US Lags World In Broadband Access

An anonymous reader writes "When It Comes To Broadband, U.S. Plays Follow The Leader says a story in IWeek. Their thesis is that, while broadband access in the United States rose from 60 million users in March 2005 to 84 million in March 2006, the US is well behind countries like England and China. Indeed, what you may not realize is that the U.S. ranks a surprisingly poor 12th in worldwide broadband access, a situation which could threaten its ability to maintain its technological lead. The federal government is no help: the FCC has almost no data on the rate of hi-speed adoption, or of what the speed and quality of those services are. Broadband is more expensive here than in other nations, as well, almost 10 times as expensive by some estimates. The cost and poor quality of service aren't from population density, aren't from lack of interest, and are not from lack of technical know-how. So, what is holding us back?

Comments

location, location, location

[superwiz]

Most of the contry was settled with the cheap gas in mind. So a large part of the population is decentralized.

Re:location, location, location

[EvanED]

Really? I would have said most of the country was settled with horses in mind, but that's just me.

(I know what you're trying to say, but I don't know how much cheap gas has to do with our settlement patterns.)

Re:location, location, location

[superwiz]

Russia had horses, it had more land and it had comparable population. It is mostly urban. People settled close to services in the 20th century. Cheap gas allowed the distance from the services to be further while maintaining the time it took to reach them.

Re:location, location, location

[saskboy]

Cheap gas wasn't really the factor for settling the country, as it happened for the most part before gasoline was invented. Things like agriculture and waterways played the main role.

Today it makes American [and rural Canada] the prime regions to build up an Internet infrastructure, but we're lagging. Wireless options might start filling the gap this decade, but with large lag times for satellite Internet, I don't foresee it taking over before ground based [or balloon based] wireless does.

Re:location, location, location

[superwiz]

The country wasn't realy settled until the 20th century. That is to say to urban centers appeared (off of east coast). The prime targets for internet infrastructure are the dense population centers. Most of the people in this country live outside of them because they can reach their services in reasonable time by cars.

Re:location, location, location

[14CharUsername]

in soviet russia the country settles you.

Re:location, location, location

[superwiz]

I am afraid that this one is even funnier because it's true. Soviet Russia did force large population re-settlements.

Re:location, location, location

[chill]

Wow! So, you mean, I can move to somewhere with a super-dense population like New York, Los Angeles or Chicago and be able to get 100 MBps broadband for a reasonable price?

Wait...I live in one of those places and it isn't available.

Population density isn't the problem here. If that were the case, our major cities would be wired out the wazoo, but they're still "oooo...ADSL! I can get 768 Kbps upstream for only $65!"

Re:location, location, location

[xzvf]

I agree. It is nearly impossible to get good broadband in rural locations. I'm not a big government type, but it's time to do a Tennessee Valley Authority for broadband. Without that kind of kickstart most of the US might not have electric service today.

Re:location, location, location

[KodaK]

If you look at a map of the US you'll notice that a lot of towns in the mid west line up along lines of longitude.

The reason for this is that the great plains are on a similar grade from east to west. Many railroad lines ran straight east/west. Going from the lower elevation up the grade to the west the trains would run out of steam (literally) and need to be refueled at pretty much the same place no matter what latitude you were on. Consequently, the same approximate distance between towns in rural areas, especially in plain states.

That has nothing to do with population density. Sorry.

Re:location, location, location

[bnavarro]

Um, most of their land is unusable, frozen tundra. Also, Communism probably had a big influence on keeping most people in the cities with no "suburbia" developing, since nobody was allowed to own their own land until very recently.

Re:location, location, location

[Hadlock]

Do a wiki search for "Lincon Highway". Wasn't even until 1920 that we had a single road across the US. Even longer until it was paved. Rails, sure, but driving across the US was a 30 day adventure, involving fording streams and rivers. San Fransisco was already completely built out by the time of the 1908 fire. We didn't have a national highway act until the end of the Eisenhower term. And people wonder why California has a totally different culture than the east coast - it was pretty much a seperate independent country until the advent of the highway and cheap travel in the 40s and 50s.... also why none of SF's banks failed in the great depression.

Re:location, location, location

[eln]

While most towns were founded prior to the automobile, the actual structure of most towns has transformed quite a bit in response to it. Even though there were many far-flung towns prior to cars, most towns tended to be fairly dense, with most people living near the center of the city (except for ranchers and farmers of course). After the car, you get widespread suburbs and exurbs, reachable only via freeways, and the population within a given metropolitan area becomes a lot less densely packed.

Re:location, location, location

[penix1]

You aren't entirely correct. The westward expansion and breakup of "the square states" is due mostly to the homestead act. The land was divided based on that act. The railroad and farther west the stage coach way stations are where you find centers of population. Mining interests played a big part in the settlement as well.

B.

Re:location, location, location

[StarvingSE]

Most of the nation was settled with the horse in mind. Think of all of the major historical big cities: San Fransisco, Chicago, Detroit, New York, etc. etc. Now look at a map of major railways. You'll see that most major cities were connected by rail before they connected by road.

The automobile contributed to sprawl around major urban centers, but it did not contribute to the way the country was initially populated.

As an aside, for anyone interested, here is an interesting wikipedia article regarding population growth around major population centers.

" US Lags World In Broadband Access"

[EvanED]

Maybe we can reduce that lag if we install broadband. I hear ping times are noticeably faster than dial-up...

This might be...

[Bin Naden]

This might have something to do with the US being such a big country. It's quite easy to put cables through a heavily concentrated Asian population. It's quite another thing to lay thousands of miles of cable across the United Staes.

