans with your crappy connections. Here in Gibraltar the highest internet connection is 512kb/s costing £75/a month($142 USD). And the line which i am on is a 256kb/s costing £45/a month ($85). Put in perspective, my friend in england gets a 24mb connection(96X faster than mine) for £24 a month($45).
Does that mean Australia's broadband penetration should be 15 times lower per capita than America's, with a population density of 2 people per sq. km.?
A good logic, but there are 1.3 million consumer broadband lines in Australia - 1 per 15 persons. The US has 69 million broadband consumers from 300 million population, 1 per 4 persons.
So all of you people whining about how it's a stupid and specious comparison on the grounds of population density, get over it - by your argument, comparing to Australia, there should be 100% saturation of broadband subscription in America.
I mean, we must be... increasingly on the alert to prevent them from taking over other mineshaft space, in order to breed more prodigiously than we do, thus, knocking us out in superior numbers when we emerge! Mr. President, we must not allow... a mine shaft gap!
Have you read my blog lately?
A number of posters have mentioned the geographic factor, but I didn't see any comments about the leapfrog factor: first movers can end up looking fairly lame toward the end of an infrastructure cycle. All the same, Canada and the US entered into the internet era at the same time facing mostly the same geographic challenges, and so far as I'm aware, Canadian cities have come out ahead on the whole.
I guess the main difference is that our Canadian monopolies form an orderly, bovine progression to the feed bucket, while American monopolies body-slam their way up to the porker trough.
Even France is kicking our ass at broadband and they got a late start to the party. Our telecom execs should be ashamed of their inability to deliver on their promises. We ponied up the tax money to them, so where the hell has it gone?
When you have a monopoly (many areas in the US have broadband monopolies), and in particular a shitty one (Cox in this case) that will turn off your internet connection for downloading a NOCD crack for a game that was LEGALLY PURCHASED (Lego Star Wars II), It makes the whole point of broadband almost moot.
I mean, even 50x more bandwidth than the pathetic 200 kb/sec I'm liable to get on a good torrent is not a lot when they are doing traffic shaping.
Now if there was a broadband offering here in San Diego County that gave true 1mb/sec downloads without traffic shaping, monitoring, shutting off the connection YOU ARE PAYING FOR, or other such shenanigans then I could reasonably recommend them to family and friends. As it stands, You might as well just use dial up, since email, google, and MySpace is all the internet is good for anyway. What good is broadband without bit torrent? Are there hundreds of uses that I'm somehow missing? Does the average person really give two shits about streaming random teenagers singing into a webcam on youtube?
The corporate stranglehold on this country is the problem. It is the terminal malignancy that we are under not just in the technology sector, but in every way that should matter to the US citizen.
Yay, we voted out the corrupt and dirty Republicans! What's that you say, the Democrats are just as sold out to corporate interests and also don't give a shit about the American populace or the concepts of civil liberty as envisioned by our forefathers? Oh, shit....
rhY
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
That might have some weight if the US had not spent over 200 billion subsidizing our broadband internet development over the last few years. The US has spent a great deal more in taxes, per person, than countries that have completely free networks via socialist programs.
1. Maintenance
Despite the fact that the infastructure is already there, there is a lot more of it to maintain, thus the higher costs.
2. Fiber Optics
Right now, the current infastructure in place (at least the older infrastructure) is limited in its broadband capacity. POTS lines can only give you so many megabits per second. Cable TV lines can do a lot better, but are still capped. In order to get to where the broadband leaders are, you need to replace all of the old infrastructure with fiber optics. You can't get Gigabit to the home with the current lines, so you need to put in something that can. That is currently what Verizon and the cable providers are trying to do right now, mainly so that the telcos can offer triple play services just like the cable companies, only a hell of a lot faster. This has been slow, though, and it will be some time until the US can compete with the numbers of the broadband leaders.
"It's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get." -- H. J. Simpson
Verizon put a fiber optic cable (FIOS) through my front yard last year. Have I switched from my 1.5mbps DSL? No. Why not? Several reasons:
-They barely seem capable of managing the DSL, which they have had for several years. Seriously, the DNS seems to go down every hour, combined with other, more mysterious outages, making an often frustrating experience. I can't help but think that a newer system would just confuse them more.
-I rarely even get the 1.5mbps from whatever site I'm viewing (their upload speed apparently, as other downloads seem unaffected). Very few things I download really need more speed anyway. In a year or two, or whenever Verizon gets their video service working this probably won't be accurate. And I don't want the wife downloading from E-bay, Amazon, and QVC any faster than she already is.
-Installation seems like a pain in the a**. They set up an ethernet router next to where the phone box is, and then I get to string ethernet cable across the house to where my computer is, or set up wi-fi (which I don't want to do). My computer is currently right next to the DSL modem. There's not yet sufficient incentive to bother.
I see I've drifted off my point, which was going to be that they (well, at least Verizon) need to do a better job of setting up their current infrastructure if they want to be able to handle more customers, and keep their current ones. I hear a lot of complaints about cable TV access too. Do they have similar problems in Europe and Japan? The article mentions we pay about twice as much for a connection, but didn't offer any numbers. I'm paying about US$30 for my DSL. How much do people pay in other countries?
Is it just me or is the option to reply to a comment gone?
Firefox 1.5.08 here...
