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."

Comments

Hey there Chicken Little!

[Salvance]

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%?

REALITY: Real countries invest in infrastructure

[WillAffleckUW]

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.

Well, duh.

[crhylove]

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