Re:This might be...

[PingSpike]

Also, if the cable and phone companies did that they would set a bad precident for themselves upholding their end of the aggreement with the tax payers.

Re:This might be...

[14CharUsername]

haha everytime someone says this.

Person A: US boradband sucks because the US is a big country.
Person B: Canada is bigger and boradband doesn't suck there.
Person A: Oh...

Re:This might be...

[Bin Naden]

Not a bad argument for why rural areas are lagging, but why are urban areas lagging too?

The United States was one of the first countries to have internet widely available, as such they have the infrastructures of that generation. However, countries in which internet sprung up later have newer infrastructures that have better capacity. The internet capacity of the United States then becomes an economic problem: is the cost of updating the entire internet infrastructure of the United States worth the benefit? If you examine it from a telco point of view, you will get subscriptions whether you have a fast connection or a faster connection. There is basically no new market to gain by increasing the speed of the internet connection, but an enormous sunk cost. Also, the nature of the industry makes it almost impossible for a startup to come in, up the ante and increase the speed of the internet. Telecommunication is a natural monopoly in that sense. In short, wait a few years, or decades.

Re:This might be...

[QuantumRiff]

Do you have any idea how much dark fiber is running through the US? Honestly, this was a good argument about 5 years ago. I live in a town of about 50k that has 4 different companies that run fiber through it on the way between SF and Seattle. I heard somewhere that the estimate is something like 200 pairs total.. (if your going to dig up roads, you might as well lay a bunch of pairs so you don't have to dig up roads again in a few years..)..

Now, in my town, which had fiber run to all the neighborhoods by the cable company 3 years ago, I have watched my cable internet access go from $35/month for a 3Mb connection, to $45/month (because I don't have cable TV, they decided to charge me an extra $10/month to "encourage" me to purchase cable TV) This month, my rates went up to $58/month (plus taxes, modem rental, misc other fees), for a 7MB connection. Funny thing is, they don't have 7Mb service in my town yet, and never got around to upgrading their connection out of town. When my access was 3Mb/s, I was getting usually around 2Mb in the evening. Now that I have a 7Mb connection, I am getting about 1.5Mb/s in the evening. The cable company has tripled the number of customers, and doesn't want to spend the money for a faster pipe out of town. So, I am currently paying $60+ a month for a little under 2Mb/s connection.. (ie, I'm paying them almost double for slower service.) The company decided that they could pay off the cost of running the fiber and stuff by charging $35/month, otherwise they wouldn't have done it. So what exactly is that extra $25+ a month going to? They have not been upgrading their infrastructure...

Sadly, My only other broadband choices are the phone company, which I had before, but was 16 (yes that is 16!!!) hops from my DSL box just to get out on the public Internet.. (added about 95ms lag, go QWEST). and a newer Wi-Max provider, Clearwire. Clearwire blocks pretty much anything but public Web access, has a 19 page "contract agreement" with a 1 year contract, and unless you notify them in writing 30 days prior to the 1 year expiration, your automatically renewed for another 1 year contract, with something like a $180 cancellation fee.

Re:This might be...

[tOaOMiB]

Person C: Yeah, but where do Canadian's live? While Canada might be larger in terms of land area, what if you look at inhabited land area?

Re:This might be...

[gardyloo]

It's quite easy to put cables through a heavily concentrated Asian population. It's quite another thing to lay thousands of miles of cable across the United Staes.

      Ron Jeremy can do it.

Re:This might be...

[wclacy]

The US lags behind 11 other Countries because Porn is more important in those other countries. They need their Broadband!!! E-mail works fine over dialup :-)

Perhaps the problem lies in our leadership?

[curunir]

Quote the article (emphasis mine):

President George W. Bush admitted back in 2004 that while broadband use had tripled over the previous four years, the U.S. then ranked 10th among industrialized nations for broadband availability, and he added, "Tenth is 10 spots too low, as far as I'm concerned."

<snide-remark>With intelligent leadership like that, it makes you wonder how we can be lagging so far behind.</snide-remark>

Re:Perhaps the problem lies in our leadership?

[EvanED]

Maybe he's just an uber-techie who always counts from zero, ever think of that?

Sheesh, you Bush bashers, always so quick to the trigger. ;-)

Again?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think we've seen this story many times before. The basic summary of all comments is:

• The USA is a large country with a dispersed population. It's tough rolling out broadband to such a large geographic area
• The country pioneered the internet and, as such, also has to deal with legacy issues. As an analogy, it's easier to move forward when everybody has a touch-tone phone than having to move forward and keep legacy support for customers who only have rotary phones.
• ???
• Profit!

Re:Again?

[IdleTime]

See that's what you get for not reading it...

From the article:

A Rural Explanation? Hardly One of the rationales often given for lower broadband penetration in the U.S. is that low population density makes broadband deployment, especially in rural areas, considerably more expensive in the U.S. than among more dense populations in countries such as Korea, Japan, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. That argument falters, however, when one considers that five of the 11 nations that lead the U.S. in per capita broadband penetration, including Iceland, Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Canada, have significantly lower population densities than the U.S.

Re:Again?

[qbwiz]

Perhaps, but what percentage of their populations live in northern Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Canada? It could be that the population density of those countries varies enough that the few very rural people without broadband can't bring down percentage, compared with the very large number of people in places with high population density and broadband.

Re:Again?