I'm an American (please stop cursing at me; it's not my fault) and my girfriend is Hungarian. I have friends in Norway, Scotland, German, and Chech Republic. I've been to most of these places myself, and more. Guess what... Our stuff here is dismal compared to that of most of the '1st world' contries! My girl gets 10mbs to the home, and NO, she doesn't live in Budepest, or even close.
I'm all for open market competition as it brings great advances. The downside is the plethera of 'standards' (I've never seen this term so mis-used before). In many countries, the government tech body (FCC) chooses the best standard, maybe thwe second best, based on bribes, and every one uses that one standard and makes the best of it. Seems to work better, especially in their cell phones, but also in broadband.
If you think that things are falling behind in the US, take a look at Australia. We pay three times as much for a slower connection that has monthly data limits (in most cases). Most normal ADSL connections are limited to 1500kbps/256kbps, and limit your bandwidth after you've downloaded a certain amount of data. ISPs and telcos are slowly rolling out their own DSLAMS for ADSL2+ (which will offer a theoretical speed of 24Mbps), but once you get outside of the heavily populated areas, you're stuck paying a fortune for slower, limited internet access. Naturally, I could go on to blame Telstra (Australia's major telco) for the lapse in technology and affordability, but there's a whole political side to it as well. Maybe one day we'll at least catch up to other parts of the world in terms of broadband capabilities. However, until then, Australia isn't falling behind. It's holding the rest of the modern world up from the bottom.
The US is probably first when it comes to penetration on broadband.
Obviously those Americans who are yelling "but we have more land to cover" have a point. But it's not, I think, a very good one. If something is going to get done, it's going to get done- especially with the enormous volume of cable already laid for cable TV and telephone service. The real problem is not land area- it is corprate mentality.
"It is possible to commit no errors and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life." -Peak Performance
"But lower population density doesn't actually matter that much, since not only aren't there any marked differences with regards to suburbs, but because the telephone and TV cables through which to offer broadband are already installed. Few people live in ranches 30 miles from the nearest center of civilization, where the population density is pronounced and acquiring a broadband connection could actually be a problem."
So there's urban, suburbs, and ranches 30 miles from anywhere?
I live in a town of 6,000 people. It got broadband a little over two years ago. There are another 20,000 people in low-density areas around this town with no broadband access. Towns of several hundred people, communities, homes a quarter mile apart. In fact, that pretty much describes all of east Texas and most of the south...it's a nightmare to deliver broadband to *most* of the population down here.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
I'm not disagreeing with anything you have said. Broadband sucks in the US and getting bigger intertron tubes is one of the few things I'd even like to pay taxes for. I'm practically waiting with a plate of cookies for the Verizon fiber truck to come to my street.
But in those countries with cheap ubiquitous super-fast broadband... what can they do that we can't? OK, hi-def TV streaming is possible with high speed. But is that actually a product they can purchase?
What are they doing with their fat pipes besides doing the same old stuff faster? I assume that it must enable new types of businesses, but besides video delivery I don't know what they are. I'm honestly curious about what I am missing besides a smaller broadband bill and faster torrenting.
Clearly, we must force a regime change in Estonia before the Axis of Evil can harness their mighty broadband penetration to further their goals of nuclear proliferation, uncle abuse, and dog hickies.
This has been on my mind for some time now. I'm now at the limit of what Speakeasy can offer with their ADSL service, 7Mbs/768Kbps. While this is good enough for my current needs, I do not have room to grow as I add IP based services.
I recently had an email exchange with Speakeasy and they do not plan to invest in new technologies to either replace their ADSL offering or upgrade it. Also, WiMax will not be deployed beyond downtown Seattle. Speakeasy, are you looking to be bought out?
If Speakeasy dies or becomes out moded then what options will I have? Comcast or Verizon... Nice choice.
As an aside, same argument here. Look at population density. It costs more per drop in most of our country than any other. However that is still not an excuse for the sad state of broadband offerings in major metro areas.
What could possibly go wrong?
(Americans) may be 15th in the world in broadband penetration
You know, that is probably the first good explanation I've heard for why everyone drives such large cars.
These stories are always accompanied by glorious tales of the 100Mbit FTTH connections that are apparently installed in every home in Europe. This is far from the truth. I'm paying $65 USD for a 4Mbit/386kbit connection here in Denmark, just like the the average person anywhere else.
I like the price, but then realized that if I have HDTV and Tivo, what do I do with 28mbps internet? What do i do with the 768k that I have now? (note: I have DSL ONLY because it is literally cheaper than dial-up) I read Slashdot, Play Kingdom Of Loathing, and do research (reading) for work. (12mbps for 5,000 people in the office)
What the hell do I do with the other 27.99999mbps? I'm certainly not going to stream in more TV if I already get HDTV and Tivo with this package.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying that having the option to -get- broadband isn't better, and I'm also not saying that we shouldn't encourage people to -get- higher speed broadband if it helps make it more widely available.......
..... but aren't we all looking at this the wrong way? The problem isn't that there isn't bandwidth, the problem is more "what are the average people DOING with the bandwidth"? Sure, tech savvy consumers are out downloading music, movies, pr0n, etc, but the -majority- of the people in the rural US, on average, seem to have difficulty with the mysteries of minesweeper, much less worrying about if they can download 24mb/sec. I'd be very interested to see statistics on technology adoption correlated against these numbers rather than drawing conclusions based on one specific measuring stick.
