US Broadband Policy Called "Magical Thinking"

eWeekPete writes "Is the pipe half full or half empty? Not surprisingly, the talk at the second annual Tech Policy Summit was decidedly mixed. 'The US is still the most dynamic broadband economy in the world,' said Ambassador Richard Russell, the associate director of the White House's Office on Science and Technology Policy. 'As opposed to being miles ahead, though, we're only a little ahead.' But Yale Law School's Susan Crawford called Russell's position 'magical thinking. We're not doing well at all.' She proceeded to call the White House's effort 'completely inadequate on broadband competition.'"

Comments

"only a little"

[Anonymous Coward]

When our policy-makers (who never admit to anything bad lately) say that we're "only a little ahead," you know that we're seriously lagging.

Re:"only a little"

[Opportunist]

Basically it means two things: First, that the rest of the world is even more behind, and second, that they got some bri... funding from telcos and now need a reason to pump tax money that way.

Re:"only a little"

[FireXtol]

America is a very large country. To roll-out fiber optics (to the curb!) would be very expensive for a nation that still has a very large number of solely dial-up users. Especially compared to the arm-and-a-leg you're being charged for poor service.
Plus it would enable hugely cheap WiFi networks. An entire neighborhood could be connected through one fiber line, and all be enjoying [several] Gigabit WAN. Enabling the ability to host your own fairly large web server.

Unfortunately, these are all very bad for big business!

Businesses model their offerings based not on what they can do... but what they think they can get away with. Establish unreliability as 'standard', establish that 'hosting your own' is cost-prohibitive (or contrary to a service agreement), and that this thing called bandwidth should be ridiculously expensive.

It is basically a criminal mentality.

Re:"only a little"

[Hyppy]

Tax money shouldn't be pumped to the telcos to yet again waste instead of rebuilding critical infrastructure. Instead, the U.S. government should build its own national, public infrastructure to replace the crap that the telcos are trying to pass off as acceptable.

Re:"only a little"

[Opportunist]

What? Socialized infrastructure? Maybe even offering everyone the same goods for the same price, leveling the playing field instead of offering discounts for large corporations to give them an edge over the smaller companies?

Careful there, it may lead to a free market system, and I doubt that's in the best interest of the corporations and their politicians. In other words, don't expect to see that anytime soon.

Re:"only a little"

[Hyppy]

You're right, I was completely out of line. We need the best government money can buy. In order to purchase that government, we need powerful corporations which have the people's best interests at heart to provide that money. Democracy at its best!

Wait... I think I heard of a quote about corporations and government before... Ahh, yes, it was Benito Mussolini. "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the marriage of government and corporate power." So much for democracy.

Is there an equivalent to Godwin's Law for fascism?

Re:"only a little"

[k_187]

Is there an equivalent to Godwin's Law for fascism?
The irony of that statement is delicious.
but yeah. Companies are only going to build out where's there's profit. Gov't either has to make them build out the rest or do it themselves.

Re:"only a little"

[Gr8Apes]

Naah, what they should do is separate the lines from the service, and not allow service companies to own lines. That separation will automatically create more competition.

Oh, and the line owning companies would be localized, since it is a municipality issue anyways.

Re:"only a little"

[CodeBuster]

If you consider self interest to be criminal then you may be right. However, t is my own considered opinion that the extensive power of the government to regulate has created the opportunity for rent seeking and anti-competitive behavior to occur in the first place. If there were less power to be gained by corrupting politicians because the government was smaller then you would have more broadband at cheaper prices right now. The competitive market does not allow people "to get away with it" because inefficient competitors are ruthlessly driven out of business by their more able competition. The problem in the real world is that busy-body governments, even though their intentions may be good, cannot resist interfering and we all know a certain road that is paved with good intentions.

Re:"only a little"

[Aladrin]

I was just thinking, 'A little ahead!? We're behind!' Some other countries have had 10 and 100 megabit connections for YEARS. I'm at 8mb at home, and getting that much at a business is still ludicrously expensive.

Re:"only a little"

[Anarke_Incarnate]

Most of the highways must be paved with good intentions, because they sure as shit don't use quality asphalt. The potholes are bad enough, but the "filled in" potholes are just as bad when they are "leveled" to 4" higher than the rest of the road, causing just as bad a dip when driven upon.

Re:"only a little"

[Original Replica]

When our policy-makers (who never admit to anything bad lately) say that we're "only a little ahead," you know that we're seriously lagging.

Speaking of policy makers not admitting anything bad, I'm not sure if I should be worried or encouraged that the policy-makers have admitted that the 1996 telecommunications act was a mess, and now they are unsure of how to make good policy. FTA:

. "People don't understand how hard it is to write legislation," he said, citing the 1996 Telecommunications Act as a prime example. As originally passed by Congress, lawmakers envisioned the act creating competition by forcing telecoms and cable companies to share their lines at discounted prices with competitors. "Look how that turned out. [Congress] decided to have everyone share the same line and the wire was copper," Russell said. "The administration has opposed any new legislation because you never know how it might turn out."

Does this opposition to new policy mean that there is actual concern for making truly effective policy or it it because there are a few big players who like the profitability of the current situation? I hate to be cynical all the time, but it goes hand in hand with talking about legislation. Is there a simple clear set of rules that could lead to real competition in broadband, or is it a utility that should be a well regulated quasi-government entity like water and electricity?

Re:"only a little"

[element-o.p.]

Oh, and the line owning companies would be localized, since it is a municipality issue anyways.
Hmmm...what about the lines running between municipalities? For example, a lot of Alaska is connected to the Internet by fiber cables running underwater from either Seward, AK or Whittier, AK to Seattle, WA. Which municipality is responsible for those lines?

Re:"only a little"

[bzipitidoo]

the extensive power of the government to regulate has created the opportunity for rent seeking and anti-competitive behavior to occur in the first place.

And of course your solution to this problem is... less government! But back up a second. That's quite a leap saying that more powerful government gives more opportunity for rent seeking. If that is true, why did the EPA try to claim it didn't have authority to regulate CO2 emissions? Why have fewer species than ever been added to the endangered species list? Maybe the FCC shouldn't have any authority over the electromagnetic spectrum, parts of which were recently reclaimed, repackaged, and auctioned off? Why did the Department of Homeland Security bungle Katrina so badly? Why does DHS insist on spending big $ for radiation detectors that won't reliably detect smuggling and which are subject to false alarms, while barely pursuing other, more promising methods? Maybe they don't have enough people? It couldn't be because consolidating several agencies into one overall smaller agency was a bad idea, could it?

The problem is not the size of the government, it's the size of the corruption, incompetence, and stupidity in government and in corporations. It's the extent to which these organizations and systems allow problems to be hidden and covered up. In some cases, government authority has been used for rent seeking, but in many other cases, lack of government authority has been used to put together monopolies and to get away with short changing the people. Just look at the subprime mess, and the way the telcos have not provided services, even going so far as to sue government entities set up to provide services where the telcos would not. If Bush and Cheney had less government to work with, they'd have fewer secrets to keep! Yeah. Transparency, not size, is the key.

Re:"only a little"

[plague3106]

Well, I'm sure people said the same thing about building out a copper network too, yet we managed to get phone service pretty much everywhere people can live in this country. And the service WAS really good, it's just that the government let AT&T get way too greedy and lazy.

Re:"only a little"

[Bombula]

it may lead to a free market syst

The definition is of a free market is one in which prices are negotiated "without force or coercion." In other words, a free market is transparent and competitive. Unfortunately, transparency and competition are anathema to profit; they are mutually exclusive. Ironically, a highly profitable market is a failed market by definition.

Re:"only a little"

[hey!]

Umm, it's the large number of dial up users that, according to one way of looking at things, makes the current US broadband situation costly to the US economy.

The fundamental question is whether this is a national issue of a collection of individual issues.

Re:"only a little"

[Curunir_wolf]

Well, he's right - writing good legislation really is hard, especially since most of the time they are relying on "industry consultants" to help them, and they are inevitably motivated by their own agendas.

Part of the problem is the vast library of existing legislation that's been around since AT&T was first handed a monopoly on right-of-way for telegraph wires. The first step is to identify and organize that mess, including everything that the FCC controls, spectrum, rights-of-way, broadcaster and FTC regulations, etc., etc. Repeal it all. Then start over from the basis of a nationwide "communications infrastructure policy". A good start would be a basic layered network topology, agnostic to content. Media, data link, network.

Now you've got a starting framework for a policy - but lots of players with huge investments in all the stuff you're planning to create a new policy for.

Yea, I'd say "hard" is an understatement. No wonder: (from the article)

By the end of the debate, Crawford was the only member of the panel still insisting on an activist Congress to address issues such as network neutrality and network management. I can understand why the rest would have very little confidence that Congress can really effectively do the work required.

Re:"only a little"

[drewzhrodague]

America is a very large country. To roll-out fiber optics (to the curb!) would be very expensive for a nation that still has a very large number of solely dial-up users.

Hi. Here in Pennsylvania, we already paid Bell/Verizon multiple billion dollars to have fiber rolled out. That was 15 years ago. We're still waiting.

Re:"only a little"

[Anonymous Coward]

And when the companies control the government.....

Re:"only a little"

[CodeBuster]

why did the EPA try to claim it didn't have authority to regulate CO2 emissions [acs.org]?

Regulatory Capture

Why have fewer species than ever been added to the endangered species list?

This is relevant how?

Maybe the FCC shouldn't have any authority over the electromagnetic spectrum, parts of which were recently reclaimed, repackaged, and auctioned off?

Other than to manage and sell licenses and enforce exclusive rights they shouldn't. In fact, they could even outsource the management and auctioning parts and concentrate on the enforcement. This is the same as the government selling oil, mining, and mineral extraction rights on public lands.

Why did the Department of Homeland Security bungle Katrina so badly?

Government, by definition, bungles. That is why I and many other Libertarians want substantially less government.

Why does DHS insist on spending big $ for radiation detectors that won't reliably detect smuggling and which are subject to false alarms, while barely pursuing other, more promising methods?

Again, because the government has no profit motive AND they are spending other people's money they aren't very careful about what they buy or what gets wasted. They might buy product A over product B because product A is made by a company that made a contribution to the re-election campaign of a certain politician or promised to do a personal favor for a DHS manager in the future. If you were spending the money of another person for them would you be as careful as if you were spending your own money on yourself? Probably not.

Maybe they don't have enough people?

They almost certainly have too MANY people already.

It couldn't be because consolidating several agencies into one overall smaller agency was a bad idea, could it?

Of course it was a bad idea. The new agency should never have been created and most of the other existing ones should have been ELIMINATED. The ideal government, IMHO, would be composed of the constitutionally mandated branches (president, congress, supreme court), the justice system (state and federal courts) to adjudicate disputes, police (national, state, and local) to enforce the rules and prevent violence and coercion, and finally the military to prevent foreign powers from conquering us by force. That is it and that is all.

The problem is not the size of the government

Yes it is.

it's the size of the corruption, incompetence, and stupidity in government and in corporations.

Corruption is inevitable in government, it will always be present at some level and it will be larger and ever more present as the size and scope of government is increased. I know of NO counter example to this principle from any time in all of human history. The difference between incompetence or stupidity in government and the same in corporations is that an incompetent or stupid corporation will be selected OUT of the system by the forces of market competition (it will declare bankruptcy and cease to exist). The government on the other hand, no matter how incompetent or stupid, will not go bankrupt OR be forced out by market competition because they control the market via the ultimate power, threat of violence and coercive physical force. Replacing governments can be dangerous work, just look at the US experience in Iraq if you don't believe that.

In some cases, government authority has been used for rent seeking, but in many other cases, lack of government authority has been used to put together monopolies and to get away with short changing the people.

If one looks at the economic history of monopolies then it is clear that the durable monopolies (i.e. ones that were not temporary) were invariably backed up by the coercive power of government to enforce the continuation of the mono

Re:"only a little"

[Seraphim_72]

Why have fewer species than ever been added to the endangered species list? Do be careful with that. What a species is gets muddier by the day. By way of example Taraxicum officinale was thought to one species. It is now acknowledged to be but 12+ individuals. That is right - all your Dandelions are the same guy. Differentiation based on species is getting thinner every day. One of my old Botany profs said it best - "The only way to identify a true individual species is to have it become extinct"

Re:"only a little"

[krazytekn0]

If you really think that the DHS has caused less "government" you have some research to do. I'm not saying that your argument is totally unfounded, it's just that at least one of your premises: "DHS was an attempt at smaller government, and DHS is bad" is entirely false. This is like saying that The Patriot Act is an attempt to have less law enforcement. None of the agencies that contributed resources to the "creation" of DHS disappeared. All that really happened is that the INS got a LOT more power, a new name, as well as a presidential Cabinet post, gained some resources and responsibilities, and absorbed some other agencies.

Re:"only a little"

[suitepotato]

Tax money shouldn't be pumped to the telcos to yet again waste instead of rebuilding critical infrastructure. Instead, the U.S. government should build its own national, public infrastructure to replace the crap that the telcos are trying to pass off as acceptable.