[maxume]

Of course, that completely ignores population density density. There's two there for a reason. I bet Alaska has really nice broadband penetration, despite its rather incredible size, simply because a huge percentage of the population lives in cities. Iceland works like that too; 190,000 people live in/around Reykjavik, at a density in excess of 1000 people/square mile, compared to a total population of about 300,000 living at a density of less than 10 people per square mile for the entire country. Serve one modest city and you serve 2/3 of the country.

It would be much more relevant to consider serviceable population vs. infrastructure costs. If you integrated the part of the graph with positive slope, you could even find out how many people in a country were worth servicing at all.

Re:I have an idea

[superwiz]

But you wouldn't mind having it ran as well as US interstate system, would you? For all it's troubles it's better than the roads in any country in the world (with the possible exception of Germany). And it's built by slacking unionized labor. Government sucks at building and maintaining infrastructure, but it doesn't suck at making it interoperate. Private interests are good at building and maintaining infrastructure, but they suck at interoperating with each other.

US Adoption Behind China?!

[PRC Banker]

While I could accept that the US was/is behind South Korea, and even, with qualitative judgement, behind some Western European countries, it is not behind China. China has a little more than 100 million Internet users. Many of them use broadband, yes. But China also has a population of 1.3bn+. China lags the US's Internet connectivity, not to mention the quality/speed of service (contention rations of ADSL of 100:1 common, DSL poisoning common, plain not being able to access content common). Heck, those in China that don't have Internet access probably don't have running water or reliable electricity. Where the Internet is connected here it is important, but connection quality and, more importantly, basic poverty in all but the bigger cities, mean that it's not that important. The US does not lag China in terms of Internet connectivity, and any study that says so clearly hasn't experienced the Internet in China.

Here we go..

[LilGuy]

Cue the 200 "US has so much more land area than _____, so that's why" threads. I think this story has been a repeat on Slashdot for a good portion of 6 years, if not more.

Whose technological lead?

[Kadin2048]

threaten its ability to maintain its technological lead

What technological lead? The "U.S." doesn't have one. All we have is the honor of being home-port to a bunch of large multinational corporations, who seem to do most of the actual production, and they do most of their manufacturing and an increasing amount of their research overseas. We couldn't make half the stuff that "American" companies sell, and U.S. consumers take for granted; it's all made and increasingly designed overseas.

We're a market for goods and capital, and a source of lawyers, marketers, and middle-managers. And "intellectual property," which the rest of the world could quickly decide to do without, if it wanted to.

I think history is going to look back, and see the Internet as the last significant achievement of a dying empire.

Re:Whose technological lead?

[planetmn]

they do most of their manufacturing and an increasing amount of their research overseas

Technological lead has nothing to do with manufacturing. And of course overseas research is increasing, you can't go lower than 0 which a lot of countries had not too long ago.

As much as the whining on slashdot would have you believe otherwise, the U.S. is a technological leader and a country that millions around the world want to come to. We have some of the best universities in the world. Have you ever noticed the number of foreign student's that come to the U.S. to study?

Technological lead, from a business perspective, means having the talent pool and the infrastructure to support research. This means having the universities (which we have), employees (which we have), high speed access (which we have, any business, pretty much in any location, can get a T1, etc.), reliable communications (there isn't a communications system in the world as reliable as the U.S. PSTN). What do we lack? People on farms and living hours outside of cities can't get broadband and can't access Youtube and Bittorrent? That doesn't prevent us from being the technological leader.

-dave

Re:Whose technological lead?

[value_added]

As much as the whining on slashdot would have you believe otherwise, the U.S. is a technological leader and a country that millions around the world want to come to. We have some of the best universities in the world. Have you ever noticed the number of foreign student's that come to the U.S. to study?

I'm not sure whether the above is boosterism, chearleading, misplaced patriotism, or just cliched bits gleaned from some expert spouting his interpretation of exceptionalism theory on Fox News. One thing I am sure of, however. You've never studied, or travelled outside the country for any length of time, and most likely don't know anyone who has.

What is holding us back?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, what is holding us back?
One word: Comcast
$60 / month for cable internet is the worst screwing I've ever received.

Re:I have an idea

[Xonstantine]

Government sucks at building and maintaining infrastructure, but it doesn't suck at making it interoperate.

You obviously never served in the military, nor were you paying much attention when the government was busy non-interoperating during Katrina.

Isn't It Obvious?

[ReidMaynard]

The Tubes are cloging.

is this a valid benchmark?

[ksheff]

Is the percentage of people on broadband a even valid benchmark of technological ability of a nation? Maybe a large amount of people don't have broadband because they don't want it? My parents live in a little town in the northern Great Plains and they recently got DSL, not because they were chomping at the bit to get broadband, but because the internal modem in their computer went bad and it would have cost them as much to get that replaced by the local computer guy as it would for the DSL installation charge. Otherwise, they would have stayed with dialup because that is sufficient for their online usage.

IMHO, the only people who harp about this are the companies trying to get a govt subsidy.

Summary of comments

[pnuema]

Don't bother reading, all comments will fall into one of the following:

1. Mmmm, US BIG! ENGLAND SMALL! LAYING CABLE EXPENSIVE! FIRE BAD!

2. O NOES! US is teh sUx0rs!

3. omg teh US is teh R0x0rS! France = surrender monkeys!

4. blah blah dark fiber blah blah net nuetrality blah blah GOOGLENET!

5. I for one welcome Korean||English||Chinese overlords.

6. I'm stuck on dial-up, you insensitive clod!

7. If you want to live in the boonies, you pay the price. The invisible hand of Adam Smith will give all true Libertarians happy endings...

8. ???