"Seriously though, the author completely ignores the vast geographic differences between the US and other industrialized country when categorizing the US as falling behind in broadband acceptance."
And you completely ignore the fact that L.A. and NY are also way behind these other countries but have similar population densities.
Seriously though, the author completely ignores the vast geographic differences between the US and other industrialized country when categorizing the US as falling behind in broadband acceptance. The US has an average population density of ~30 people per square km, industrialized Europe's is ~100, while Japan's is 336. The higher the population density, the less cable is needed (and hence, the lower the cost) to provide broadband to all these people.
I used to think the same- until I went looking for broadband in Boston, looking for a place to rent. Here's a general description of how it goes.
Verizon has rolled our FiOS in almost every suburban neighborhood in Eastern Massachusets with a decent average per-household income, but nowhere in Boston or surrounding neighborhoods. Newton, in fact, is the closest city to Boston which has FiOS. Alston, Brighton, Boston, Cambridge, Dorchester, Jamaica Plain, Somerville, Watertown...the list goes on. None of these places have FiOS. These places have relatively high population density, and some of them have enormous $/household income levels. A few state legislators have made noise about it- accusing Verizon of getting all the benefits of being a public utility, but discriminating in how it rolls out its services. Verizon's official line is that it is "easier" to work in the Suburbs; possibly true, but in the city, you have 10-50 times the customers for any given block; even if you have to hire 2x the crews to finish the job faster, hire police details, pull more permits...you'd still make your money back faster. I am convinced that what Verizon is terrified of is that one person in a building will buy FiOS, and then share it wirelessly or with ethernet runs to everyone else. 10mbit down and several mbit up goes a LONG way for a lot of home users...and it is pretty cheap, too...$30-40/month.
The towns that do are all outside, or inside-but-very-close-to, the 128 corridor. Meanwhile, Verizon MIGHT offer DSL service if you're not a)too far from a CO which is b)actually wired for DSL which c)Verizon has decided to offer something better than 1mbit down and 128kbit (YES, 128KBIT!) up...or sDSL service, which costs an arm and a leg...
Up until recently, Verizon wouldn't even offer ANY DSL services where Comcast operated; comcast's service costs a minimum of $40-50/month, and it's more expensive if you chose not to also get basic cable.
Please help metamoderate.
"Seriously though, the author completely ignores the vast geographic differences between the US and other industrialized country when categorizing the US as falling behind in broadband acceptance. The US has an average population density of ~30 people per square km, industrialized Europe's is ~100, while Japan's is 336. The higher the population density, the less cable is needed (and hence, the lower the cost) to provide broadband to all these people. "
I agree. But the communications companies have had enough time to expand the system further than they have. It's been ten years and I'm still waiting for broadband to reach my area.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
psh, the usa shouldnt complain about having crappy internet speeds - Australia didnt make this list because well, the services provided, lets just say arent up to par. but it is correct, it is population density that is the issue here. i live about 500km's west of sydney, i guess you could call it the country, and i work with a lot of people out of town trying to access the internet. the majority of the time, they are stuck on dialup because they are too far from the exchange, and yet are still too close to town to recieve a government subsidy to have satellite internet installed on their farms.
When everyone gets to go back to dialup again, let me know how you feel, because there are hundreds of thousands of people here that are still unable to get even basic adsl (512/256). And the prices? Well lets put it this way - if population density = low, then price = high as hell
Broadband availability and offerings is worse in the US than even countries like Norway, with a population density of 14 people per square kilometer (less than half that of the US), just as with cellphone coverage...
A better comparison would be to determine which country is the best wired for broadband among regions of similar population density. In that department, I'm very confident that the US still is not in the top ten. I live in Manhattan. I can get 768 kbps DSL and that's it. Many places can get 6.5 Mbps DSL, or they can get so-called cable, which degrades at times of high usage. Compared to what's available in Sweden or Korea or even Estonia, it's a joke.
And like most bad jokes, it won't end nearly soon enough. No one in government is so much as contemplating forcing the telecoms to adopt even 1990's technology, much less 21st century.
-- "The only thing that is ever new in the world is the history you do not know." -- Harry Truman
Because people would buy that much more porn, thats why!
I'd hate for Elbonia to have better broadband - Dilbert & Dogbert would be sorely missed ;-)
That works out to ca 27 people per square kilometre, or about TWICE the density of Norway - a country with broadband offerings that are far better than most of the US...
Americans tend to compare USA to densely populated Central European nations to complain about how rural the US is whenever cellphone coverage, broadband or public transport is brought up. But there appears to be a tendency to ignore the fact that this somehow isn't an issue for Norway, Sweden etc. that have far lower population densities.
In fact, only 12 US states have population densities below that of Norway, and their total population is about 17 million.
Well,
.... But that is missleading as the 1st post / insightfull rating of: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=205797&cid=167 88797
.... 2.5 million lines (with about 190 million inhabitants)
sure, China is #1 with a populatin of 1.2 Billion and
USA is #2 with a population of 270 Million
Truth is: the figures and situation is: BROADBAND LINES ADDED not the EXISTING ones.
ADDED in the US got 2.5 million new broadband lines. (with 270 million inhabitants)
ADDED in france + germany + UK got
So: per million inhabitants the growth in EU is much bigger (as I only counted 3 countries nad not all of thema anyway).