So you'd do this despite the fact that you'd not want all your communications copied by AT&T to the NSA? Despite eight years of privacy invasion by the current administration? Despite Carnivore? Despite initiatives by our government to make all your information open to them whenever? Despite that all of the above happens with the Internet being carried by private companies now? Despite that what you're proposing would mean they'd own the lines, routers, switches, etc. and thus they'd have total control of all information passing on the net within America? Despite 200 plus years of proof that even in our own representative democracy the state absolutely cannot be trusted to do the right thing without eternal vigilance on the part of the citizenry?

What are you smoking and where can I get a loan to afford it?

Yeah, I want to give my Internet infrastructure over to the state where they already abuse their police powers at whimsical will.

Re:"only a little"

[BoogeyOfTheMan]

While I agree for the most part, you seem to be ignoring some very important aspects of government regulation.

With no EPA, whos to stop Company X from dumping that waste into a deep hole and let it pollute the ground water?

Without an FCC, whos to stop Tom Psycho HAM operator to build a giant tower that he can talk to Siberia with but drowns out every otehr signal in the neighborhood? (Before anyone freaks out, I'm not saying thats likely, but to all you HAM's, seriously, if it wasnt illegal, dont tell me you wouldnt try it once just to see if you could build it, I would)

Without a federal transportation commision, why would a lot of states keep up the interstates? In a lot of east coast states, a large portion of traffic is from out of staters, and in southern states (MS, AL etc) the interstate is mostly used to go through the state, not travel in it. Why should they spend their tax dollars keeping a road working that is mostly used by out of staters?

Without the FDA, whos going to make sure that when a food or drug product comes to market, that its truly safe to consume?

Yes I know theres a lot of different solutions to those problems, but none of them are perfect either. Also remember that without regulations of some kind, corperations would try to milk the crap out of the consumer without regards for thier health or safety. At least as it is now, they have to answer to someone when they screw up.

Re:"only a little"

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking of criminality...

A few months ago our Road-Runner internet service went to crap. I'd call and complain, they'd tell me nothing was wrong (or the usual high-school-dropout-tech responses, i.e. your wireless router is causing it to go so slow/random disconnects). Rinse/Repeat for a few weeks. Sadly, there is nothing else available in our area other than cellular-wireless (prohibitively expensive and slow) or satellite (also expensive and slow) due to us being so rural. One day they call to try and sell me new service and I downgrade to the absolute lowest service available (RR-Lite, 768k-u 128k-d marketed, real speed about 300k down and maybe 28k up).

Talking to a neighbor, she had the same problem, so I went to the neighbors on either side of our houses and asked them, and sure enough they had the same problem. So we all called at the same time to complain, and the next day we had a couple TW techs out digging up lines and laying new cables.

Service was 'OK' for a few days, then back to crap. Talking to the neighbors again, the only people who aren't having problems are those getting their digital-cable/cable-phone services. We were ending our out-of-state cellular contract at the time so we dumped that and jumped on their all-in-one bundle, only after complaining for a long enough time to get discounts and no contract period.

Since we got the new service, not a single problem. However, the people across the street who didn't upgrade are still getting 2-3 hours of outage for every 4 ours of connectivity (he's a heavy WOW player who is online all the time).

Sounds like a window-protection-scheme to me. End result is that we as a neighborhood are actively petitioning every other broadband provider to visit us and give us service. The last month or so we've had a lot of door-to-door salesmen from Time Warner trying to get us to upgrade even further; found out why last night - the city is planning on expanding its incorporated area (due to a highschool being built less than a mile from us) to include us (which opens us up for Verizon FIOS and ATT-DSL).

Re:"only a little"

[cheater512]

They already have full control over it.
Making them own it doesnt change anything.

Re:"only a little"

[CodeBuster]

With no EPA, whos to stop Company X from dumping that waste into a deep hole and let it pollute the ground water?

Would you let them dump that waste on your private property? You might be willing to allow it if they compensate you or you might not want to sell that right to them at any price and either way is your right to use your property as you wish. If they dump anyway then you can sue them in court for causing damages and violating your rights as a property owner. If someone else allows them to dump on their property and it affects the ground water then you can sue both the other property owner AND the dumper for damages. The court system, appropriate laws to address negative externalities, and private property solve these problems with very interested parties (i.e. the property owners) carefully looking out for their own self-interest and in so doing supporting the public interest at the same time even though it was no part of their intention to do so.

Without an FCC, whos to stop Tom Psycho HAM operator to build a giant tower that he can talk to Siberia with but drowns out every otehr signal in the neighborhood?

Again this is a matter than can be addressed via the courts and when the offender is told to stop (as he surely will be) and doesn't then the court can order the police to enter his property and remove or disable the offending equipment or impose any other remedies which the laws allow and the courts see fit to apply. The people with cause to bring the action, those being interfered with by the illegal broadcast antenna, will bring it. Now, I concede that the courts will...gasp...probably have to be expanded somewhat to support the increased load of cases that need to be adjudicated when the regulating agencies are dismantled. However, a great deal of the day to day operations of the court (i.e. administrative, IT, and other support functions) can be bid out to contract with private business, freeing up the court to concentrate on actually settling legal matters.

Without a federal transportation commision, why would a lot of states keep up the interstates? In a lot of east coast states, a large portion of traffic is from out of staters, and in southern states (MS, AL etc) the interstate is mostly used to go through the state, not travel in it. Why should they spend their tax dollars keeping a road working that is mostly used by out of staters?

Why does the butcher or the brewer provide you with cuts of meat or beer to buy? Does he care about whether you get your dinner or not? No, he cares about his own self interest, which is to earn a living. Now, states would support these roads because they WANT out of state people to visit their state and spend money there which they cannot do easily if there are no good roads to bring them in on. In fact, I am in favor of private toll roads replacing the interstate highway system. Why should the government run the road system when every toll road that I have been on suggests that private industry does a better job?

Without the FDA, whos going to make sure that when a food or drug product comes to market, that its truly safe to consume?

Those who sell tainted products will be liable for their negligence or malice under the law and via the courts. It is not in the best interests of a private entity to sell tainted food. It harms their customers, helps their competitors by driving business to them instead, and exposes them to lawsuits and liability.

Yes I know theres a lot of different solutions to those problems, but none of them are perfect either.

Yes, but some solutions are clearly superior to others, even if they too have some problems.

Also remember that without regulations of some kind, corperations would try to milk the crap out of the consumer without regards for thier health or safety.

Corporations are nothing if not rational and if the

Re:"only a little"

[TheLink]

What are _you_ smoking? And no I don't want any of it.

How has having the network being owned by a Corporation stopped comms being illegally spied on by the US Gov?

If you have a crap Gov, it'll spy on citizens whether it owns the network or a Corporation owns the network. Heck it'll MAKE IT LEGAL TO DO SO IF IT WANTS. The fact that the present Gov doesn't even give a damn and tries to make it retroactively legal shows the amount of CONTEMPT it has for the citizens, their intelligence, and the laws of the country.

The last I checked US citizens had this thing called a vote. If they don't care very much about your mentioned concerns, the Gov will continue doing it. If they do care enough then the Gov might stop doing it.

But it appears most are clueless. The Sheep are busy deciding which Wolf should eat them for the next term, and it sure seems that some would rather have the Wolves' good friend the Fox to own the networks, because they are afraid of the Wolves owning the networks.

Brilliant. No wonder Bush won two terms.

I live in a different country and wouldn't care so much but for the fact that the USA is the most powerful country in the world ( military spending is almost as much as the rest of the world combined), and has no qualms on starting wars unilaterally, doesn't care about the UN, what the rest of the world thinks, or what the US Constitution says. Add Diebolded elections, lots of really stupid voters, and it sure doesn't look good.

Re:"only a little"

[AJWM]

How has having the network being owned by a Corporation stopped comms being illegally spied on by the US Gov?

See Qwest for one (and perhaps the only) example.

Re:"only a little"

[clambake]

Let me fix that for you: Businesses in America model their offerings based not on what they can do... but what they think they can get away with which is why they can no longer compete with much of the world.

Re:"only a little"

[u-235-sentinel]

What? Socialized infrastructure? Maybe even offering everyone the same goods for the same price, leveling the playing field instead of offering discounts for large corporations to give them an edge over the smaller companies?

Careful there, it may lead to a free market system, and I doubt that's in the best interest of the corporations and their politicians. In other words, don't expect to see that anytime soon.

I keep telling them that we don't have a free market and they keep telling me I'm nuts?????

I have a cable connected to Concast and can't use the damn thing for any other provider. I don't want Concast after that crap they put my family though last year (terminating the Internet account because we used the damn thing too much). So we're using DSL which is ok. So what competition are we talking about? All 2.5 options?

Man... We're really lagging behind and Bush has the gall to say our Broadband policy is working. What a tard.

Re:"only a little"

[Teun]

Corruption is inevitable in government, it will always be present at some level and it will be larger and ever more present as the size and scope of government is increased. I know of NO counter example to this principle from any time in all of human history. We in NW Europe and Scandinavia beg to differ.
Sure we see cases of corruption but they are dealt with by the system.
Executive and legislature are carefully separated and would one step over the line he'll not have a second chance.

Of course this has a lot to do with a healthy political system where a government is usually made up of a coalition, a major factor to prevent sleaze.

Re:"only a little"

[Hyppy]

What would that change, hmm? We've already seen retroactive immunity for cooperating telcos after the NSA "Folsom Street" incident, and blacklisting for those who didn't walk with the piper (Qwest). Just about every telco also complies blindly with any National Security Letter drawn in crayon plopped in their inbox.

I'm not saying I'm anti-privacy. In fact, I hate what the government has done with its domestic spying policies as of late. Retooling the FISA to apply to U.S. Citizens is absurd. Repositioning the NSA for domestic surveillance, when their charter specifically stated that they were to only monitor communications in other parts of the world, is just downright criminal. Allowing the FBI to serve secret warrantless search orders on businesses for secret reasons and with secret results violates every principle of government transparency I've ever heard.

What about all of this would change if the federal government owned the lines? I don't think much would. Would you be more comfortable allowing the states to maintain ownership, or perhaps local municipalities? I don't trust our government, on any level, but I trust AT&T & friends even less.

Re:"only a little"

[cowscows]

I'm not convinced that "durable" monpolies can only exist with government approval. In theory, a company that doesn't meet the needs of the market should go out of business, but when you're dealing with something like a utility, especially one that requires so much infrastructure, I'm not convinced that it'd ultimately pan out that way. And even if that is actually the case, what's the expected lifespan of a "non-durable" monopoly? The way that telecommunications technology is advancing these days, if it takes 20 years for a monopoly company to die out, that's still two decades that they can hold everything back, and consumers are getting screwed the whole time.

I also think that there are plenty of valid reasons why most utilities should not be an un-regulated market. We would not be well served by dozens of different companies fighting to dig trenches and run cables everywhere. The reality of regulating something as practical as that means that you're giving someone an unfair advantage, which ultimately means you're going to need to create more regulations in order to make that a fair deal.

The fact that government can very easily become inefficient and corrupt is true and unfortunate, but the same is just as true for corporations. Even if the market can manage to self-correct that (and I'm not completely convinced), it happens very slowly. Getting government organized and focused is certainly tough, but when it does happen, it can bring a lot of resources to bear and actually be very effective.

Re:"only a little"

[BoogeyOfTheMan]

Ideally, your views seem great, but there are still many problems.

What if the company dumps on its own property and it leaks into the water? What if it takes 30 years to see any effect? Wouldnt it just be simpler to have a governing body checking to make sure they are disposing of that stuff properly instead of letting them do whatever untill they get caught. I understand that just because there are rules, doesnt mean they wont be broken, but having an inspector show up twice a year is more likely to deter the company from trying to maximize profits by cheaper disposal methods that arent safe.

With the broadcasting tower scenario, what if my neighbor started his own TV station? Sweet, thats awesome, untill it starts drowning out the other channels I could get. But since there is no governing body to regulate the airwaves, I'm SOL as to my options.

And we've already seen companies screw over the consumers. Look at all the toy recalls because of the lead content that is at unacceptable levels. A government body decided what level of lead was ok and said if its above this level, you cant do business here.

I dont think I adequately explained the interstate problem. There are highways who are only used for passing through. I've driven through AL and MS numerous times and never spent a cent in that state. And for most of I10 going through those states, the purpose is not to travel to or in the state, its to get through the state.
Though your toll road idea would pretty much solve the issue of who pays for the roads.

With things like national transportaion, energy, etc that spans multiple states and needs to be interconnected to work properly, there needs to be some sort of federal oversight so when State A wants to hire (or OK's for zoning) Company X to build thier road, State B might have a better offer from Company Y, but where it is supposed to meet State A's road is 40mi away from where Company X wanted it to cross the border.

I'm not saying that I have all the answers, or any of the answers for that matter, I am pretty sure that no regulation is just as bad as too much. I do agree with you that right now, we do in fact have too much government. But getting rid of it all just because its governemnt controlled isnt too smart in my opinion.

Re:"only a little"

[Opportunist]

Yeah. Right. Cables in private hands kept the government from tapping into them illegally.