9. Profit.

Thanks, I'll be here all week.

Re:Summary of comments

[Rotten168]

Total population density does miss one important fact, US urban living arrangements tend to be far more decentralized (farther away from downtown) than nearly every other nation on earth regardless of population density. There was a good article I read about how the richest residents of Silicon Valley have the hardest time getting broadband due to them being located out in the "exurbs".

Competition, competition, competition

[Infonaut]

a large part of the population is decentralized.

Yep, but that doesn't explain why other countries that are even more decentralized are kicking America's ass. There is no appreciable statistical correlation. Plus, even if there were a correlation, the excuse that America is diffuse is a pretty weak excuse for the technological and economic backwardness we're exhibiting with broadband.

America's broadband failures shouldn't be news to anyone who has been paying attention. Several reports have gone into extensive detail on this over the past few years. Check out Broadband Reality Check II (PDF) for a solid analysis of where the US is in broadband, and how the FCC has its head in the sand.

We've been giving the phone and cable companies a free ride, buying their arguments that free enterprise is working efficiently. It isn't. These massive companies have managed to keep all other entrants out of their markets by manipulating the FCC and getting the Supreme Court to buy their argument that there's a free market for broadband. There isn't. We have the worst of both worlds: Government protection of an oligopoly comprised of regional duopolies (one cable company and one DSL provider in most markets), and tremendously high barriers to entry, without at least the broad reach that a government-controlled system would have. We need a truly competitive marketplace, or we'll keep languishing.

Re:Competition, competition, competition

[superwiz]

Can you give an example of a more decentralized country that has better broadband access?

Re:Competition, competition, competition

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Here's the end result- the Quarterly Report. This makes American corporations short sighted- if they can't show a profit within 4 months, then that's a project not worth doing. With competition, margins are razor-thin on broadband unless you're the very first company into a new area with sufficient potential subscribership to pay for your equipment within 4 months, you're not going to do it. Even more urban areas rarely get broadband unless existing infrastructure can support it, and small towns in the middle of nowhere aren't sufficiently populated to pay for it.

In most other nations, government services step in at that point, but not in the United States where we are afraid of government media services.

Re:Competition, competition, competition

[Anonymous Coward]

Certainly: Sweden.

A country world-renowned for its internet access, which has about 20 people/km^2 compared to the US's 30 people/km^2.

I think I've made my point.

Re:Competition, competition, competition

[Anonymous Coward]

Canada. I live in a small prarie town, and there are three competing options for broadband. Even the rural farmers can get wireless high-speed internet using Motorola Canopy equipment.

Even still, "high-speed" in Canada is still pretty slow compared to Japan.

Re:Competition, competition, competition

[S.O.B.]

Can you give an example of a more decentralized country that has better broadband access?

Canada has a population density of 3.6 people/sq km with a 77% broadband penetration while the U.S. has a density of 32.6 people/sq km (almost 10x denser) with only a 57% broadband penetration.

Reference:
Canada
United States
Broadband stats

Re:Competition, competition, competition

[Phanatic1a]

Don't confuse population density with decentralization. More than 90% of Canada's population lives within 200km of the US, and 41% of actual Canadian soil contains less than .3% of the population.

Canada's actually got a considerably more centralized population than the US. You've got the vast majority of your people living in a narrow strip of land.

Reference:
Canada
Canada

Re:Competition, competition, competition

[The Lerneaen Hydra]

IIAS (I am a Swede). Considering that the vast, vast majority of people in Sweden live in an urbanized city center or near there,you've essentially got a relatively small number of cities with a relatively large population, in contrast to the US, where you have lots of people living in the middle of nowhere, (though with the occasional densely populated city), and as such you can't really make that comparison.

Re:Competition, competition, competition

[Marxist Hacker 42]

How does that square with the fact that I can't find a way to get broadband for less than $50/month in a major US city?

That's the balance point between equipment cost amortized over 4 months (about $200/connection, sometimes a bit less, somtimes a bit more) and competition in the area. Once they've got payback for those 4 months, of course they keep your rate the same- after all, it's quite a hassle to change.

When I was in France I was getting equivalent service for about a third of what I'm paying now. And I'm pretty sure the French government isn't subsidizing the cable companies to provide broadband, no matter how subsidy-happy they are otherwise.

Actually, if you search Google they do, or at least did- in the last year or so EU rules have changed that severely. But in addition to that, there's that quarterly bottom line to consider- many European stock markets operate on a different cycle, so there isn't the pressure to have a project started in one quarter paying in the next quarter, which can lower costs drastically. Plus- if you went with DSL instead of cable, you'd have a guaranteed bandwidth instead of variable, and even in the US, you'd be paying under $20/month in major cities.

Re:Competition, competition, competition

[greenbird]

FYI, in the city of Iqaluit, Nunavut which is just shy of the Arctic circle and has a population of 5,236 you can get 2 Mbps broadband for about $60CDN. Elsewhere in this discussion someone mentioned that they lived is a large U.S. urban area and they could only get 768 Kbps for $65US.

I think the point is that there are only a couple of dozen isolated locations like that in Canada whereas there are thousands in the US. Expanding broadband to those couple dozen locations is trivial and cheap compared to doing the same thing to thousands of locations

Re:Competition, competition, competition

[klui]

The counter argument to this line of reasoning is "why can't a city like New York City have fast and cheap broadband because of its high population density?"

Re:Competition, competition, competition

[miyako]

it's funny how every post in this thread has put a larger portion of Canada's population closer to the US border.
I just keep expecting to see:
Everyone in Canada lives in one house who's front porch is on US soil, except bill, who lives on Neptune, but he still gets 1TB down and they pay him $25 a month to use it!