More important: the complete issue is a fake big time. Who cares what the growth rate is? In the EU the broadband coverage is now in the range of 90% of all inhabitants. Our growth rate will sink, big time even. The coverage in USA is what? 40%? Of course the growth rate will increase. How is it in China? Probably 1%? Every new installed broadband connection in China will give a new kick to the "growth"!!
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
let's face it, the broadband dualopoly is america's mediocracy at it's best. My major complaint is speed. Uploading rates are minimized to prevent you from offering services on your homepc, this is a major bottleneck in network based applications and with the popularity of virtual appliances and the proven vitality of the internet to spur inovation, there is little room for error. The usa is going in the wrong direction by allowing expensive/mediocre service and behind it is multiple interest at stakes, telco's cable companies, brick and morter business realestate and yes finally the consumer pc market. imagine everyone having highspeed up/down access and virtual appliances running many things, little need to upgrade, eh? the embedded appliance market has yet to really take off in consumer offerings, except cell phones, which is far from ideal, just imagine having a free third-pipe highspeed would do for embedded devices other than cell phones. Bottom line is 9/11 was not only a wakeup call, but a forward looking statement of the problems of a market-driven economy as opposed to a free market economy. Cut out the politics and you have a free economy. "fighting for air", is a good take on the why. a politically driven market-economy is on it's last leg, i imagine as long as the democrats don't do something about alternatives, i'll have to go back to my own new party, the "red-dog demmy's"
I have 2mbps ADSL and multiple 3G connections in Greece, and I see Americans, inhabitants of USA, the world's only hyperpower, complaining that they only had 20kbps dialup in Arizona. Why?
Why is broadband not ubiquitous in the most powerful country of the world?
This is such BS. Who cares if the US is 180th in the world in broadband adoption? It's as if broadband adoption is some kind of bellwether for thought leadership or cultural hegemony.
What is broadband good for? Porn, Youtube videos, on-demand porn, downloading copyright music and movies via bittorrent, gaming and porn. Did I happen to mention porn?
In a matter of minutes on a mere 56k modem, you can download more historic literary works, scientific discourse, political bills, candidate voting records and world news than you can possibly ever read through in a month. Aside from the convenience of serving our 'gotta have it now' sensibilities, what tangible benefit is it that 'broadband to every home' really delivers, other than a medium through which the latest pop culture crap can be shoved down our throats?
Population Density is the main problem - NO not slow thinking citizens.... people per square mile over the entire country. It would be interesting to take areas of the US with population density comparable to Europe and compare the accessibility of broadband in THOSE areas specifically.
The US isn't even in the same race. I've been on 100MB FTTH here in Tokyo for the last 3 years (25MB ADSL before that). Included with it I get IP telephony services which allow for very cheap international calling rates (I do use SkypeOut instead though) and also free domestic calls to other IP Tel users). I also get TV over IP with a variety of foreign and domestic stations. All the above for about $45US/month, no capping/limits. Eat that Uncle Sam. They need to clean up the corruption in the US Telecoms industry bigtime. There is no reason why the US cannot have comparable services.
And how.
:)
Actually you can blame Telstra.
Its the fact that they are cheap and installed a very poor copper network across the country that makes half of it so crap. The other half is population density is Australia is virtually non-existant.
Subexchanges and RIMs are the bane of Telstra - these devices fuck over competitors because the fibre Telstra can lay to these, and then lay copper is so much cheaper than building another exchange.
WTF do you expect when the only first world country with a builtup infrastructure entirely unaffected by war(s) has overall lower broadband bandwidth rates?! It's not like the US had the fuc k bombed out of the country ever and had to replace evrything from scratch(hmm... wonder who would subsidize that?)
Living in the, now, people's fucked up democratic republic of self-congratulatory self-serving assholes intent upon congratulating themselves with excessive taxation in the U.S.(to pay for all the "free" goodies promised) I, currently(expecting it to be taxed away soon in the interests of the socialist utopia & wetback union) have 6Mbps up/2Mbps down. IF Verizon survives the marxists(ultra left democrats) currently elected, I hope to have nearly unlimited bandwidth within 2y courtesy of Verizon...
We must not allow... a broadband gap!
honey, we done did fall off and get runded over, we did!
living for 4 years in an international dormitory at my university, I heard the grunt of it. these kids who knew almost nothing about computing knew one thing for sure; that our measly 1.5 Mbit lines were allot slower than the at the time 12-30 Mbit lines that they had at home. this was 4 years ago and we still have Americans thinking that dsl's 3 Mbit is awesome. some say it is the huge land mass, I say that we have been in a downward spiral of anti-technology in America since the advent of the computer. making computer's faster is all gravy, but maybe we should also focus on something other zippy graphics and large hard disks...
just my opinion.
I completely agree with you on the harrendous job that the government does regulating monopolies. Personally, I think that all utilities (phone/cable/gas/electricity/(water?) lines) should be run by local cooperatives owned by the customers (and possibly also by the employees). The services actually provided on these physical connections (phone service, DSL, cable TV, cable internet, etc) can then be run by various corporations free-market style, with some government oversight. You get the best of both worlds: well-kept infrastructure AND competition between service providers.
Of course, that would be deemed too socialistic to ever actually happen, but one can dream, can't one?