If anything, fed owned cables could (ok, a big could) mean that at least some sort of surveillance could exist. Right now, those cables are in private hands. Meaning, I, as a citizen of a country, have no reason to take a look into their business. As a federal business, I, as a taxpayer, do have any reason to expect response to a request concerning the doings of the organisation managing the cables I paid for.

Re:"only a little"

[CodeBuster]

but having an inspector show up twice a year is more likely to deter the company from trying to maximize profits by cheaper disposal methods that arent safe. Effective deterrence is achieved by ensuring via the laws that the expected winnings or the expected value of gaming the system will always be negative for those who are eventually caught doing it. If the penalties are set up as an increasing function of size and revenue then even the most daring individuals or companies would think twice before doing something that is likely to have adverse consequences down the road. There is a balance to be struck here between controlling externalities and preventing useful economic activities but this can probably be done in such a way that the result is at least as effective as the current regulatory scheme and more efficient to boot.

But since there is no governing body to regulate the airwaves, I'm SOL as to my options. The government would still license the right to use the resource via the public auction. It would be the place of the rights holder to sue violators. If you don't hold the license then you are SOL but how is that any different than living near a broadcast television station today (analog broadcasting is going away now I know, but surely you can see my point) and trying to use an antenna?

A government body decided what level of lead was ok and said if its above this level, you cant do business here. There are private agencies that do the same types of testing and reporting, Consumer Reports for instance.

With things like national transportaion, energy, etc that spans multiple states and needs to be interconnected to work properly, there needs to be some sort of federal oversight so when State A wants to hire (or OK's for zoning) Company X to build thier road, State B might have a better offer from Company Y, but where it is supposed to meet State A's road is 40mi away from where Company X wanted it to cross the border. So the states work something out and demand that their contractors do what they want or else find new ones who are willing to do the work for a price that everyone can agree on. The private sector and the free markets find ways to connect up people and resources and make things work. If it cannot be done profitably then it is probably wiser to ask why the government should be doing it. Where I live in California, people are always passing new initiatives every time we vote for the government to provide free ice cream to everyone on Friday or whatever else people think is a good idea. They are so enamored with the prospect of free ice cream that they don't stop and think about whether the government should be providing free ice cream with taxpayer money or perhaps they simply don't care because that money comes "from somebody else, not me". That is on of the main reasons why the state indebtedness has increased by around 1,200% in the last 38 years since about 1978.

But getting rid of it all just because its governemnt controlled isnt too smart in my opinion. Not all, just most. Of course, none of this can be done overnight. If we were serious about reducing the size of government then it would have to be done gradually over a long period of time. However, it is necessary for one to state the ideal so that we can judge whether a certain policy change or proposal leads us forward towards that goal or holds us back from reaching it.

Re:"only a little"

[ashitaka]

That would explain why the pipe at my home here in Vancouver is faster than the one at the office I work for in Newtown Square.

Re:"only a little"

[CodeBuster]

We in NW Europe and Scandinavia beg to differ. Suit yourselves, but the only Northern European country that I would consider living in is Estonia where the taxes are low and the government interference is minimal.

Sure we see cases of corruption but they are dealt with by the system. The ones that you catch anyway. How many slip by or sneak in below the radar and then disappear? Probably a lot more.

Executive and legislature are carefully separated and would one step over the line he'll not have a second chance. Congratulations, most other democracies around the world include the same features.

Of course this has a lot to do with a healthy political system where a government is usually made up of a coalition, a major factor to prevent sleaze. That I will give you. There is indeed value in gridlock whereby the government is prevented from doing much harm, but do not confuse the good government with poor government which appears good merely because gridlock and factionalism prevents it from behaving badly. If one party ever gets majority control then you will see how well the government really runs.

Re:"only a little"

[Gr8Apes]

I'm pretty sure those would be run either by the two municipalities, or some backbone type provider....

It's the last mile issue that's causing a lot of problems. Not the links between municipalities, esp in the larger cities. The big pipes are profitable. You might recall the sale of some minor companies like MFS and UUNET back in the day.

Re:"only a little"

[CodeBuster]

I'm not convinced that it'd ultimately pan out that way The complete destruction of the offending company (i.e. start over) is not always necessary and in fact occurs only rarely. It would be more common, particularly in the example of your utility, for new owners to purchase the company out of bankruptcy, make the necessary investments and changes to return the business to profitability and then either sell the now profitable business for a profit or continue running it themselves for profit. The community gets good utility service at reasonable prices and the new owners earn profit. What is not to like?

what's the expected lifespan of a "non-durable" monopoly? It would depend upon how large the company was, the industry, how badly run the company was and many other factors, but in general I believe that you would not have long to wait if the company was really that bad.

The way that telecommunications technology is advancing these days, if it takes 20 years for a monopoly company to die out, that's still two decades that they can hold everything back, and consumers are getting screwed the whole time. So start a competing company and compete your geriatric competitors into the ground.

I also think that there are plenty of valid reasons why most utilities should not be an un-regulated market. You know how I would respond to that one...

We would not be well served by dozens of different companies fighting to dig trenches and run cables everywhere. You are referring to a Natural Monopoly right? There may be some limited circumstances where this could be appropriate, but nothing is stopping a community from forming their own corporation to either build their own local infrastructure, where the locals are all shareholders, or contracting a firm to build it for them and then collectively running it. There are other solutions besides natural monopoly and regulation, it just depends upon what the community property owners collectively want.

but the same is just as true for corporations As stated above, corporations are easier to get rid off when things go wrong.

Even if the market can manage to self-correct that (and I'm not completely convinced), it happens very slowly. Governments usually come and go even more slowly.

Getting government organized and focused is certainly tough, but when it does happen, it can bring a lot of resources to bear and actually be very effective. Government can act quickly and it does have lots of resources, but as I have stated previously the temptation to meddle combined with a tendency to bungle usually makes these government incursions, fast though they may be, a disaster (witness the FEMA response to Katrina: the temporary shelter trailers were contaminated with formaldehyde, people spent their government issued debit cards on pron, there were double-dippers and fraudsters on the relief funds, etc..).

Re:"only a little"

[Anonymous Coward]

It might cost $200 billion.

Sadly, the money was STOLEN by the private sector, providing yet more evidence that free markets abhor honesty.

Re:"only a little"

[BoogeyOfTheMan]

Now that you mention it... I did live near a broadcasting tower, I did get god aweful interference, and yes, there was nothing I could do about it, lol. (Thankfully it was an AM station that only broadcast for like 4mo a year, but when you're trying to carry on a conversation on the phone and you can hear a preacher talking about fire and brimstone(no lie) better than you can hear the person you are talking to, its really frustrating, when my stereo was on, but nothing was playing, the speaker wires picked up the station and you could hear it over the speakers too).
Anyway, there are still some problems with what you propose. If it was up to the licensee of the frequency to police thier own frequency, I dont think they would care too much if Joe Broadcast Geek disrupted the signal to his 2 neighbors. It would cost them more to prosecute than its worth. On the other hand, you could always make it mandatory for the licensee to police it or lose it no matter how small the infraction.

Now that you've got me thinking about ways to fix the problems that getting rid of most government entities would create, I'm coming up with some issues I cant work out.

If we let consumers groups do the policing, who polices the consumer groups to make sure they arent taking bribes? (Kind of a similar problem to what we have now anyway though)

Who would pay for the groups? Even non-profit org's have business expenses. Though this would probably be the easiest to solve.

Re:"only a little"

[TheLink]

Correcting myself: not all US citizens have a vote - convicted felons lose their rights to vote, usually permanently in practice.

While the 14th amendment allows for denying the right to vote "for participation in rebellion, or other crime"

If you don't allow people to vote what say do they have in government, other than rebellion? Perhaps if someone participated in a rebellion you _temporarily_ remove their rights to vote while they are serving their time (because if they're still "hot" and their favoured candidates don't win they'll think of all sorts of conspiracies). But I think in the next round of elections even if they are still in jail they could be given the right to vote, as part of their "reintegration" to society.

Re:"only a little"

[MidnightBrewer]

Size is no longer a viable argument here; the backbones are in place, and as for the last-mile equation, the government already gave the money to the telcos specifically for that task. Ten years ago. They pocketed the money, said thank you very much, and proceeded with business as usual.

All of this distance argument has done very little to dissuade the cable companies from installing digital cable over fiber; they're very happy to pass the costs on to the consumer.

Re:"only a little"

[msromike]

I really think they are no longer teaching the basics in school. "5" insightful. Someone show me the insight here, perhaps I am too dense.

Please tell us how a "socialized infrastructure" will lead to a "free market system." They are by definition opposites. Perhaps the insight is that in complex societies there are three classes. Do you see the US as having been different in the past?

Here's some news the average American has the highest standard of living ever (though I will give you that it has come at the expense of the mother leaving the home to work.) The rich and nobility structure society so that the masses will continue to produce and not come knocking the castle walls down and start killing them. This perpetuates their wealth and power and keeps everyone relatively happy.

It is the same as it always has been, only better. Now mod me up 5 since I have truly lent insightful comments to the discussion.

Re:"only a little"

[Opportunist]

Well, I don't know if you ever tried to open a business. I also don't know how that works in your country.

In mine, it means that you have to provide some sort of "minimum capabilities", depending on your business. You have to have plumbing, electricity, access to roads and such, and so on and so forth.

As a small business, this means you have to pay what's offered. You have no bargaining power. You have to buy your electricity, water, gas, whatever at a given price, take it or leave it.

Now, let's imagine you are a wee bit larger and let's say you're... GE. You will not use a few kilowatt hours a month, you'll need enough for a power provider to build a small plant, or at least you are a very reliable consumer of that power. That gives you an edge when trying to negotiate prices. Of course it's also no problem to get power there, it pretty much pays for itself to send some lines your way. The same applies to network connections and even traffic. If you're big enough and can easily promise a few hundred or thousand people commuting, it's likely that you can convince your local public transport to give you your very own subway station. At the very least they'll reroute a bus line to accomodate you, your workers and your customers. And in addition to all this, the municipal administration (and, if you're larger, the federal one too) will kiss your butt and pamper you any way you want for staying and not moving that plant to China, too.

Now try to compete with that as a small to mid sized company. The simple answer is, you cannot. In addition to your location drawbacks (because you can't simply outsource to China, or do you want to move to Beijing with your family?), you are also in no way on par in infrastructure. Your power is more expensive, your connection to road and rail is inferior, and you're the one who gets to pay for the "grants" those corporations rake in (because, hey, someone has to foot the bill. And like I said, you can't move that easily to China).

Re:"only a little"

[Eivind]

Depends on who you're comparing to offcourse, like always.

I'm sure you're well ahead of the world-average, probably also ahead of the europe-average (though I'm less sure of that truth be told)

But you're miles behind world-leading countries.

Want a piece of my (perfectly average for my geographical area) communications-infrastructure ?

Single-mode-fibre to the basement. Currently modulated at 1Gbps, but physical fibre is capable of another order of magnitude or two, but there's no demand for that. TV over ip, reserved bandwith on the fibre-link so no interference with other stuff. Phone over ip. 25Mbps symetrical internet over fibre. (i.e. 25Mbps upload, 25Mbps download)

That's actually the lowest available speed-tier. (Choices are 25, 50 or 100Mbit/s) Most go for the slowest because frankly, on todays internet "slow" is a relative term and 25Mbit/s is quite acceptable for most uses.

Yeah, it does introduce a single point of failure. There's municipal wi-fi as backup for the internet and gsm-phone as backup for the phones though. No backup for TV, but let's face it, it's seldom life-threathening if TV is down for a few hours. (not that it has ever been down that I can remember)

This ain't crazy good, rather it's a typical hookup for a city. Rural districts mostly don't have fibre and make do with speeds in the 3-20MBit/s range. They also typically do not receive TV over ip.

Re:"only a little"

[phlinn]

It's amusing that you think government intervention would make a free market. By defintion, if the government uses force to control what happens, it's a constrained market, not free. You may not feel that the current, less constrained, market isn't producing the result you personally would prefer... but that's one of the things about markets with multitudes of individuals, someone is generally going to be unsatisfied.

What?

[Anonymous Coward]

Corporate greed prevents connecting rural housing to broadband?

I thought greed and the free market would solve everything!

Ron Paul where are you?!?!?

Re:What?

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

If Ron Paul were in charge of this we'd still be just as far behind, but at least we'd individually have more money due to not paying taxes to the telecom companies to roll out fiber they never actually did.

Re:What?

[sumdumass]

Lol.. You don't know that it wouldn't solve this problem either. You see, little things like no Brad band availability keeps market prices a little lower which makes urban sprawl more common which means that those rural areas won't alway be rural areas.

Just because it doesn't do something fast enough for you doesn't mean it doesn't work.

Re:What?

[lenester]

This troll is modded insightful? Five minutes of listening to Ron Paul ramble will yield "corporate welfare" as one of his biggest hot-button topics. This is not a free market; this isn't even a market in most regards. The idea that the behavior of a corporation which can prop itself up with hand-outs from taxpayer money is in any way representative of the dynamics of an unregulated market is not insightful, it's a dangerous red-herring meme.

Now, if you want to discuss the difficulty of forming a system of government which does not rapidly become corrupted and start pouring money into the pockets of corporate interests, be my guest. The U.S. government circa 1786 was a nice try, but voters didn't care enough to keep it clean for more than a few decades. Solving that problem is the biggest challenge to libertarianism's viability, not bleated one-liners equating corporatism to laissez-faire.