Re:Competition, competition, competition

[atamido]

To see how this does work out in the US check out UTOPIA. A coalition of cities in Utah got together and made a plan for laying out fiber to every home and business. A few quick points about it:

1. The government owns the fiber but does not offer any services directly. Instead other businesses offer internet, phone, and TV services through it.
2. 15Mbps up/down connections available from $40/month (less than the $60 I pay for 5Mbps/384Kbps), or 30Mbps from $125/month.
3. Connections are standard 100Mbps, but can be requested as 1000Mbps.
4. The UTOPIA is faster and more flexible than Verizon's FIOS system. (Verizon uses a passive optical network while UTOPIA uses your typical actively switched setup.)
5. Every report I've read from a user has been positive. Overwhelmingly positive.

I am mostly libertarian, but even I can see the current setup is completely broken. Broadband is no necessary to infrastructure that it would make sense now to have the government build it out like they did with the roads. It would be expensive, but at least it would be done, and that is what we need.

Re:Competition, competition, competition

[SonicSpike]

I hate to tell you but utilities and broadband companies here in the US do NOT currently operate in the free market. If they did the situation would be improved.

In fact the problem is that there is NO true competition available (it is a cartel/oligopoly situation) because of governmental regulations. Try starting your own cable or DSL company sometime; see how quickly the PUC shuts you down.

This is the result of intrusive government, excessive regulation, and big business buying legislation and regulation in favor of big business. I vote Libertarian.

Population Density misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

See This map for why it really IS about population density. Canada, pshaw, sure they have a lot of land, but they have almost no one in 90% of it. It certainly looks like almost all of Candada's population is within 200km of the US border. Norway, Sweden, and Finland are in the same boat...

This is one of the stupider more vapid "analysis" articles..

Sorry for the Anonymous, I left my password at home...

The Real Easy Answer

[sycodon]

Regulations that prevent competition is why.

Re:The Real Easy Answer

[sycodon]

I am speaking of regulations that prevent a company from laying down lines and competing with the established providers. I don't care what they charge because the more there are putting in lines, the lower the prices will be.

What?

[swid27]

Have you ever been remotely near a "farming state"? I'm shocked that you actually believe that people in rural areas don't know or don't want Internet access. Do you have any idea how important and useful online shopping, weather information, and instantaneous communication are for those who don't live close to large population centers or retail hubs?

Re:I have an idea

[chill]

The poor? How about decent broadband for the RICH? They don't have it, either.

That's part of the point. The U.S. considers anything above ISDN "broadband", whereas in the rest of the world you can get 10 and 100 MBps access. That is almost unheard of in the U.S., rich or not.

Re:Do all AMericans need internet?

[garcia]

Farming states are full of people that have no idea what they could use it for and don't think they need it.

Yes, because all "farm states" (I live in a metro area and am not a farmer) are backwater hicks that don't know about them Internets thangs, right? For fuck's sake, get a clue.

In fact, Internet communication and research is growing for farmers as a way of learning about better crop yields, soil care, etc.

Capitalism

[MBCook]

This is pure capitalism. Thanks to all the competition in the broadband market, the US is well covered and the prices are great.

No... wait....

Most places are under a monopoly leading to high prices ($60 a month for 2mbps), bad service, late coming to the area, etc.

Let's look at me. I didn't get cable modem access until about 2001 or 2002 despite living near a HUGE development area. One of the fastest growing counties in the entire country at the time. And I'm in a rich/dense neighborhood. You'd think that would spur them.

Nope. I had to pay for ISDN at INSANE prices.

What about DSL? Still not available. "Too far out.". My guess is they just don't want to compete with the established cable. But I don't get a choice of cable so my prices are high and my service is terrible.

Signing up so that only one cable operator or local phone company can operate in an area is one of the worst decisions a municipality can make.

Please, Time Warner, come save me from Comcrud.

Re:Capitalism

[doroshjt]

I've moved around a bunch and I have found that the cable company you don't have is always better then the one you do have. I have time warner but would love comcast. I would love just to watch fox once in a while. http://www.timewarnercable.com/northwest/moscowkay u.html I agree, choice would be great. When I lived in Northern Virginia, choices were there, Cox Cable or Verizon FIOS, both offered, phone/cable/internet. Service was vastly improved with just two competing companies. I think if all areas had three companies competing, prices would be drastically lower and customer service would have to improve, since it would be so easy to jump ship.

Re:Capitalism

[Bluesman]

Like you said, this is because you have a government granted monopoly to a private company that has no incentive to provide anything better than "good enough."

It's not a free market, it's the worst of all possible scenarios.

Most traditional liberatarian/conservatives would agree that providing infrastructure support is a legitimate and useful function of government. The logistical and real-estate problems in building a national highway system, for example, are probably only solvable through government intervention.

The fact that the U.S. Constitution explicity grants the federal government power to build roads for the use of the Post Office is telling. Obviously the founders could not envision e-mail, but facilitating the transfer of such information would most definitely be within the original scope of the document. It doesn't even require creative "interpretation" by the Supreme Court to see that.

This is one case where the U.S. government has a legitimate claim to the legal authority to provide infrastructure to U.S. citizens, and they've abdicated that responsibility instead.

Now, I'm not arguing that a federally sponsored internet infrastructure would be necessarily cheaper and more efficient overall than the one we have now. It would be more expensive in order to be universally available.

