Slashdot Mirror
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?
Maybe we can reduce that lag if we install broadband. I hear ping times are noticeably faster than dial-up...
<snide-remark>With intelligent leadership like that, it makes you wonder how we can be lagging so far behind.</snide-remark>
"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"
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.
Oh.
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.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
So, what is holding us back?
One word: Comcast
$60 / month for cable internet is the worst screwing I've ever received.
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.
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.
If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
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.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
in soviet russia the country settles you.
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.
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...
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.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I am afraid that this one is even funnier because it's true. Soviet Russia did force large population re-settlements.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
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!"
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
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.
There should be a "-1:Groupthink"
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.
--J(K) DOS is like Unix in exactly the same way that a pinto is like an aircraft carrier.
Regulations that prevent competition is why.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
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?
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.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
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.
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
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.
moox. for a new generation.
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.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
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.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
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?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
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