Re:What?

[Cairnarvon]

Ron Paul opposes net neutrality. More can be said about how his naive view of the economy would mean far less buying power regardless of whether people have more money and the like, but really, his stance on net neutrality is all you need to know to see how "good" his influence in this area would be.

Re:What?

[overunderunderdone]

Corporate greed (and government monopolies) prevent connecting rural housing to broadband?

I thought greed and the free market would solve everything!

Ron Paul where are you?!?!?

Corporate greed works great when a bunch of different greedy companies are all vying for your $$$. It's when one corporation is guaranteed the $$$ because the government shuts the doors on the other greedy corps that want it that you get crappy service. It's Lily Tomlin's old AT&T catchphrase in action: "We don't care, we don't have too. We're the phone company".

Verizon FIOS came into my town a couple of years back, all of a sudden COX cable which hadn't increased bandwidth (but had increased prices) in all the years since it was granted the local monopoly found all sorts of ways to increase services, up the bandwidth and lower prices. Sadly for them it was too late, they couldn't come close to competing on service or price. I'm sure they have some customer left around here but suddenly all my friends had @verizon email addresses.

Re:What?

[Suddenly, UNIX!]

Ron Paul does not oppose the principle that all media should get equal access, but he thinks neutrality can be worked out through consensual contracts instead of government regulation.

Re:What?

[Cairnarvon]

That's what I said. It doesn't work.

"Magical Thinking"

[Anonymous Coward]

Anything coming out of the White House at the moment is "Magical Thinking" alright.

Re:"Magical Thinking"

[Anonymous Coward]

> Anything coming out of the White House at the moment is "Magical Thinking" alright.

I'd be glad if I thought they were thinking at all, magically or otherwise...

magical thinking

[45mm]

It's certainly magical ... like LSD-induced magical. What is this administration smoking? Can I have some?

Re:magical thinking

[AioKits]

It's certainly magical ... like LSD-induced magical. What is this administration smoking? Can I have some? But more importantly, did this administration INHALE?

Re:magical thinking

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

But more importantly, did this administration INHALE?

Snorted.

Re:magical thinking

[sm62704]

What is this administration smoking?

Corporate poles, of course.

Re:magical thinking

[do wop]

LSD provides insight. These guys are in a coke fueled fantasy world...

Re:magical thinking

[operagost]

Clinton didn't inhale, but he passed the Telecom act of 1996 anyway.

Re:Magical Thinking

[Iceykitsune]

of course I don't have mod points

Re:magical thinking

[spazdor]

No no, that's what Hitler smoked.

...I'll get my coat.

Better connectivity in China

[querist]

I don't know about Washington, DC, (which I suspect has great broadband) but where I live in South Carolina all I can get is dial-up. I get better connectivity when I'm in China.

Re:Better connectivity in China

[Serge_Tomiko]

Ridiculous. I've been to Charleston, Hilton Head Island, and Aiken. You know what? They all have broadband available. This means you live someplace rural.

People in rural China don't have access to many basics of urban civilization known since Roman times, ie paved streets and running water. Regular electricity service is not available in large sections of the countryside.

Re:Better connectivity in China

[querist]

I live just outside of Roebuck, in Spartanburg County. Yes, it's rural, and so is the majority of South Carolina. So, while the larger cities have broadband, that only reaches a small portion of the population.

Re:Better connectivity in China

[Anonymous Coward]

Not that it is the best option, but practically everywhere in the US can get broadband via satellite. The downside is latency. You probably would not notice it for web surfing, but anything requiring two communication would suffer. Imagine a terminal application with a 1 second latency, each keystroke would have a 2 second delay. Online gaming would be pretty bad too. VOIP would have an added pause.

Best thing for rural is fiber. Vote for your city to build the infrastructure, then lease it out to a provider.

Re:Better connectivity in China

[FrozenFOXX]

No such luck, our broadband is horrendous. I live inside the beltway and I'm still over 13,000' from the nearest CO for DSL. The only cable here is Comcast, end of story.

Are either any good? As I suspect most people here already know, it's terrible. If you're very, very lucky you can get FiOS, but Verizon seems to have no real rhyme or reason to where they roll it out. One block away from me has FiOS, my neighborhood isn't even scheduled to get it last time I checked. What's the difference between the two? One's directly across from the police station, mine's a block away, other than that it's identical.

I think it's pretty obvious what the boys and girls in Washington have been smoking: dollar bills and corporate hand-waving.

Re:Better connectivity in China

[CrackedButter]

Maybe its because you're black then? I mean there has got to be some sort of logical reasoning hasn't there? (Note to mods, this is a joke.)

Re:Better connectivity in China

[pmbasehore]

I don't know if I would say the majority. My parents live in York, South Carolina, and have enjoyed broadband internet service since they moved there over 5 years ago. York County is pretty rural...

When the Farm Bureau is larger than the Police Department, your county can be considered rural.

Re:Better connectivity in China

[yiffyfox]

I live, 35.4 mi - about 1 hour, from Google's headquarters in Mountain View. The best I can get is ISDN. No Cable/DSL is available. Nor will the phone company install a T1 to our house. I feel your pain. If you live in the thick of it, you can get broadband, step away form the city and it's back to dial-up.

Re:Better connectivity in China

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no references to KFC or watermelons -- not a joke.

Re:Better connectivity in China

[Anonymous Coward]

Where in South Carolina and where in China? Are you comparing rural SC with downtown Beijing? There are plenty of places in China that don't have phone lines, much less internet connectivity.

Re:Better connectivity in China

[Morrigu]

Verizon won't even sell me an ISDN circuit. Bastards.

Not like I'm bitter. See my other post on this thread for my bitch-session on satellite Internet access.

The real kicker is that the county a couple miles to the south line has DSL access available for every home from its telco cooperative (Shentel). But not Verizon. Verizon will wire up FiOS all day long to its precious consumer base in densely-populated Northern Virginia and the DC suburbs, but will hardly lift a finger to provide even decent dial-up service out in rural areas.

Universal Service Fee, my ass.

Y'know what modem speed I get when I dial up my local Verizon access number? 23.4kbps if I'm lucky, 19.2kbps if I'm not. Not even a 28.8kbps connection. Welcome to 1995.

Re:Better connectivity in China

[NekSnappa]

It's really not so straight forward.

A couple of years ago I lived 20 mi. south of D.C. and couldn't get DSL or cable based broadband. Then one day a get a call from my sister-in-law living in the middle of nowhere S. Dakota asking for help setting up her DSL modem. I was so pissed!

The moral of the story is that it doesn't matter how populated the area you live in, if nobody is in a hurry to run the wire to your door you're not getting service.

Re:Better connectivity in China

[sumdumass]

Find your local public utilities commision and write a complaint to them. It worked for me in ohio. I'm only 200 yards from a main timewarner line and found that I couldn't get service from them when both the neighbor across the street and next door can. I'm stuck with Verizon DSL or a satellite hookup that the other neighbors tree knock out every so often.

Time Warner told me that it wasn't econimically feasable to service my house so I complained to the PUCO. It took about 8 months to a year and time warner sent letter to everyone on my road (I am rural) saying they where going to run all the way down the right of way and we needed to attend a meeting to object to it. Verizon already put in a RDSLAM to increase my service and extend DSL to others down the road.

Your local authorities and government structure isn't as concerned with externalities like the state would be. Seriously, complain to them, get your neighbors to complain, and it might take a while, but something will/should happen. The purpose of giving them monopoly access to certain areas is to make sure the unprofitable areas get served. If your state is anything like mine, the fines for non-compliance will end up being more then the costs of running the lines and making the necessary changes. Also, if it is a local "right of way" issue, the state can step in and settle the issue a lot easier then a company can.

Don't hesitate to use the PUCO or equivalents authority to complain about being left out. BTW, if you call, record everything and write down what you said then mail it to them. A call gets logged but doesn't always have the same status. Written correspondence and email seems to be much more effective because they can forward it to someone specific easier then a call taken by a secretary.

Re:Better connectivity in China

[Anonymous Coward]

DC actually has terrible Broadband. However, right outside of DC you can get Verizon FiOs which is the bomb.

Re:Better connectivity in China

[Brobock]

I don't know about Washington, DC, (which I suspect has great broadband) but where I live in South Carolina all I can get is dial-up. I get better connectivity when I'm in China. I live in Arlington which is only divided from Washington by a river. It is about $60 for 6 Mbit.

Washington DC However gets their cable internet and TV heavily subsidized. Such as $80 for every channel, premium package, and internet combined.

Not so good

[scubamage]

My boss's mother in Korea has 1Gbps coming into her house via ethernet. It costs less than 30$ a month. Considering that a t3 functions at 45Mbps and costs a few thousand dollars a month, I'd say we're lagging behind. Badly. Most of our national infrastructure is still using lines which were installed in the 50s and 60s that have been retrofitted with newer equipment.

Re:Not so good

[ivan256]

You don't need a T3 to get 45Mbps now that we have FTTP. You can have your 50Mbps for in the $100/month price range.

It's not 1Gbps, but it's also not nearly as bad as you say. It's pretty impressive considering how far apart people live here compared to Korea. You have to spend orders of magnitude more money on infrastructure per customer, so it only makes sense that the cost of the service reflects that.

Granted, not all of the ILECs are installing FTTP... This is a problem. Any ILEC executive that signs off on an FTTN plan instead of building out the last mile should be water-boarded.

Re:Not so good

[morgan_greywolf]

And the question here is -- why is it this way? Who is benefitting from keeping us behind. As always, the answer is to follow the money. Surprise! It's the telcos and the cable companies, both of which would find 1Gbs running into everyone's house to be detrminental to their bottom line and even better -- they don't have to pay anything to upgrade our infrastructure! That means they get to put EVEN MORE of the exhorbitant prices they charge us in their pockets! w00t.

Nationalize the communications infrastructure and put AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and ALL OF 'EM right outta business. Screw those greedy corporate mofo bastards!

Re:Not so good

[Briden]

can you please elaborate on what ILEC FTTP and FTTN mean? sorry, i don't feel like RTing the FM today, you seem to know what your talking about, i'm curious how this is developing, any more information would be great.

Re:Not so good

[Anonymous Coward]

My boss's mother in Korea has 1Gbps coming into her house via ethernet.

And of course she only uses it for email...

Cos she's old. And in Korea. Bet you thought that meme had finally gone away...

Re:Not so good

[Anonymous Coward]

While you're at it please explain to Briden what RTFM means because he obviously doesn't understand it.

Re:Not so good

[scubamage]

ILEC = Incumbant Local Exchange Carrier.. basically your local telco who controls the last mile or so. FTTP = fibre to the premesis... replacing the analog loop from the telco switch to your home. All POTS lines and other telecommunications equipment use analog lines for the home run loop from the switch to the home... replacing it with digital can dignificantly increase line speeds in the US. FTTN = fibre to the neighborhood... basially the same thing but it connects small switching stations which service neighborhoods via fibre. One of the biggest issues is that the home runs between your handset and the telco or local switch are analog lines, which means that a) processing must be done on the signal to modulate it, and b) its going to be slower and more error prone because of the nature of an analog signal.

Re:Not so good

[Shakrai]

can you please elaborate on what ILEC FTTP and FTTN mean?

ILEC = Incumbent local exchange carrier, i.e: the phone company (Verizon or AT&T) that actually owns the lines in an area. Contrast to CLEC (competitive local exchange carrier) which is a third-party company that leases facilities from the ILEC to provision service (dial tone or DSL typically) for it's customers.

FTTP = Fiber to the premises
FTTN = Fiber to the neighborhood (most cable networks would qualify, being hybrid fiber-coax)

Re:Not so good

[Anonymous Coward]

More like $150/month for 50/20mbps, and you're limit to Verizon FiOS if you are fortunate enough to live in one of the extremely rare areas that has the service available.

When I upgraded to 20/20mbps FiOS, I asked them about higher packages. There's only the 50/20mbps, and there wasn't a single subscriber for it. $150/month is more than people want to pay. My 20/20 is $67/month. A bit steep, but probably better value than most cable and DSL services here in the US.

Re:Not so good

[A beautiful mind]

My boss's mother in Korea has 1Gbps coming into her house via ethernet. It costs less than 30$ a month.

Ah, this explains it. You see, only old people in Korea use email, so the government there set up a special infrastructure for the elderly in order to cope with the spam levels. Of course a very fast connection is part of the equipment!

Otherwise, the USA is still the bestest country when talking about the Internet, we invented it duh! Not listening to you nananananana not hearing you, fingers in my ears!

Re:Not so good

[JohnSearle]

I get 2Gbps up/down in my apartment in Finland, and it's included as a part of my rent; which is next to nothing, since it's a student apartment. On top of that, free post-secondary education for all! On the downside, higher taxes... on the upside, a well educated populous, and debt free students.

I'm a Canadian married to a Finnish citizen, which is the reason why I'm here, and I can say this connection is the nicest I have ever been on. I've also been on other publicly available Finnish connections, and it is still leaps beyond what Canada has to offer... especially in terms of fairness towards the customers, since rates are low and forced contracts are rare.