(Aside): Speaking as a Bay Area resident, SBC/AT&T and PG&E are both pretty damn mediocre with regards to serivce.
The physical factors account for some of it, but not much. For one thing, the suburban qualities of America doesn't give much insight into why it is that city dwellers in most of America still have broadband speeds that pale in comparison to those in much of Europe and Asia. Remember that according to the FCC, broadband means anything over 200kbs, so talking about "broadband" in America and South Korea is really talking about two completely different things.
The "America is so huge" argument doesn't work when you also recognize that most Americans only have two broadband providers to choose from. The consolidation of the telecom market means that it is a losing proposition for one carrier to enter a geographic market that another carrier has already taken. Usually it comes down to "competition" in the form of a choice between the dominant local telecom and whichever cable operator has the contract for the area. You can drink anything you want, as long as it is Coke or Pepsi.
By defining broadband as an "information service" the FCC and the Supreme Court (in the Brand X decision) turned the incombent telecos and cable companies loose. They no longer had to lease excess capacity to new entrants in the market. The anti-competitive measures taken by the Baby Bells in the late 1990s were essentially excused and ratified, and almost all of the plucky broadband competitors that sprung up to bring broadband to the masses were squashed by the giant, slow-moving, ever-consolidating telecom entities.
The South Korean approach worked in part because the government created an initial infrastructure and allowed carriers to compete on top of it. Here in the US, we talk about the free market incessantly, but in reality we have coddled the Baby Bells. They are the severed pieces of the old AT&T, which was essentially a government-protected monopoly for decades. So when the heads of these companies talk about how pissed off they are at Google, et. al., for using "their" networks, just remember that they were born rich. Sure, they built the fiber optic networks and invested billions in infrastructure, but were it not for government intervention in the early years of telecom, they would have been in the same place as Covad and all the other newcomers. Anyone can compete in the broadband market in theory, but in reality if the incumbents have a decades-long lead on you and billions of dollars, how in the hell are you going to get the funding necessary to compete? Of course, with that nice head start, the mutant offspring of the Baby Bells are fervent supporters of free market competition. Funny how that works, isn't it?
Look up broadband prices in the US from 10 years ago, five years ago, and now. Evidence of a truly competitive market? Check prices per megabyte in the US against those in the OECD report linked to below. Something isn't right.
I could go on and on about this, but Copps is right. The US is getting its ass kicked in broadband, and the "hands off" approach the government has taken over the last ten years has clearly not worked. Sure, we're a big country, but the technical aspects are the smallest part of the equation. After all, the Internet was started here. DSL was invented here. Fiber optic cable was first put to practical use here. We screwed up politically, and now we're paying for it.
Broadband Reality Check II (PDF)
OECD report on broadband access in several countries
GAO report on broadband (PDF) - takes the FCC to task for failures in its methodology for determining broadband penetration.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Damned, why don't you go to the future to harvest technology instead of complaining? Oh... right, sorry, that was Copps, not Fox.
USA telecommunications being an international joke and rip-off is very old pre-2000 news.
USA Broadband as defined (marketing spin) by most USA providers ain't in fact Broadband, it is wideband or less.
USA proportionally has far less citizen/public broadband access to the Internet than most other developed nations' citizens.
Our government provides Billions of tax dolors annually to foreign countries with much better telecommunications
infrastructure than currently exist in the USA, while politicians also make sure by legislation that telcos and cable companies
have a protected hostage customer base with no need to compete [AKA: Corporatist communism].
Don't even get me started on banking and loans, because the tip of the home and small business foreclosure ice-berg is almost
visible on the horizon after six years of serious economic stupidity.
Globally US is in the dog-house and most US politicians just don't give a damn about US all.
NOW FOR AN OFF-TOPIC PART:
We are quickly becoming the PaperEagle of the global community, because most politicians have their head up their ass
thinking the USA is a global player by WWII dejure/fiat. Politician have provided us more-than two costly military venture
losses.
War was not mucking declared on Vietnam or Iraq. Vietnam and Iraq are political conflicts not war/attacks on enemies
that ever threatened US. I believe in kill your enemies if they will not unconditionally surrender, but Bin Laden and many
terrorist are alive, leading, and training others to kill US.
I feel (in Iraq) we are like the cartoon elephant going mucking nuts, because (we think) there is a mouse in the house.
We could just step on it and move on, but we don't we do the panic-dance and look pitifully big, sad, ugly, and crazy.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
First, this was meant as a reply to another post asking for comparison. /. now allows for discussions that need no more replies.
But
Ok, here are the key data about my current broadband account in Germany, I'm a hansenet customer (alice-dsl.de)
At ~40 (50USD) I get dsl (ADSL2+) and ISDN phone service. I have nominal 16000KBit/s down, 1000KBit/s up, in fact it is 17800/1150 as my home is close to an access point. Taking losses at the dsl-modem in account, this translates to ~1,8 MB/s down, 110KB/s up. Included with that price is a flat rate for all traffic I might generate, a flat rate for domestic land line telephone connections.
This is about the max of what is available for private households at the moment, VDSL2 lines are in preparation but there is some fighting about the question whether the former telco monopolist which currently suffers hard from competion in the dsl field should be allowed to set up a new monopoly in this field. VDSL2 lines, when available, may offer 25 to 50 mBit/s up.
605413? Yes, it's a prime.