But this whole thing is a perfect example of how our government is so broken that they have to invent new "powers" that allow them to waste billions of dollars on ridiculous programs that are blatantly unconstitutional, all while completely ignoring a basic responsibility.

At least we "do well" in other sectors

[bogaboga]

I mean...

1. We're about 4% of the world's population but consume 63% of its drugs, ouch!
   
2. We're are leaders in attacking other nations in the name of defending our interests and "spreading democracy."
3. We run the biggest trade and budget deficits in the world.
4. We're the only industrialized country whose budget is supported by nations we call "undemocratic."
5. We're the world's greatest polluters.
6. We have the world's most obese population.

Need I mention more?

Re:I have an idea

[Xonstantine]

Katrina is a non-example. It doesn't say anything about how government handles long-term infrastructure projects. It only says something about how government handles security and emergency situations.

I disagree. A substantial amount of time and money has been spent on disaster preparedness by the Government, but they seemingly overlooked relatively minor things like communications interoperability and task force coordination, which, among other things, led to trucks with supplies sitting idle while people were going hungry and thirsty in New Orleans.

cost, competition, length of the two-pair

[swschrad]

someplace like new york city, where the infrastructure (wires and boxes 'o' bits and the like) is generally quite close to the subscribers, DSL is an easier play than in north dakota. the peturbations of the signal as the line gets longer deteriorate the possible speed you can deliver, and beyond about 18,000 feet, your line rate is about two bits per week. ADSL2+ gets you a little better, but the rule "inside" is that beyond 15,000 feet, service becomes tenuous.

it's too expensive to retrofit any of the bad-move 24 and 26 gauge wire that was put up in the 60s and 70s and 80s, and thinner wire makes it only worse. without equal footing between the competitors (telcos are highly regulated and every time they change light bulbs in the bathroom, they have to notify all potential competitors, and nobody else has to meet those standards,) stuff doesn't get placed unless there are basically guaranteed customers enough to pay for the expansions. that's a fact of life after the telecom bust of the turn of the century.

and for some silly reason, uptake of high-speed subscriber lines has been fitful at best, which means any equipment installed isn't filling up. you get the population wildly excited about something, they demand it, rip the walls off the corporate headquarters to sign up for it, and costs of all items come down with higher production and deployment.

the big one is distance, and getting around that engenders the cost issue.

in the US, folks like their elbow room and their freedom. overseas, where population densities are higher and the government decides through centrally-owned telcos what to push and basically what it should cost, it can be expected that high-speed like DSL is going to be more availiable and less costly.

with the bankers and the government working against it here, and distances making it tough, it's going to be harder to get. pure and simple.

I call bullshit.

[NeutronCowboy]

I live in one of the most densely populated regions in the US and arguably the center of the tech industry. Yet my choice for broadband is either a single cable company, SBC or several CLECs like Speakeasy. Not only that, but in the last couple of places that I lived, I always was at the max range of the DSLAM, which meant that my connection was regularly crap.

The problem is not location. The problem is local governments being cahoots with telecom monopolies who love nothing more than charging through the roof for crap connections. Yes, other nations have telecom monopolies as well, but for some reason they're not facing the same kind of problems. I suspect that the difference is that with a state monopoly, you can vote for change. With a government sanctioned economic monopoly, you can only bend over.

Re:Do all AMericans need internet?

[MBCook]

Wow. That has got to me one of the most ignorant and biggoted things I have ever seen on Slashdot. And you got modden insightful.

Let's try thinking, shall we?

The internet lets people in highly remote areas:

1. Shop for things they have no local access to without driving 2+ hours
2. Keep an eye on commoditiy prices and such so they can farm more efficently
3. Discuss farming techniques and such
4. Entertain themselves when their local video store is tiny and there isn't a theather company anywhere near
5. Learn things when their local school district has all grades in the same building because it's just that small and can't afford 20+ teachers ini different disciplines
6. Start/run an internet business and make good money somewhere where the cost of living is very low
7. Keep in touch with family and friends like the rest of us use the internet for

That's all I can think of off the top of my head, but.. I mean... WOW. I know /. hates the red states and red states may have low population density (look at large parts of Montana or even Nevada) but get a clue. This isn't 1900 any more. It's not like the people living in 1800s era cities in the "mountain country" like there were that the TVA was designed to help.

We have civilization here in the middle of the US, despite what stereotypical New York characters in sitcoms think.

My kid brother is in canada

[stratjakt]

He's on Rogers cable, he get's threatening letters every month about him going over his bandwidth cap. I live in the US, have comcast, and have never gotten a complaint - and I'm the leech/pirate/dude-who-pegs-his-bandwidth-at-100%-f or-months, not him. He plays xbox live, uses skype, and grabs the occaisional mp3. His cap is something ridiculous, a few gigabytes. They also f with him, blocking ports seemingly at random. They sent him a threatening letter for connecting to me using OpenVPN (we found the easiest way to play SNES roms online was to bridge him onto my LAN). The bandwidth we used on that session was minimal, but just the connection to 1194 pissed them off, I changed ports for him.

I'd imagine if he ever downloads HDDVD movies, it'll have to be from rogers. He couldn't download them on XBox Video Marketplace, like I can right now, even if he wanted to. He'd hit the cap.

My point is, yes, more of them have access to broadband, but what good does it do if it's basically capped at-or-around dial-up per-month limits, and has other arbitrary restrictions on it?

Re:that's specious

[chill]

You can't get 10 MBps or 100 Mbps Internet links in the San Fernando Valler or the Washington-New York City area. At least, not without paying close to $1000 a month.