- John

Re:Not so good

[operagost]

Nationalize the communications infrastructure and put AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and ALL OF 'EM right outta business

Goodie! Then, with the government owning the infrastructure, it will be even easier for them to perform surveillance on their subjects! No silly warrants!

Re:Not so good

[mapkinase]

Would you please stop comparing US w/ Korea and Finland already?

Fare comparison would be with countries with similar distribution of people over the area.

Big question is why Montgomery county or Maryland cannot be like Korea and Finland...

Re:Not so good

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll take a 2mbps/512kbps connection over your student connection anyday.

24/7 surveillance, connection logging, no dhcp servers allowed attached to the line? ... noooo thanks.

Re:Not so good

[Scyber]

It's called population density. The US has a density of 80 per sq mile. South Korea is at 1274 per square mile. Such a higher population density provides a much better return on infrastructure investments. This opens the competiveness of the broadband market, forcing prices down.

In the US it is nearly impossible for a new broadband player to enter the market due to the extensive infrastructure investments needed. In areas where Verizon FIOS and the cable companies compete, speeds have increased. Prices still haven't come down too far, but I bet in general that the cost of living in Korea is less than the US.

Re:Not so good

[ivan256]

Verizon has national pricing, but apparently some regions have lower regional pricing for some reason. I happen to live in one of those regions where FiOS services are between 10 and 25% cheaper than the national pricing. I didn't even realize it until I saw your post. Specifically, in my town each speed costs what the tier below it costs on the national pricing chart. I have no idea why.

Before I had FiOS, I had Comcast. 7M/512k cost $61/month (including $12 for "basic cable", but the internet was $14/month more if you didn't have any TV service). $67/month for 20/20 is a bargain. I actually pay extra for statics, but probably not the average user. Most people don't need 50Mbit, so I'm not surprised there aren't many takers. The upstream is nice, but the best part for me is the stability. I'm going on 3 years uptime on my line. With comcast there was plenty of downtime, and router reboots, and all sorts of nonsense. I used to have my router on a networked power switch so my server could reboot it when the connection went down. In contrast, the ONT just works, I plugged it into a 3U UPS, and just don't think about it. The only way I'll have downtime is if a tree falls on my line or if the power goes out for more than 48 hours.

Re:Not so good

[asuffield]

In the US it is nearly impossible for a new broadband player to enter the market due to the extensive infrastructure investments needed.

No. In the US it is completely impossible for a new broadband player to enter the market due to the extensive laws explicitly prohibiting it, at the request of the incumbent telcos. This is pure corruption.

Who told you that the infrastructure investments were prohibitive? Hey, it's those same telcos again. They're lying to you: it's quite doable in the urban areas, and the rest would creep out slowly over the following years. This is all sleight of hand to distract you from noticing the corruption that's really responsible for the mess.

If it was legal, you would have competition, and your network services wouldn't suck so utterly.

It's called population density. The US has a density of 80 per sq mile.

Irrelevant. Nobody wants to run network service to miles of desert in Utah. The density in the parts of the US where people actually live is more than high enough to support real service. This sort of misleading statistic is typical of the way they try to convince you that what you have isn't broken.

Re:Not so good

[Briden]

thanks!

FWIW: up here in canada, we usually have 2 ILECs to choose from, either shaw, or telus.

both are "broadband" but telus does a terrible job of providing good internet speed over the POTS lines.

on the other hand, shaw does a DECENT job, much nicer customer service, faster speeds, less restrictive policies, and no contracts required (telus forces you into a 3 yr contract)

the downside? neither of these is suitable for full screen video, voip, internetTV, or even streaming internet radio at good quality to a decent amount of users. if you want that, you gotta go to the university or library with their T1s and T3s.

there may be other "options" but as far as i'm concerned, wireless, satellite, wimax, wireless hotspot wardriving etc. are unreliable and only useful in a pinch. I want a wire into my house dammit! and right now, the wires ain't fast enough, and still cost far too much.

it is my personal opinion that anything costing an individual consumer more than $40-$50 a month is an "option" only for business, schools, govts etc. i used to be able to experience everything the internet had to offer for $14.95 a month. Now, i can only experience half of what the internet can offer, and it costs me $50 a month, what gives? prices have more than doubled, policies have gotten more restrictive, WASTED bandwidth has increased (due to spam, ads, updates, etc.), and after large infusions of taxpayer money, capacity has barely increased? come on you bastards, keep your promise!

just letting you know, the situation ain't that much better up here in Canada. (but at least our telcos go to bat for us and don't give up customer records as easily as US ISPs do).

Re:Not so good

[pcfixup4ua]

Don't forget the AA's a 1 gig line to every home, and almost everyone would get their music/video through the internet. And without strong enforcement, p2p piracy would dominate. That may be the big holdup, the telcos are not going to update the infrastructure until we can enforce things like the DMCA and put anyone who does not recognize "Intellectual Property" as real property in prison. Hopefully the next administration will listen to people like Laurence Lessig ) and Richard Stallman

Re:Not so good

[FredFredrickson]

So explain this: I'm in NH and I'm getting basic DSL with Verizon for $45/month. That's 3mbps. Our local cable company (metrocast) is similarly priced with very little difference in speed. I feel like I'm getting the shaft here!

Re:Not so good

[cloakable]

...Call me dense if you wish, but why would you want to put a DHCP server onto a network that presumably already has DHCP? Best case scenario, your DHCP server is non-authoritative, and everything carries on.

Worst case, your DHCP server IS authoritative, and hands out broken settings to hosts trying to connect. Not pretty (I've seen it happen).

Just stick a NAT over the line, and run DHCP on the internal network.

Re:Not so good

[scubamage]

Average density doesn't mean anything without a standard deviation to give it meaning. Do you happen to know what the standard deviation is? As mentione din the other reply it could be heavily skewed by the great plains, and the alaskan tundra.

Re:Not so good

[Rakishi]

I get 2Gbps up/down in my apartment in Finland, and it's included as a part of my rent; which is next to nothing, since it's a student apartment. Meh, I got 100mbit in my dorm and on-campus housing in the US. They didn't upgrade to 1gbit simply because there was no real point, no point in rewiring a whole campus every 5 years so that students can download movies a tiny bit faster. Then again there was very little monitoring or control over what you did with your bandwidth unless some external group complained specifically.

On top of that, free post-secondary education for all! Okay, you can get nearly free college education in the US by going to a community college.

on the upside, a well educated populous Which has little to do with the free post-secondary education system, the US due to various social issues has trouble getting students to finish high school despite absurdly low standards.

As for the "well educated" part, that depends on how it's implemented. Poland for example has free post-secondary education but I've heard a number of complaints about how inanely idiotic the government system is in terms of admissions.

Re:Not so good

[Achromatic1978]

With Comcast Business I have 8mbps/1mbps, 5 staticss, no throttling/blocking of BT, no port blocks, for $89 a month. (Regular price $170 a month, but I was on some deal, that, nicely, isn't just an 'expires after x months', but a 'as long as you extend contract').

Re:Not so good

[Achromatic1978]

Precisely. There's plenty of places throughout the US providing 'co-op' ISP services to upwards of thousands of users each, and big hint: most co-ops are counting every penny, they don't have tens or hundreds of millions in supposed infrastructure investment costs.

Re:Not so good

[compro01]

shaw isn't an ILEC. they're a cable company. ILEC is only about the phone lines, which would include telus, sasktel, bell, and i'm likely forgetting another one somewhere. which province do you live in?

also, the small ISP industry is alive and well. CRTC regs state that ILECs are required to lease out the lines (local loop unbundling), so there's plenty of small ISPs. canadianisp.com has a nice database of them. if telus and shaw are pissing you off, looking into those might be good idea.

though if the ILEC is not doing their job, complain loud to the CRTC. they tend to pay attention to people.

Re:Not so good

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe the forced contract is between you and the government. You're paying for it one way or another.

Re:Not so good

[evilviper]

On the downside, higher taxes...

Well that's the understatement of the century...

Re:Wrong

[ricebowl]

Forget that it, alone, produces five times more agriculture than the entire Isle of England.

I'll assume you meant Great Britain. California is (bear in mind all numbers are from Wikipedia) 163,696 square miles with a population of 36,457,549, Great Britain is 80,823 square miles with a population of 58,845,700.

The population density of California would be 222.7 people per square mile and for Great Britain is 728.1 people per square mile.

So yeah, California generates more agricultural produce than Great Britain but it's got more room in which to do it. There's also the climate difference, which I'd assume helps the crops.

But were you really just expressing irritation at the fact that the US isn't leading that particular industry? 'Cause that's fair enough and, given the fact that the web was (so far as I can tell) more-or-less an American creation (with the exception of HTML), understandable.

I do have mod-points but, since I've replied to you, I can't mod you. Which is fair enough really, since I wouldn't know how to mod you. It's not Flamebait, I'm sure; but I don't think it's insightful either. And, while it's Informative, I'm not convinced that's the spirit in which you meant it. So I thought I'd reply instead.

Just Redefine "Success"

[hardburn]

In this case, "success" means that local monopolies are continuing to make money on existing infrastructure without having to reinvest any of it into new infrastructure.

I signed up for a business-class cable modem a few years back (being willing to pay the premium so I could host my own email and not have to worry about bandwidth caps), and my contract is about to expire (defaulting to month-to-month after the expiration). In that time, the cable company hasn't increased the speed for business users at all. Normally, I'd look for a competitor, but none of the local companies have DSL coverage near my house. There's one company offering WiMax service, but I find WiMax questionable.

So apparently, in the few years that I've had my cable modem, almost nobody has invested a single penny in infrastructure upgrades. Meanwhile, the Koreans had 10 megabit fiber connections years ago. I can only conclude that "a little ahead" is a measure of profit margins, not usefulness.

Re:Just Redefine "Success"

[drooling-dog]

In this case, "success" means that local monopolies are continuing to make money on existing infrastructure without having to reinvest any of it into new infrastructure. Bingo. The White House (and Congress, for that matter) talks to telecomm CEOs and lobbyists, and they tell them, "We're great!". Together, as in so many other areas, they make their own reality.

Re:Just Redefine "Success"

[flynn23]

While this is true, it should be noted that it hasn't benefited shareholders either. One would think that because profits hadn't been reinvested in upgrades to infrastructure that they would ultimately flow to shareholders, but the telecom sector as a whole has not grown very well over the last 8 years or so. They lag behind other large cap stocks like energy, health, and construction as a function of return on equity. So not only are those profits not being used to upgrade infrastructure, but they're not yielding a higher return to shareholders to generate wealth. Most of those profits have just been siphoned off as waste and lower productivity, which is easily hidden given the last few years of consolidation and subsequent layoffs. So you should be pissed off twice.

"Current Administration?"

[bigdanmoody]

So explain to me again how it's Bush's fault that we don't all have free gigabit Internet in our houses? Although I am registered Republican I certainly don't agree with Bush's policies on everything, but in this case I'm not really sure how this is his fault.

Re:"Current Administration?"

[Anonymous Coward]

but in this case I'm not really sure how this is his fault.

Sending one of his legion out to open its gaping maw and spew false platitudes for the corporate overlords made him part of the problem. It's not his fault that broadband sucks, it's his fault that the government is lying about it.

Re:"Current Administration?"

[Anonymous Coward]

Normally I don't bother to reply to obvious suspicions of partisanism, as generally they are, but this is SPECIFICALLY the fault of the administration. The FCC is directly over the monopolies that we currently have, and the top position of the FCC is directly appointed by the President. Over the last several years, we have seen not desire to encourage competition and build out, but RELAXING the restrictions of Telcos, and clear preferential treatment of telcos over cable. I would go so far as to say the FCC has experienced regulatory capture at the hands of "The New AT&T"

Re:"Current Administration?"

[downix]

His insistance of removing provisions or with executive orders allowing telecom companies to ignore their obligations that they agreed to in the 1990's to deliver such pipelines.

Re:"Current Administration?"

[hardburn]

From the FCC using a flawed broadband policy that was started under Clinton and continued under Bush. Note that FCC Commissioners and executives are appointed by the President.

Specifically, the policy is that there be one company handling a given broadband technology for a certain area. One company handles cable, another handles DSL, etc. The problem is that there aren't enough technologies to go around, and some of them overlap within a single company. Fiber to the Curb service is obviously different from DSL, but the telco is in the best position to deploy both of them. At this point, it should be obvious that the cable/DSL duopoly isn't enough to produce healthy competition between providers.

This policy is the reason the FCC pulls out power line broadband every few years, even though the power lines were never designed to handle data, and it's been shown to create interference in the ham radio bands.

Switching administrations would have been a great time to reverse this policy, but it didn't happen, for whatever reason. A cynical person could conclude that the ISP have too much influence on the FCC, which wouldn't go away just by changing Presidents.

Re:"Current Administration?"

[sm62704]

So explain to me again how it's Bush's fault that we don't all have free gigabit Internet in our houses?

Bush != government. He only is in charge of the executive branch. The legislature is the branch charged with writing laws (although Bush oversees those writing regulations).

If you want free gigabit ethernet in your home, write your congresscritter.