Sorry, but your argument of geographical dispersion and population density is not enough, it should be countered by the technological advance the US have over the rest of the world. I live in Portugal, a small country, considered to be on the "tail of europe". Portugal is full of mountains, and there are entire villages up north with less than 1000 inhabitants. But we get ADSL everywhere we have a phone line ( -> everywhere we have light -> everywhere), minimum speed is 1mbps, average is 4mbps, with speeds up to 16mbps (been hearing of 20mbps recently). :p
:)
It would seem almost deliberate that the US are holding back on broadband. Afterall, information is power, and a population detached from the rest of the world is easier to influence. Other countries use different kinds of information control, sometimes far less subtle (although a distant comparison, I wonder if I'll get a troll point for the appropriate reference to China?). I'm not saying the government has an active part in delaying broadband adoption, but it certainly doesn't have an active part in promoting it.
It's sad that we've had this very same discussion here at Slashdot over 1 year ago, that time it was still about how the US were so far behind in broadband adoption. Back then we were happy with our bleeding edge ADSL lines at 1mbps... and I often refered to how France and Sweden had T1s, or even Germany. Now come and tell me Germany is small.
Consider two facts: 1) The US is a country that doesn't maintain its power grid 2) You resist the introduction of free wifi in towns. Seems to me that someone over there is more concerned with having money in their own pockets than making the country grow.
But then again, what do I know? I live in a country where the minimum wage is about 300$. But we still get ADSL everywhere.
"I don't mind God, it's his fan club I can't stand!" E8
The U.S. has higher broadband penetration than, among others, Australia, Austria, Britain, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Portugal, and Spain.
Well, maybe they can adopt our policies and get their broadband penetration up before they're left behind.
We are a huge country with 5 people per sq kilometre.
I mean besides antartica we are the most sparesly population continent on the planet.
I live in the burbs, 45mins from the CBD.
I have a 24MBS DSL connection. Our local council recently installed Fibre To The Kerb.
So i could get cable instead if i wanted to.
I get 80gb/m limit for $99 AU, and if i go over that limit im shaped to 64k. No extra fees.
Any suburb that doesnt have a high speed SLAM complains like buggery till they get one.
I think the American system is fucked, and your $200BN went straight back to the govt as bribes so the telcos could keep their monopoly. But hey thats how your system works right? Just pay enough money to the govt and you can get any law passed.
The problem with these stats is that for countries that have invested in a government sponsored program, everyone who wants internet access gets broadband, whether they want it or not.
I'm sure a significant number of people in the U.S. are satisfied with their current options. I know I am, and I have the option to get faster service for a slightly higher price. It's just not worth it to me. But these statistics as used in the story assume that I'm just desperate to get Internet access like they have in Korea, and that my livelihood depends on it, neither of which are true.
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
There's a lot of people saying that the USA has such shitty broadband service because in the USA, we're too spread out, and wiring us up for 100mbit fiber connections would be "too expensive." Don't buy into the hype, its a load of bullshit. Why? Because there are plenty of places in the USA with population densities as high as South Korea or Japan. Know what? They don't have decent internet either. The reason is purely the consolidation of the Telecommunications industry and a lack of antitrust action/regulation. In short, COMPETITION, and GOVERNMENT REGULATION OF BUSINESS, make many nations far, far, better to live in than the USA, by any number of criteria (Life Expectancy, Health care access, infant mortality rate, functional literacy, science literacy, technology access, etc, etc, etc) The USA is a slum, barely better (if at all) than the small third world nations we use our military strength to keep down, like Cuba, Mexico, etc.
show the US at a 12th place
2 3_37529673_1_1_1_1,00.html
... (hmmm, that just sounds wrong)
http://www.oecd.org/document/9/0,2340,en_2649_342
it ALSO has a nifty penetration/inhabitants per sq km
anyhoo, here's the list:
1 Denmark
2 Netherlands
3 Iceland
4 Korea
5 Switzerland
6 Finland
7 Norway
8 Sweden*
9 Canada
10 United Kingdom
11 Belgium
12 United States
13 Japan
14 Luxembourg
15 Austria
16 France
17 Australia
18 Germany
19 Spain
20 Italy
21 Portugal
22 New Zealand
23 Czech Republic**
24 Ireland
25 Hungary
26 Poland
27 Turkey
28 Slovak Republic
29 Mexico*
30 Greece
Here in Canada things are starting to open up. I know my cable provider is going to be offering a "Nitro" service of 25Mbps in a week. We already have 10Mbps "Extreme" service, and the rest of us (cheap) chumps have to live with 5Mbps.
:)
I believe Telus and other phone companies are bringing out products with speeds similar to 25Mbpsvery soon. I'm just not willing to pay $100/mo to get them.
Every time this topic pops up, this same nonsense keeps coming back. US has much lower population density blah blah. To answer the first poster in the thread: The US has an average population density of ~30 people per square km.
Finland has a population density of 17 people per square km. My house there is literally in the middle of nowhere, and yet I get 8Mbit DSL there. Currently I live in Los Angeles, and the communications infrastructure is a joke compared to RURAL Finland. The maximum speed I can get anywhere, cable or DSL, is 6Mbit.
My previous apartment in LA was "so far" from the DSLAM that I could only get 1.5mbps. This in the second biggest city in the US as you know. Granted one that is all about urban sprawl, but I can guarantee you it's more densely populated than my Finnish home town.