Re:What's holding us back?

[mhackarbie]

You have good reason to be angry RS, and the lame broadband issue is just the tip of the iceberg. We're getting screwed on healthcare for the same reasons. Another huge one: the miltary industrial complex and their current campaign to burn trillions of our dollars while generating more war and terrorism around the world. You are correct as to the cause: too many politically clueless people led by right-wing robber-barons and their propaganda-spewing lackeys. I also wonder why things aren't worse than they are. I suspect it's due in part to inertia, and in part to the large number of people in this country who do have at least some clue about good government, economics, education, environment, social and foreign policy. The recent elections were a hopeful sign that we might be headed back in the right direction.

It's not just rural areas

[Paulrothrock]

I live in Lancaster, PA. Yeah, I'm surrounded by Amish country, but I'm on a main thoroughfare between Harrisburg and Philadelphia, and I live in the city where the population density is near 10,000 people per square mile. I know for a fact that there's dark fiber under my block because I talked to a guy who was trying to sell it to my former employer.

I also know that most people on my block are young professionals who would snap up really great broadband for about $50/month. But is there an option for this? Heck no. Verizon and Comcast would have a conniption and the Public Utility Commission, a wholly owned subsidiary of Comcast and Verizon, would kill any startup in a heartbeat Is there any way for my city to tell Verizon and Comcast where to put their "broadband" and roll its own? Of course not. Ed Rendell saw to that, and now municipal broadband won't ever happen in Pennsylvania.

So here I am, stuck paying Comcast $80/month for 3.0M/384kbps broadband and basic cable. Why? Because the government, a wholly owned subsidiary of Comcast, keeps competitors out of the market. And my other choice is to switch to Verizon and have all incoming ports blocked and have even slower access (1.5M/384kpbs). Or blackmail Comcast into lowering the price for six months by threatening to switch.

Secondly, the options in NYC don't compare favorably to the options in Seoul or Tokyo or Stockholm. They can get 100Mbps symmetrical access with a static IP for half of what I'm paying. That's an impossibility in any city of the US, even though the population density is the same.

So, you see, it's not about land area or population density. It's about the greed and laziness of the service providers and the idea that people don't have any way of forcing the issue.

Blame the people; they got what they wanted.

[zerofoo]

The state of broadband in the US reflects its users. Lots of people in the US know very little about what occurs outside their borders. Most broadband customers feel that $50.00/mo. for a 3 Mbps/512k connection is normal. Furthermore, they think that is all they need. I've heard plenty of people sing the praises of Verizon's $20.00/mo. 768k/128k DSL....why? Because it is cheap, and faster than dial-up. In their minds, there is no reason to spend almost 3x as much for faster service.

Thanks to this type of consumer, and local monopolies, $50.00 low-speed "broadband" is the norm in areas that have access to broadband.

Remember the Tennessee Valley Authority from your history class? Why was it important?

Our government realized that electricity was so important to the growth of our nation, that it could not be left to an unregulated market. Our government knew that if left to private industry, utility service would only be made available to densely populated areas. Our government needs to realize that high-speed data service now is as important as electricity or running water. For those that doubt that statement, try to apply for a job without using the internet. Sure, you can in some cases, but high-paying jobs almost require you to apply via electronic means.

We need to vote for guys that make this a priority (not Ted Stevens).

-ted

Re:Blame the people; they got what they wanted.

[goofballs]

Remember the Tennessee Valley Authority from your history class? Why was it important?

it's important because it shows what a bad idea having gov't run lun large projects is? the tva is essentially a $6B corporation carrying $29B in debt, subsidized by 250M people, so that 15M people can have chearper than normal electricity. yeah, sounds like a real winner to me. not.

Re:that's specious

[Jorgandar]

Did you even read the damn thing? There's a lot of metrics in the report, not just one, and RIGHT BELOW the metric you are referring to is a comparison between
%population living in urban areas vs. broadband adoption. It found no significant coorelation. Therefore you're wrong, and there must be another reason. There is simply **no excuxse** for the US. Our system is broken.

Try gov't sanctioned monopolies and you may be looking in the right place.

Cost and competition are excuses

[Iloinen Lohikrme]

I'm sorry to say but costs and competition are poor excuses for having no broadband available or having it cost much. You state that in other countries where broadband adoption is higher the government through state owned telco has made it priority to have broadband adoption high, its not true either. Just to give you an example...

Finland is a country of 5 million peoples. The population density is 16/km. There is only one metropolitan area, Helsinki, with little over 1 million inhabitants. The other few major towns are barely over 200 thousand inhabitants. Broadband is available almost in all corners of Finland, except some northern and eastern rural areas. Even in these rural communities, usually broadband is at least available in the centre of the community. If you live in a town you can get 8mb dsl-connection with 39 and 24mb with 49. I myself have 1mb connection which costs 24.90. Even if you live in a rural area, like my parents: 5km to community centre (community total population little over 6000) and 20km to nearest town (36000) you can get broadband connection with acceptable price. You may think that government has lend a hand in here, but that isn't the case like I said. In Finland before 90s telecoms sector consisted from independent local phone companies and state owned Tele. After deregulation in the beginning 90s markets because free to competition and local phone companies loosed their monopoly to their wires. In example you can start virtual operator in broadband or in mobile business very easily by renting other operators wires and equipment as needed. And to say it again, Finnish government didn't put any pennies to build up the infrastructure, the playing field was totally left open to companies.

When you compare Finland to US states, in population density Finland is in the same bar as Colorado or Maine.