(disclaimer: not only am I not a fan of Bush, well, I'm not going to get into what I think of him as the other day when I dared give my opinion of him the comment was modded up to +4 before it wound up as "0 flamebait". Some people equate bad opinions of Bush to bad opinions of the country.)

-mcgrew

Re:"Current Administration?"

[Volante3192]

One of the President's duties (I hesitate to say job, as it's not in the Constitution) is to direct policy. The analogy to a ship's captain is not wholly unfounded.

The President can lean on government agencies and attempt to place people in head positions that have certain agendas in mind. Hence, he could get someone like Crawford in place as the FCC head or the "associate director of the White House's Office on Science and Technology Policy." (Nice business card title there...)

So, he's at fault as well. But lots of people share the blame here, let's not kid ourselves.

Re:"Current Administration?"

[Shakrai]

I would go so far as to say the FCC has experienced regulatory capture at the hands of "The New AT&T"

Dude, you did it wrong. Haven't you seen the new logo? It's 'The new at&t'. See? Lowercase! Clearly less threatening and not like the old Ma Bell at all......

Re:"Current Administration?"

[Shakrai]

Bush != government. He only is in charge of the executive branch

Which according to his minions can pretty much do whatever it wants without any Legislative or Judaical oversight.

The legislature is the branch charged with writing laws

Might wanna tell King George about that. He seems to have other ideas.

If you want free gigabit ethernet in your home, write your congresscritter.

I did but my check wasn't as big as at&t or Verizon's, apparently.....

(disclaimer: not only am I not a fan of Bush, well, I'm not going to get into what I think of him as the other day when I dared give my opinion of him the comment was modded up to +4 before it wound up as "0 flamebait". Some people equate bad opinions of Bush to bad opinions of the country.)

I love the United States and would gladly give my life to defend them. I also think GWB is a dimwitted moron who owes his success in life to his family name and Karl Rove. Let's see where I end up after the modding is done ;)

Re:"Current Administration?"

[creysoft]

Which according to his minions can pretty much do whatever it wants without any Legislative or Judaical oversight.

Jewidecimal?

Re:"Current Administration?"

[sm62704]

I can't argue with a single word.

Re:"Current Administration?"

[genner]

Goerge is only king if the topic has a specious link to terroism some how..........If we don't get FIOS in South Carolina the terrorist have already won!

There...the NSA should have intercepted that by now....all will be well.

Bleh

[doyoulikeworms]

I would be happier knowing that our next president would leave tech alone. The feds have enough shit to fuck up.

Re:Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Just the black ones. And the brown ones. Some yellow, and a few of the white ones that like to marry their first cousins. And the white ones that live with the black ones. Aside from that, everything is just peachy!

"Magical thinking"

[pcfixup4ua]

Brought to you by AT&T

Crawford right -- net should be publically owned

[Jerry]

Crawford added that what America needs is "access to a general communication structure that is open with universal access," a notion characterized by Russell as a "tragic mistake" and invoked an image of a single, regulated monopoly.

"More pipes into the home is the key," Russell said.

We already have "more pipes" and their bandwidths are too narrow and too expensive. We pay $70 for 10MB and many European and Asian countries pay $15 for 40MB to 100MB.

We should have had a PUBLICLY OWNED 100GB optical fiber pipe across the nation FIFTEEN YEARS AGO but the cable and telcos reniged on their promise to build it after Congress gave them to money to do so in order to prevent local governments from building their own. Much of that pipe my city government installed is still buried and is still good. One line goes under my yard. We should demand that the cable and telcos FULFILL their promise and finish the job they were paid to do, and finish it without being paid a single penny more or raising their rates. That's right... take it out of the profits and stockholder dividends. The stockholder's didn't mind receiving windfall dividends while the cable and telcos management was taking the money and paying themselves huge salaries and bonuses and giving those dividends. It's time to pay up, with interest... just like they'd charge.

Translation

[arth1]

"A little ahead" in this context means "behind Denmark, Netherlands, Iceland, Korea, Switzerland, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Canada, United Kingdom and Belgium" in broadband penetration.
And that's with a very liberal view of what broadband really is (256 kbps or above). If only looking at true broadband capable of video streaming both ways, the US is WAY down the list behind almost every other non-third-world country.

Geographically, it becomes even worse, with broadband being largely unavailable outside cities and suburbs, while other countries have ensured that penetration also reaches areas with a low population density.

The US is much like the Holy Roman Empire in that it refuses to acknowledge that its days are numbered and that to survive, it needs to accept that it's not #1, and that it must accept help from the outside.

Or, to use a vehicle analogy (this is slashdot, isn't it?): The train has left, and the US was not on it. Even though the many of the engineers are Americans, the passengers and their agents were too busy haggling over the ticket price, so they missed its leaving the station.

Re:Translation

[LWATCDR]

Well except I don't know a single person that can not get broadband.
I have a good friend that lives in the middle of no where Idaho. Somewhere near a town called Rupert... He has broadband.
My father in a cabin in mountains of Northern GA. He has broadband there. I think that if you take a look at the percentage of people and the actual number of people in the US that have Broadband available you will see that it is a pretty big number.

I have a cable modem at home. Most of the time I can not saturate that link when I am downloading an ISO so I don't think that FIOS would be much of an advantage since most of the time I am limited by the server speed more than my connection. Would I like a super fast and cheap broadband connection? Well yes I would. Do I need it it? Not really. It would be great if my office could get a fast two way connection that was cheap but for home not so much.

The problem with broadband in the US is most people do have access to it but a lot of them don't see the need for the extra cost over dial up. The economics of broadband vs dial up is much different in the US than other countries. In most EU contries you pay by them minute even for local calls. In the US local calls are part of your flat rate bill. So in those countries it is actually cheaper for everybody to get broadband even if they just use it for email and surfing than it is for people in the US.
I deal with about 15,000 users. They are everywhere from North Dakota to Alaska. I don't know of a single one that can not get broadband.

Can it be better? Yes it can. Is it a national crisis? I just don't think so. Do I want my FIOS? Yes I do.

Re:Translation

[Anonymous Coward]

Well except I don't know a single person that can not get broadband.

Nothing like striking down valid statistics with anecdotal evidence.
I don't know a single black person, but that doesn't mean they don't exist or are too insignificant to be considered.

Re:Translation

[arth1]

"In the US local calls are part of your flat rate bill."
Don't assume that everyone has the same plan as you. I live in the US, and I pay per minute for local calls. Because the number of local calls I make are very few, this saves me over $100 a year.

Re:Translation

[Anonymous Coward]

The train has left, and the US was not on it. Even though the many of the engineers are Americans, the passengers and their agents were too busy haggling over the ticket price, so they missed its leaving the station.

Yes, and the AOTUS is rolling their own chairs across the rail, pretending they're still travelling along with everybody else.

Re:Translation

[jcnnghm]

I have a 15mbps FiOS connection, although on speed tests it can register up to 16mbps. In practice, I very rarely am able to download at a rate of greater than 1 MB/s. Indeed, the only internet service that I am routinely able to download at link speed from is my Usenet provider. Of course, being able to download over 5 gigabytes an hour has its advantages.

I have been able to stream HD video from the few sites that currently support it (Hulu), and that's nice. In general though, I'd say that a 15mbps isn't a huge improvement over 8mbps. It's nothing like moving from 4 to 8.

Re:Translation

[LWATCDR]

I do work at a software firm with a customer base of well over 15,000. It is a small but significant sample.
Here are some more hard numbers
"79 percent of those with a home phone (which is nearly everyone in the US, thanks to the Universal Service Fund) could get DSL. In addition, 96 percent of all households who can get a cable signal can purchase Internet access through their cable provider".

That puts the number of homes in the US that can not get broadband at less than $21% Since I am sure that there is at least one home that can get a cable modem that can not get DSL.

Could it be better? Yes it could. Is it a national crisis? Not really.
The vast majority of people that don't have broadband don't have broadband because they don't want it and not because they can not get it.

Re:Translation

[hpebley3]

Geographically, it becomes even worse, with broadband being largely unavailable outside cities and suburbs, while other countries have ensured that penetration also reaches areas with a low population density.

Geographically you're comparing apples and oranges. "Low population density" is significantly different between the United States and most of these mentioned.

People per square km: (Source)
S. Korea: 480
Netherlands: 392
Belgium: 341
UK: 246
N. Korea: 187
Switzerland: 176
Denmark: 127
United States: 31
Sweden: 20
Finland: 15
Norway: 12
Canada: 3.2
Iceland: 3

The most densely populated state has 440 people per square km and quickly drops. (Source for the states' population densities.) Of the 50 states, only 10 have population densities of greater than 100 people per square km. So, the cost of reaching all the people in Korea, Netherlands, Belgium, UK, Switzerland, or Denmark is significantly less (probably by a couple orders of magnitude) than all the people in the United States.

A better comparison would be between the countries listed and the states of New Jersey, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maryland, New York, Delaware, Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania. I'm guessing there's probably pretty good broadband coverage in these states in "low density" areas. Although I'll grant you, in Alaska, probably not so much.

Re:Translation

[Dare nMc]

Can it be better? Yes it can. Is it a national crisis? I just don't think so. Do I want my FIOS? Yes I do.

Not knowing the future, national crisis is of course impossible to say for sure. Is broadband the tool of the future, and how much is practice and availability an advantage?
It is impossible for most people who grow up without a tool to imagine was how those who have that tool use it, and thus what and how would be best supplied to those using it. So with that in mind, I don't see how the US could be as competitive in the computing market in the future. How important that becomes, and how long will it take for the mindset of these now tech deprived Americans to catch back up in this market, is yet to be seen.
This will also infiltrate the productivity of all other businesses. So as the rest of the world figures out how to leverage these tools in the daily lives, and then those tools are provided to the company's who employ those people at no cost.
If you don't believe this, it should be obvious why so much work is being put into this in other countries. If your building business that need to be connected to the world. All else being equal, you would choose the locations that already had the best infrastructure, so you as a business wouldn't have to build it from scratch.

Re:Translation

[Immortal Poet]

I think that if you take a look at the percentage of people and the actual number of people in the US that have Broadband available you will see that it is a pretty big number.

The problem with broadband in the US is most people do have access to it but a lot of them don't see the need for the extra cost over dial up. According to the research group Point-Topic, broadband penetration in the United States is 52.77%. So while you could claim that technically, "most" of Americans have access to broadband, it's not that huge of a majority, especially when you compare it to the broadband penetration in other countries. Indeed, South Korea (89.38%), Hong Kong (87.14%), Monaco (82.92%), Iceland (75.76%), The Netherlands (73.27%), Denmark (72.99%), Norway (71.35%), and 13 other countries have more broadband penetration than the United States does. With only have of the country having access to broadband, and most of those people possibly living in rural areas, it's obvious that those using dial up do so not by choice, but out of necessity.

Re:Translation

[LWATCDR]

According to what I have read 79% of phone users have access to Broadband. In the US that is almost 100% of the population. That penetration number I believe is for how many internet users actually use broadband. I would say that a very large number of people in the US are opting out of broadband.

Re:Translation

[LWATCDR]

"All else being equal, you would choose the locations that already had the best infrastructure, so you as a business wouldn't have to build it from scratch."

Yes but that is just it. In the US broadband is available in every major city and most suburbs. It is even available in many small towns and rural areas. Will those areas attract more jobs? I think so. Just like areas with good schools, Universities, roads, and airports do better than places that don't.

Should smaller towns and rural areas invest in broadband? I think that would be very wise. There are some very nice places to live in the US that have very cheap housing. The problem is they lack jobs. People are leaving and schools are closing.
The problem is that they don't have the money to put in the infrastructure and they don't have the customers to make it worth while.
I could see a nice small town in Iowa spending millions of dollars to put in fiber and then have nobody use it.
It is a problem but not what I would consider a crisis.

Re:Translation

[arth1]

Let's compare apples to apples, then!
How come that Denmark has a much higher broadband penetration than New Jersey? Both are flat with high population density, with an above average (but not top) standard of living.
Or that Norway has a vastly higher broadband penetration than Alaska? Both are mountainous with low population density, and with oil income to spare.

I believe it's politics that causes the difference. If giving the population access to something is a goal, capitalism does not work well.

Re:Translation

[hpebley3]

I believe it's politics that causes the difference.

Sure politics makes a difference. At the moment, those other countries are more socialist than ours. The government controls more industries. There are higher taxes. There is less freedom. I know that's not what I want in my country. I want the government to be small. I want more freedom. I want lower taxes. If there is a need, be it broadband or anything else, and there are sufficient people willing to pay for it, it will happen eventually. If people don't want to pay for it because it's too expensive in their area, they do without or move to where it's cheaper. I don't think it's appropriate for them to complain about unfairness and that the government should do something. It's not the government's job to do something like this. If it's too expensive to provide this through private industry, it's certainly too expensive for the government to get involved. The government can never do something for less money that private industry. There's too much overhead.

If giving the population access to something is a goal, capitalism does not work well.

But the goal of capitalism is not to provide the population access to things or services. The goal of capitalism is to create an prosperous economic environment. A side benefit is minimizing the cost of goods and services through competition and choice. The products and services provided are driven by a combination of need and willingness to pay for it.