Frankly, I'd replace the apologism with demanding the telcos do something about. With the monopolies they have in their tidily divided areas, they just sit on their asses and do nothing except take the consumers' money as the existing wiring just continues to degrade. Verizon's FIOS is promising, though, but spreading very slowly.
Come on! If you're in an urban or suburban area in the US, you can almost always get broadband from either the cable company or the phone company (or both). Not to mention all of the wireless ISPs. Hell, my grandfather (now 90) has neither sewage nor water service, lives 10 miles down an unpaved road, and at least 15 miles from the nearest community of any size. Guess what? They have cable internet service through Adelphia. And they qualify for DSL from Verizon as well.
The fact is, not everyone wants broadband.
As for "25 MBps" connections, guess what - I'm on a university network with a 100MBps connection and multiple OC-3 links. Unless I'm pulling from Akamai (local mirror) or another university (Abiline), I can't tell the difference between the service I have here and the 6Mbps Comcast at home. Guess what? The Comcast connection has better latency, too - around 40ms to Google.
Verizon is pulling fiber into millions of homes and cable companies are upgrading their infastructure to support massive amounts of bandwidth (look at Comcast's CRAN, for example). Where, exactly, is the problem here? Since when did it matter if South Korea or France has a higher percentage of broadband subscribers? There are a multitude of factors that contribute to that (population density, generally unmetered local service, etc.). Let's worry about the problems that are really problems - like why we have so much heart disease or so many murders (even though the rate is at an all-time low).
Estonia is probably the Internet capitol of Europe. It is a very small country (1 million citizens) that used to be part of the USSR. They speak almost the same language as in Finland where Nokia is located (and Linux originated), and after Estonia gained independence it was more or less taken over by Nokia, and rebuild as a model country for communication technology.
It is no shame being listed after Estonia in Internet related statistics.
I love it when Americans write about those "Europeans" as if we were one country. There are 50 countries in Europe with a combined population of about 600-700 million people. Land area and population vary greatly. Theres quite a range from the top to bottom (80 million to 50.000).
Some countries do have high densities - however the countries that score well are mostly countries with small, rural populations and very LOW density. Take Norway for example (no. 7) with 12/km2 versus the USA (no 12) with 31/km2!
If population density was a problem, then wouldn't we be able to see 100Mb fiber and 40Mb ADSL being rolled out to the cities, like New York? Japan can get this because of population density,right? Then places like Manhattan should too. Oh hell- when I checked my provider comparison tool that came with my Japanese laptop, some carriers even offer cellular data to go with the DSL for portability, and only $5 extra too. That shouldn't be hampered by population density, right?
OSx86 FTW
I'm sorry to dawn this on you, but you're not falling behind, the US has been behind europe for a LONG time.
:)
Paris, for example is going to be 100% wired with FTTH in the next few years etc etc
US, wake up, you're not the empire you think you are
(alright, I'm sorry I didn't intend this to be flamebait)
PS but of course I'm french, why do you think I have this outrageous accent ?
People who are saying that Broadband is difficult in USA because population density is too small are ignoring the fact that inspite of the low population density Telephone lines exist. In Paris phone lines carry 24Mbps, ofcourse this requires that you are near the exchange. In other parts of France 512Kbps is available, inspite of the fact that France is a socialistic and protectionist country. I would expect USA being a Capitalist country to do much better. But the fact is USA no longer has real capitalism. Large Corporations have too much power. The only solution is for communities to develop their own WiMax networks, they cannot depend on the corporations or the government to help them. They might actually make this illegal. I think this has already happened in a few states ;-).
Uh - China doesn't have completely free networks. Not even close. Residential service costs 80RMB per month (5% of a person's monthly income) and it frequently fails. Not even mentioning the censorship imposed by the benevolent socialist government.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
The UK measures the proportion of the population able to theoretically get Broadband if they want it on the basis of the number of enabled telephone exchanges. Unfortunately - there are customers with telephone lines connected to exchanges who live too far out to get a stable ADSL connection - so this measure overstates the real number of people who can get access. I have a friend living in East London who can't get broadband because the line noise is too high due to his distance from the exchange - and he lives in recently built development in the capital city. UK pricing tends to ignore the 10UKP (19USD) you have to pay BT for telephone line rental in order to get most broadband connections. I currently pay 14UKP (~26USD) for my 8mbit ADSL connection. But in practice I get 4mbit throughput (from bandwidth tests) since I'm too far from the exchange to get the top speed. My ISP (BT) upgraded me from 1mb last month for free though. (Actually better than free they actually dropped the price from 18UKP to 14UKP presumably as a response to other special offers in the UK from Orange and Talk Talk). Talk Talk are currently offering telephone line rental, 8mbit broadband, and unlimited europe wide telephone calls for 20UKP a month.