And on a note on competition. Competition really does work. Here in Finland local telecom operators have had to update their networks and try as hard as possible to get people take broadband because otherwise soon they wouldn't have no customers at all. In here mobile operators have been very aggressive and almost everybody have mobile phone and more and more people use it as their only phone. Also by introduction of GPRS and later EDGE and UTMS networks, there is pressure from mobile operators to get customers adopt mobile broadband from them. So competition and costs of operation are not real reasons for not having or having costly broadband access.

MA is back.... She is the main problem.

[dhickman]

All of this comes down to money.

In St. Louis, broadband is availble and works well in the newer western burbs.

I live in South City.

Until last summer, I could get broadband from the cable company and SBC(ATT) and the varous clecs.
Then the storm hit last summer and destroyed much of the infrstructure in my area.
At that time I had a business connection from Charter 1M up / 5m down /29 static for $350 a month.
The storm ripped all of the telco/electric/cable wires from the house. Three weeks later, the cable was still down.
I was told by Charter that they do not intend to rebuild this area thus they discontinued the circuit.

DSL was not an option, I have tried several times and it does not work.
The lines in my area predate WW2. I am 5580 feet out on path 1 and 9500 feet out on path 2.
Officially ATT will not install dsl in my area even though the CO is dsl capable.

So I ordered a T1 from Speakeasy.
Here is the fun... ATT at first refused to install it.
After it was finally installed, it was turned up without a class a inspection and failed miserably.
ATT refused to support it because they used hxdsl for the circuit and they are only required to provide best effort support on it.
They tnf the circuit. TNF = technically not feasable.
This means that the telco is off the hook from supporting the install.

ATT installed a second T1 and also TNF it.

So speakeasy installed a Third T1.
This one worked but the rj45 on the smartjack was bad.
ATT refused to fix it because they could not find any errors when they looped from the co.
I put a hard loop on my inside wiring and there was no errors from pattern testing.
An att tech came out and did find that the jack was bad but refused to fixit because ATT had already determined that this t1 was in TNF status.

I am now in the process of getting a third t1 ( traditional 4wire point to point t1) from XO installed.
Right now, ATT is placing the ticket in jeopordy status becasue there are too many pairs of copper going to a residence.

My only other option is a local wireless company who seems to not want customers.

If I lived in a rural area, I expect problems installing a T1.
In fact I have a friend who lives in Hopedale Illinois (BFE) and he has had a T1 running for about six months with no problems after the initial install.

Re:Re; SBC tells me "DSL not available in your are

[kmeister62]

I had the same issue. I live well within the DSL distance from the Central Office but could not get DSL. I called Verizon and asked why not. The reason, our neighborhood had a fiber combiner at the head of the copper infrastructure. There was no direct copper line to the CO. I now have four choices for broadband though, Cable, Satellite, wireless and Fiber Optic. Ten years ago I had two, dial-up or unidirectional cable modem. I tried cable modem when Adelphia finally installed bi-directional service. Service was abysmal and cost twice as much as Comcast (the next county over). As soon as Verizon installed fiber optic to the house, Adelphia dropped their price to match FIOS. I told them no dice, poor spotty service at any price wasn't worth it. One other note, most of the top countries have telcos that are monopoly or run by the government as opposed to the US.

Re:England and China?

[djinnn]

Well, none. :)
29.90 for an ADSL2+ connection with unlimited traffic, "cable" TV and free phone is the norm now.
It's no match compared to Japanese offers, but it's a good deal for an E.U. country. And afaik, it's much better than what you can get in UK.

I guess Scandinavian countries (like Sweden, Finland...) are quite good too, with a pretty good network density even though those countries tend to be comparable to the US: few people compared to the country size, thus expensive coverage.

Re:NO.. not a "natural monopoly"

[plasmacutter]

buddy.. the companies didnt lay the wires, the US government provided the majority of the funding.

The "companies" then bribed the government under the premise (outright lie) that they did lay the infrastructure.

Imagine if a trucking company claimed they laid the highways.. same thing.

would you tolerate a trucking company being allowed to lock out all other trucking companies, allowing them to jack up the price of every product in your local grocery store?

no? well then why do you tolerate it with internet? people in nations with real internet competition pay half the price we do for twice the speed!

10. England, U.K., heck they are the same!

[fantomas]

Also (referring to the slashdot summary)

Comment 10. England, U.K.? Heck they are the same let's use them interchangeably.

Oh dear oh dear please dumb American cousins* please be careful, going into a pub in Glasgow and loudly exclaiming "my it's good to be here in England!" could be bad for your health.... please note 'England' and 'U.K.' are not interchangeable expressions for the same place.

* I know it's only a minority of folk in the USA who are dumb, we've got loads of stupid people here as well who would likely make an equivalent mistake. In fact I am so dumb you'll have to tell me what the equivalent stoopid thing to say would be if I walked into a bar in the USA ... :-)

12th?! Oh you poor, poor people

[sn00ker]

Try living in New Zealand, which is nearly at the bottom of the OECD for broadband uptake. Our number of dialup connections is growing!

Seriously, if the worst you've got to complain about is that you're 12th, with only four major companies supplying last-mile access, come here. We've got precisely two companies supplying the last mile, and in our largest city we have only one choice for residential connections.

Consider that NZ is at the top of the OECD for the percentage of the population that actually uses the 'net, so it's not like we're a bunch of technophobes. We're just catching it up the arse from a rapacious monopolist incumbent, which thankfully is about to be unbundled. So, sorry, but y'all should get a grip. You're in the top half, we're in the bottom quarter!