Re:Translation

[laejoh]

"A little ahead" in this context means "behind Denmark, Netherlands, Iceland, Korea, Switzerland, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Canada, United Kingdom and <b>Belgium</b>" in broadband penetration.

Hey, there's no need to swear!

Re:Translation

[Denial93]

"In most EU contries you pay by them minute even for local calls."

Not true anymore. In Germany where I live, and in all European countries I have heard of, telcos started to offer flatrates for countrywide landline calls around three years ago. Flatrate deals for inside each mobile network are pretty widespread. Deals that connect you to several, or any, mobile or landline network are starting to pop up.

They're affordable, too (although they wouldn't seem so if you converted them into Dollars at current or near-future rates).

Re:Wrong

[hyades1]

I think you miss the point. When the statement of a government official (we all know government officials always tell the truth, don't we) is clearly contradicted by documented date and objective analysis of that data, then it's time to cry bullshit.

For far too long bureaucrats, politicians and corporate leaders have cynically played on the sometimes-misplaced national pride of Americans to short-circuit justified criticism and move attention away from real problems. Whenever I want to refocus a debate in a way that favours my view, I simply say this: "Well, the American people have the best (fill in whatever you want) in the world." The Americans in the room will all nod gravely and accept whatever claim I've just made, no matter how outrageous. I've just convinced them that everything is mostly OK, and all that needs doing is a little fine-tuning. I now own the debate, because I've defined most of the situation to suit myself. Whatever useless little make-work project I then suggest to make things "even better" will be enough to make "the American people" believe the problem is as good as solved.

If you don't believe me, try this some time and watch it work. Don't worry about the occasional person smart enough to catch you. They'll be perceived as one of those left-wing nay-sayers who never has anything good to say about The Greatest Country In The World, Ever. In today's climate, they might even wind up on an FBI Watch List.

I Double Dare You:

[Anonymous Coward]

All U.S. FOREIGN POLICY is magical thinking.

Sincerely,
Filipino Monkey

USA Broadband is fine

[tjstork]

The gist of the article is the phrase "universal access". What this really means, is that cash strapped cities and suburban areas should again rise to subsidize broadband in rural areas. I think at some point, if you choose to live in the middle of nowhere, you aren't going to get all the benefits. While its great that Denmark has higher broadband penetration, I think its silly to argue that broadband penetration in a country the size of one of our states is the same sort of engineering feet as solving the problem on a continental basis. Broadband for the USA is a much, much, larger problem than broadband for a tiny european country.

Re:USA Broadband is fine

[Trigun]

It seems to me that what you are saying is that you don't have a bandwidth problem, you have a population density problem.

So why are you kicking the Mexicans out?

Re:USA Broadband is fine

[arth1]

You're quite wrong here. To quote F.D.R.: "Look to Norway"
Norway has mountains ranges and large fjords cutting off easy access to most anywhere, and less than 3% arable land. It's much harder to cable up Norway than the US. Yet, they have a much higher broadband penetration, especially outside the big cities. This doesn't jive with your claims.

The real difference is in politics, not geography.

Re:USA Broadband is fine

[ivan256]

I have cows in my back yard.

On Main Street in the center of my town, people keep horses and sheep. I don't think you could categorize my town as anything buy "rural".

However, Boston is 30 miles to the east of me. I've got Fiber to my house. Nobody in Boston does.

Why do I mention this? It's because the problem is much more complicated than you imply. We've got a city with a high population density with no access, and rural farming communities with the option for 50Mbit symmetric connections, because while it's typically easier to serve a higher density population, the problem reverses when you start talking about a place where everything is hundreds of years old. It's hard to lay cable in a city that has gone through hundreds of years of layered construction projects, so those of us in the sticks end up with service first.

We need to come up with our own solutions. The only way we can be compared to European and Asian countries is in these statistical analyses. We can't always adopt their solutions. If you look at the European cities that have high penetration, they're generally fairly modern cities (even if they're "old", because many of them have had non-voluntary infrastructure resets (read: wars) over the years) compared to some US cities. We need solutions custom tailored to each of our regions. There isn't one magic solution.

Re:USA Broadband is fine

[tjstork]

It seems to me that what you are saying is that you don't have a bandwidth problem, you have a population density problem.
So why are you kicking the Mexicans out?

I agree. Lack of density compounds everything - it means we don't have a national rail network, for one, and our highways cost a fortune to maintain. Water, electricity delivery, all are huge problems. There are some places in the USA where water is literally trucked in, because they are so remote. On the other hand, if you don't mind not being on the internet or can live without fast downloads, then, the great outdoors can be alright. The sky is mighty big in the western USA, for sure, but the loneliness is not for everyone.

I don't want to kick the Mexicans out, for sure. I'd like them to learn english and become US citizens, and I'd favor some sort of an amnesty program, for sure.

Re:USA Broadband is fine

[cowscows]

I don't think there are that many people arguing that some hermit living in the middle of the woods in Montana should have telco's lining up to run a fiber line to his house, but there's a strong case to be made that even in dense urban areas and brand new high end suburbs, the state of the telecommunications infrastructure in the USA is generally behind the times. I've got family living in wealthy areas of the east coast, and their internet options are limited to the same dsl/cable choices that I get where I live. In the south in a city that was half destroyed by a hurricane a couple years ago.

What I think this means is that the government should force the telcos to get off their asses and actually upgrade some of this stuff, and do it without passing huge new bills onto consumers. Yes it's regulation, no it's not free market economics, and no it's not necessarily fair to the telcos and their shareholders. But the idea that those telco companies and their successes are the result of a free market is just a myth. They were handed their marketshare by the government decades ago. That wasn't a gift, it was a trade, and the telcos need to be held responsible for their side of the bargin.

Re:USA Broadband is fine

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah yeah, trot out the usual bullshit. "Wah! our country is so large and spread out that we can't even provide asian-speed broadband in the densest downtowns of our largest cities!"

It's still bullshit, and will continue to be so until New York catches up with Hong Kong or Tokyo (and don't give me that "we can't put new wires in old buildings and under old streets" bullshit, how many centuries do you think Hong Kong has been around?)

Re:USA Broadband is fine

[rtb61]

Typical infrastructure lie. Do you know, factualy, that electrical power supply is far more expensive not only to supply but also to power. Water services are also far more expensive to provide and also the cost of supplying the water. Public roads of course are an order of magnitude more expensive and that excludes the cost of the land used.

So of all the services FTTH is the cheapest to provide and supply. The only thing holding it back is the existing inflated value of the copper network, with the telcos valuing it in the billions to justify their share prices, and make no mistake, they will lie, cheat, steal and corrupt to protect that copper network for as long as possible.

It will only be replaced when fault rates start to have a severe economic impact upon the overall economy, and why will fault rates rise, why naturally enough, why spend money on maintaining the copper if you are going to replace it with fibre.

No for the country size lie, oddly enough smaller countries, also have lower populations and smaller economies, hence they have significantly less money to spend on infrastructure projects.

Re:USA Broadband is fine

[Anonymous Coward]

On Main Street in the center of my town, people keep horses and sheep. I don't think you could categorize my town as anything buy[sic] "rural".

However, Boston is 30 miles to the east of me. 30 miles west of Boston places you in Marlborough which can't exactly be called rural. Looking at Google Maps, you'll see that 495 is about 30 miles from Boston, and you can tell that nothing along 495 counts as rural.

Given that Marlborough is home to several tech companies (according to the article) I can't say it's that surprising that areas near it would have fiber installed. You're not rural. Get over it.

If you look at the European cities that have high penetration, they're generally fairly modern cities (even if they're "old", because many of them have had non-voluntary infrastructure resets (read: wars) over the years) compared to some US cities. So your solution is to bomb Boston? I can get behind that. Maybe we'll get lucky and hit the representative from the Boston district that called for arresting computer security researches as criminals.

Of course, you'd still have to solve the problem of most tech gear having blinking LEDs on it, but I suppose you can always use a lot of electrical tape.

Re:USA Broadband is fine

[sm62704]

I think its silly to argue that broadband penetration in a country the size of one of our states is the same sort of engineering feet as solving the problem on a continental basis

Your feet are engineered? ;)

Seriously though, I don't see any difference between giving Denmark universal broadband penetration and giving Illinois universal broadband penetration.

Why are our cities cash-strapped while Denmark's aren't? Why do you make excuses for government's abysmal failures?

One more nit: we're only about a third of the continent. Mexico and Canada are part of North America as well, and Canada has a comparable land mass, although I don't know how many Canadians have access to broadband.

The US's real problem when it comes to our governments (local, state, and federal) is our method of financing political campaigns. Has there ever been a plutocracy that was just or efficient?

Re:USA Broadband is fine

[tjstork]

Why are our cities cash-strapped while Denmark's aren't? Why do you make excuses for government's abysmal failures?

Government is doing exactly what it is supposed to do. If people want broadband, they can buy it. If they don't have the money for it, its not the government's problem. You could always move to where there -is- broadband and that reflects on the value of a neighborhood. It's not a failure of government that taxpayers don't want to subsidize something that is a private sector effort.

Re:USA Broadband is fine

[QuickSilver_999]

Norway also has one of the highest GDP's in the world thanks to a large amount of oil being shipped from their North Sea platforms. Most of those oil companies send a whole lot of money directly to the government. One of the reasons the price of oil is so high today is that the US is subsidizing things like broadband rollout and health care in places like Norway through buying their oil. Don't believe me? Look into tobacco. The real reason it isn't outlawed is simply that the government would collapse if it did not have the revenue stream generated by the purchase of cigarettes.

Raise our GDP by 50-100%, and I'll bet we'd see a bit more penetration. Everyone in the world stop buying oil from Norway, and see how long they stay at the top of stuff like this.

You also have to deal with the fact that in the US, especially in the Midwest, there are sections of land the size of Norway that have less people living in them than Norway does! And if you think it's so cheap to run fiber, think again. There is a lot of money involved, and that takes time. If you want true comparisons, compare something like the state of Texas to Norway, not the whole US. Something comparable in size, if not population. Comparing a country the size of the US to something the size of Norway is disingenuous in the least. Compare us to the Russian Federation and what do you get? Or how about the whole European Union? I'd be more interested to see those kind of figures honestly.

Re:USA Broadband is fine

[Anonymous Coward]

Because they're not legal immigrants.

Re:USA Broadband is fine

[us7892]

Exactly. Why the heck is government supposed to mandate broadband access to everyone?

Electricity and Water are basic needs. Broadband is not.

Re:USA Broadband is fine

[Anonymous Coward]

Municipal Wireless?

Re:USA Broadband is fine

[PPH]

It will only be replaced when fault rates start to have a severe economic impact upon the overall economy, and why will fault rates rise, why naturally enough, why spend money on maintaining the copper if you are going to replace it with fibre.

No. The copper will only be replaced when its owners are allowed to escape telecom regulation with the new network.

Show me a place where Verizon (or whomever) has torn down an old decrepit copper network and installed fiber to serve existing customers with existing contract terms.

Re:USA Broadband is fine

[deoxyribonucleose]

Yep, that's the answer. Swedish cities have been completely razed to the ground... let's see, we were last combatants in the Napoleonic wars, and last faced enemy action on our own soil when we lost Finland to Russia back in 1790. After which most of the contested ground moved outside our current borders, anyway. Clearly, that's the reason the US is lagging behind us!

OK, to be fair, I'm not happy about broadband penetration here (some mostly local government sponsored fiber, some cable, mostly ADSL2+), but at least it's not as bad as in the US. And, what the heck, we had a lot of Modernism-inspired razings of city cores during the 50's and 60's, to the extent that visitors to Stockholm frequently look at the concrete substitutions and commiserate on our war damages! But major effect on broadband penetration? Not really.

Have you guys even managed to get cellphone operators to agree on roaming, yet? My cellphone works fine all across Western Europe. Might regulations possibly be part of the problem?

Re:USA Broadband is fine

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you guys even managed to get cellphone operators to agree on roaming, yet? My cellphone works fine all across Western Europe. Might regulations possibly be part of the problem? What are you talking about? My cellphone works fine across the US, no added charge.

Just not where I work, and not where I live, despite both places being marked as being covered on the coverage map.

Actually, the real problem in the US is that the four cellphone providers mostly use different frequencies and technologies. (And, yes, there are only four, any other "provider" is really a subcontractor of one of the other ones. For example Virgin Mobile in the US is actually Sprint.)

Sprint and Verizon both use some US-only system - but on different frequencies, so a Verizon phone can't work on the Sprint network.

The other two (AT&T and T-Mobile) use GSM, but just to be different, on a different frequency from the GSM phone used everywhere else. And I'm pretty sure AT&T and T-Mobile can roam on each others networks.

But Sprint and Verizon users can't roam because they both use a proprietary system rather than the global standard.

Sort of like - well, every other US standard. Either the US standard "wins" in the end (Internet) or the US uses their standard ANYWAY (measuring system) without regard for the rest of the world.

Re:USA Broadband is fine

[tjstork]

Typical infrastructure lie. Do you know, factualy, that electrical power supply is far more expensive not only to supply but also to power.

Electrical power lines and water pipes last a long time. A lot of water infrastructure in the USA is decades old, and there are some electrical generators pushing 75 years....