Not sure if threading is fixed yet, so I will quote piggydoggy:
"But lower population density doesn't actually matter that much, since not only aren't there any marked differences with regards to suburbs, but because the telephone and TV cables through which to offer broadband are already installed. Few people live in ranches 30 miles from the nearest center of civilization, where the population density is pronounced and acquiring a broadband connection could actually be a problem."
a) DSL has a MUCH lower distance limit for data service on phone lines than voice. Even in central New Jersey there are plenty of large areas that are too far away from their COs for DSL but have excellent voice quality. My parents' home is in one of these areas, and NJ is one of the most densely populated states in the nation, and central NJ is one of the most densely populated parts of the state (as compared to South Jersey, where the population density is quite low in the Pine Barrens.)
b) Cable TV penetration is much lower than you think. I know a lot of people in the area I'm living now (upstate NY) whose only options for TV are terrestrial broadcast and satellite because there isn't any cable service even remotely close to where they are.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
What sort of bandwidth are you getting for 80RMB? Where I live is only capable of 512k for that price, and 2M line for 120RMB (they also stated 150RMB for unlimited hotspot access) but the line is apparently too noisy for anything over 512k. Why me?
OSx86 FTW
Here's the chart. Agreed that they should have included it in the article.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
One of the reasons Denmark is leading the OECD list this year*, and probably will remain high on the list for many years, is the fact that the power companies have started to roll out fibre to consumers, as they work to bury overhead power lines. We just had a big merger in Denmark, where many of the major power companies turned into one company called DONG Energy, which is going to speed up the process. They estimate 98% of the population will have access to this within 10 years. I very much welcome this development as my 8Mbit/s line isen't cutting it anymore!
2 3_37529673_1_1_1_1,00.html
* http://www.oecd.org/document/9/0,2340,en_2649_342
This is a viral signature. You are now infected!
Extreme: 6 Mbps down/800 k up for $51.95/month (+ $3 modem rental, or buy modem for $99)
Express: 5 Mbps down/384 k up for $43.95/month (+ modem as above)
Lite: 1 Mpbs down/128 k up for $31.95/month (+ modem as above)
UltraLite: 128k down/64 k up for $21.95/month (+ modem as above)
All come with a 60 GB activity limit per month (additional use at $1.25/Gig)
So the 43.95 Cdn = $39.55 US for the Express service seems very close to what you are paying for roughly the same service. (As if I ever see 5 Mbps down; I'm thrilled when it tops 200k..)
What was once true, is no longer so
It doesn't matter - you'll never max out that pipe, anyway. I have an 8Mb connection at work, and it gets about 4k/s outside of China. Inside China, the speed is great, but who reads Chinese web sites, or downloads files from inside China?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Cincinnati Ohio: At the moment you can get 3Mb/768kb for $20/mo That comes with free wireless access.
My mom, in Rio Rancho NM, can get free wireless. It's only 512Kb/60Kb and for 1 hour a day, but it's free.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Salvance,
/..
... have been on the increase for the past decade.
... it is all about SFI (Special Ducking Interest) and the citizens [AKA: public] are feed spin&BS as the cause for fraud and treason.
...?
...?
....
This sounds like the typical Democrat and/or Republican spin/BS.
I know some times there are MS hired-guns on
Are you a USA Telco/Cable wideband service hired-gun that tells US citizens the wideband is broadband?
The US telecommunication infrastructure is very ducked up just as the ITU and other reports have been stating for the past decade.
Telcos software/service patch/package and area-code/subscriber databases upgrades are as directed more than as needed. So, even wire-call miss-routing, phantom-rings, disconnects
Also, the telco and cable companies working with congress have delayed or prevented new technologies from entering the USA market, and holding customers hostage to one provider at obscene prices. Neither democracy or capitalism functions in the USA
What happened to Wireless local loop, 802.16 WiMax,
Why have USA Cities/communities trying to provide all their citizens with Internet access (including the poor) via WiFi (802.11*) been taken to court by the telco and cable companies to prevent any improvements for public citizens' Internet access?
Why can I get COMCAST but not DirectTV service
IOWs Don't drucken lie to US like the politicians. US ain't idiots or your cockless bitches, and mamma can kick-ass too on
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
Just wait until the guy finds the BFG, ripper, sniper rifle or chainsaw. That 10 million city will be cut down in a matter of hours. Well, unless his ISP starts throttling the connection. Then some n00bs will call him a cheater because of the erratic behaviour and kick him from the server. f00k!
actually, up until now I've been downloading ROMs for my DS Lite from Chinese sites (when games are 400RMB a pop and I don't know when I'll be back to the States, that's what I do) so I do max out the pipe. I use eMule with a Chinese server too. Strangest thing is that when I try to use eMule at school (big no-no, I know) all I can do is upload- my download bandwidth is reduced to 5k or so while upload bandwidth is usually over 50k. Yes, those are probably illegal behaviors in the US, but if it's illegal in China I haven't noticed- the lawsuits have never happened here yet.
OSx86 FTW
The assumption is always made in these pieces that this is something desirable, or at least generally desirable. But for most users, the net is a giant timewaster and worse. Wiring the people of the world is not unlike the British bringing opium into China.
As others have pointed out, the issue is why those even in dense areas (New York) do not get 50-100MB access. Even in Columbus, Indiana, the max for under $100/mo is around 8mbit with Comcast. I know they can do over 10, they did at least that much in Bloomington when cable modems first came to town. The issue is that they the duopoly between them and AT&T means that if they both call single digit speeds "broadband", both can rake in the cash without increasing the speed.
The only way you, and much of my extended family that chooses to live in the country will get high speed is if something like WiMax comes into play. Remember, by getting "away from it all" in the less dense areas, you're getting away from advanced services. Even those, though, pale when compared to what is offered in other countires.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.