Re:USA Broadband is fine

[Anonymous Coward]

If you look at the European cities that have high penetration, they're generally fairly modern cities (even if they're "old", because many of them have had non-voluntary infrastructure resets (read: wars) over the years)

Yea, I'll just bet that Berlin started laying fiber the moment WWII was over. These countries have what they have because someone with the power to do so put a priority on it. Whether it was a commercial company or the government someone decided that it needed to be done and did what was necessary to make it happen. You lay the problem at the feet of the "old" infrastructure in many towns, and while it may be true that old infrastructure does present it's own set of problems it doesn't stop it from happening.

Boston just recent finished a major project referred to as the Big Dig. Billions were spent on it by the government. How much would it cost to run fiber to just the downtown area of Boston? I'm sure in the last 10 years there has been work done on replacing existing phone lines? Any new construction occurring?

The bottom line is that fiber isn't run because those who have the power to make it happen don't care, not because "it's difficult".

Re:USA Broadband is fine

[tjstork]

One more nit: we're only about a third of the continent. Mexico and Canada are part of North America as well, and Canada has a comparable land mass, although I don't know how many Canadians have access to broadband.

If NAFTA keeps up for another 100 years, there will only be the country of North America... there is a -lot- of trade and travel between the three nations.

Re:USA Broadband is fine

[radl33t]

Your justification is wrong. The only reason for relatively poor service is the fascist relationship between government and telcos. Telcos own the government in so far as telco legislation is concerned. There are a few small bleeps in US telco history where brave lawyers and politicians have attempted to combat corruption. Their efforts barely last past the next election cycle. Telcos have pioneered many of the abusive corporate behaviors we see over all major US industries today.

Re:USA Broadband is fine

[zanaxagoras]

Nice try, but no cigar.

Norway has mountains ranges and large fjords cutting off easy access to most anywhere, and less than 3% arable land. The majority of the population of Norway lives in areas NOT cut off from easy access by fjords and mountains. Otherwise, they wouldn't just not live there, they wouldn't live, period.

It's much harder to cable up Norway than the US. Wrong, per the fact stated above. The inhabited areas of Norway are pretty straightforward to cable, and there has never been a need to cable the uninhabited parts... y'know, the parts made inaccessible by fjords and mountains.

Yet, they have a much higher broadband penetration, especially outside the big cities. Yes, because it is a LOT easier to cable up Norway than the US, for the reasons stated here. By virtue of climate and geography, the US allows for larger pockets of more remote inhabitation, which makes the inhabited areas of the US more difficult to cable than those in Norway.

Re:USA Broadband is fine

[FredFredrickson]

Boston to Manchester, NH has FIOS through verizon. Don't know what you're smoking.

Re:USA Broadband is fine

[sm62704]

Electricity and Water are basic needs

Water is a basic need, but people lived without electricity for hundreds of thousands of years. None of my grandparents had electricity when they were young.

Re:USA Broadband is fine

[CaptKeen]

I'm about a stone's throw from IAD. I'm not even 1000' from the Verizon CO. They won't sell me DSL. They still have the DSLAM and will support existing customers, but 'they are rolling out FiOS now'. Because they've started to deploy FiOS in my area, they flat out refused to sell me DSL. Now it's a year later, FiOS still isn't available in my complex (but it is in the complex across the public road...) and they still won't sell me DSL. Their solution: dialup. No thanks. I ended up getting cable service from Cox, which is okay when it works, but their track record there isn't too hot...

Re:USA Broadband is fine

[funkboy]

Perhaps it has something to do with the city of Boston being unwilling to bend over and take it from Verizon, so Verizon just ignores the whole downtown?

Re:USA Broadband is fine

[dkf]

Broadband for the USA is a much, much, larger problem than broadband for a tiny european country. Only if you're intent on doing the whole country at the same time. It certainly wasn't done that way in the UK; instead, it was a sustained investment (by companies after being pushed into it very hard by the regulators and government) over many years, and it involved a lot of digging up of streets (well, mostly sidewalks). Sure, at the time it meant a lot of grumbling by various people, but it now means we've got a free market in internet access where there are lots of providers fighting for your custom like rats in a sack. Just what Adam Smith would approve of!

If you (as a nation) want it done, stop finding stupid excuses (and mendacious "regulators") and just fscking do it!

Re:USA Broadband is fine

[rtb61]

The sheer silly nonsense of deregulating what is an essential service. Quite simply if governments want modern telecommunications infrastructure, they are simply going to have to bite the public, create a government funded and regulated infrastructure and basically leaving the existing telecoms stranded with an cheap previous millennium network.

It will eventually happen but in the US (and likely some other countries) only after a collapsing copper network has caused the US to fall far behind other nations and has cost the economy more that what a new fibre network would cost at this time.

Re:USA Broadband is fine

[arth1]

Thus speaks someone who hasn't been there. Try going to Norway on vacation, and you'll find that people live all over the country, in areas that are hard to get to. Most of them still have broadband.

Re:USA Broadband is fine

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea, that's one possibility. That or the telecom happens to be holding Boston for ransom. It could be either of those. Perhaps some googling would shine some light.

Re:USA Broadband is fine

[nalagiri]

Europe is full of millennia old cities, and while you're correct that some, like London, have had periodic disasters that allowed the city to be modernised somewhat, there are plenty that haven't. I live in Edinburgh, most of our buildings are listed (historial buildings that can't be touched) and our roads were designed for horses and the occasional cart, consequently we have traffic problems. We're cabled pretty well however.

Of course our telcos are awful, but that's the other argument :)

Re:USA Broadband is fine

[PPH]

A public broadband infrastructure? Not likely.

In almost every case, local governments that have tried to put up their own networks have been thwarted by the telco lobbying machine. A few early installations managed to sneak one under the nose of the telecoms before they started paying attention. Or, some rural governments have managed to put them in if they happen to have a deep pot of money available.

Private enterprise has a valid claim that they should not be made to compete with public entities. That's a sure fire recipe for a slow decline of profitability and shareholder value. The only solution might be to create public utility districts that can aquire telecom and cable TV infrastructure within their boundaries by eminent domain.

Re:USA Broadband is fine

[ivan256]

Did you miss that big hole in the coverage map?

Let me re-phrase. You missed the big hole in coverage that includes Boston and the immediately surrounding towns.

Re:USA Broadband is fine

[FredFredrickson]

The map must be incorrect. That or I'm posting using imaginary interwebs.. maybe slashdot is all in my head.

Re:USA Broadband is fine

[ivan256]

I'm just going on the information Verizon provides...

Do you live near a town line or something?

"Magical thinking"

[sm62704]

That is a symptom of schitzophrenia.

Schizophrenia, from the Greek roots schizein (, "to split") and phrn, phren- (, -, "mind"), is a psychiatric diagnosis that describes a mental illness characterized by impairments in the perception or expression of reality, most commonly manifesting as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions or disorganized speech and thinking in the context of significant social or occupational dysfunction.

Emphasis mine.

I've known a few schitzophrenics. I seem to be a "nut magnet", as you know if you've read any of my journals here or old diaries when I was at K5.

-mcgrew

Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

"As opposed to being miles ahead, though, we're only a little ahead." Since when was having huge swaths of populated land without fiber-optics considered "ahead"?

Re:Wrong

[Himring]

No problem. My post fully deserved a bad modding. I suppose I get sick of the slant on /., but, yet, I'm attracted to this site at the same time. It's sorta like being in love with a hot chick that's no good for you. She cheats, she lies, she does drugs, she does all your friends, yet, you still love her ... abuse and all.

A sign of the times.

[Mactrope]

It was nice of you to post in English, good foreigner.

Re:A sign of the times.

[calebt3]

He didn't.
No, you do not want know what he really said.

Re:A sign of the times.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just as well that 'funny' mods don't grant karma, so you'll have to continue shilling your own posts.

Susan has balls !!!

[zappepcs]

I've said the same thing. Connectivity should be somewhat socialistic, services should be market based. As long as the content providers are giving you the connection there can be no fairness in it. When having the internet was similar to dial-up=beater car and broadband=luxury SUV perhaps the market was handling it. Now we have a need for ALL people to have broadband access to the Internet. The market fell behind. The 'market' in this case fell behind not because of some magic, but because of greed.

If the infrastructure that your home machine connects to is a co-op infrastructure (owned by the users) and you buy services from ISPs like email, Internet connectivity etc. then their view of and version of the Internet is no matter to you, you can switch on a whim. If they start dropping p2p connections, you just switch to a competitor. All competitors for your business connect into the user-owned infrastructure and billing choices determine your packets route from the user owned infrastructure to the outside world. At this point, all ISPs are equal players... even little ones, and they will have to compete on services offered and price. In that way, yes, the market will fix things.

Such things right now are done with co-ops or via the local municipality as they have the funds to pool together and build out local infrastructure.

I'm not being paid to investigate further than the idea, but I know that it can be done. We just need a little governmental coercion to get the ball rolling really... well, more or less.

Re:Susan has balls !!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Fact: Nobody NEEDS an Internet connection. You can survive just fine without one, despite what some on Slashdot would have you believe. My tax dollars should not be used to provide other people with things they do not need. You find yourself in a bind and can't afford food, I'm fine with my tax dollars being temporarily used to help you until you get back on your feet. People need to eat to live. They don't need to be on the Internet to live, therefore tax dollars shouldn't be used. If you want taxpayer financed broadband, go to a socialist European country and enjoy having a 60%+ overall tax rate. We're not about that in this country.

Re:Susan has balls !!!

[zappepcs]

Only replying as apparently I did not explain myself well. I do not mean taxpayer funded infrastructure, and as I don't have clear plans on how, just the idea, I mean user owned like co-operatives. It does not have to be the city/municipality. It might simply be the HOA, or some other neighborhood organization that owns it. Basic use is a small amount each month if you want to use it. Internet service/content are paid for by the end user. The main point is that the content provider ISPs should not own the last mile of connectivity. It gives them a kind of monopoly over your use of the Internet which, whether you believe it or not, is becoming much more important in day to day living. Want to find something cheap? you look in the paper, I'm going to use the Internet. Want to find out something about your government? You spend all day at the courthouse and library... I'm going to find it on the Internet during a break. Yes, what you say is technically correct but pragmatically luddite-ish.

Re:Susan has balls !!!

[daveime]

Yes, because endlessly throwing free food at people has worked *so* well for the millions starving in Africa. 25 years of food packages to ease your moral conscience, and hey guess what, they are STILL starving. Educate people to make their own food, and your problem is solved ... and education can be far better disseminated to the masses of the world with a good information infrastructure. Ignorance is not bliss, it is death.

American broadband:

[n3tcat]

A series of optimistic tubes.

Re:American broadband:

[Brian Stretch]

Technically, fiber optic cable is a series of tubes, and getting government permission to build a FTTH network requires a great deal of optimism...

Re:Wrong

[Shakrai]

She cheats, she lies, she does drugs, she does all your friends, yet, you still love her ... abuse and all.

Just wait until you wind up with something that can't be treated with antibiotics ;)

Nothing new here

[Remillard]

This is simply another example of the Bush administration engaging in wishful thinking. We're doing well with broadband because we say it's true. The Iraq War has been a huge success because we say it's true. The economy is strong because we say it's true. Global warming is a myth because we say it's true.

Sadly the country is full of folks who do not think critically for themselves and believe what they've been told is true. Imagine what's going to be "true" tomorrow.

Re:Nothing new here

[tjstork]

This is simply another example of the Bush administration engaging in wishful thinking. We're doing well with broadband because we say it's true. The Iraq War has been a huge success because we say it's true. The economy is strong because we say it's true. Global warming is a myth because we say it's true. Sadly the country is full of folks who do not think critically for themselves and believe what they've been told is true. Imagine what's going to be "true" tomorrow.

I say I'm doing well with broadband because I have FIOS. Bush has never said, as of late, the war is a huge success, and has always said that it would be difficult work. The economy is strong because I sold my house for more than it is worth and have a job that pays a lot more than I made when Bush was sworn in. Many of us have been proposing nuclear power to beat global warming for decades, and yet you refuse it, so I think it is reasonable to think that when various left wing leaders say that they see global warming as not so much an environmental problem as a vehicle to scare the masses into accepting a massive redistribution of wealth, then, I say yes, I think the politics of it are b.s. I mean, even Obama talks about using cap and trade CO2 money to pay for his health care proposals - this isn't a solution to an environmental problem, its a tax increase backed by a body of lies. I think there are still a lot of people that support Bush because they have thought critically, and they are better off, and we tend to view the claims of the left wing that we are being suffering or robbed as so much superstitition.

Re:Nothing new here

[all5n]

"This is simply another example of the Bush administration engaging in wishful thinking. We're doing well with broadband because we say it's true. The Iraq War has been a huge success because we say it's true. The economy is strong because we say it's true. Global warming is a myth because we say it's true."

Allow me to correct your partisan statement:

This is simply another example of Liberals engaging in rigid group thinking. We're not doing well with broadband because we say it's true. The Iraq War has been a huge failure because we say it's true. The economy is weak because we say it's true. Global warming is real because we say it's true.

Fixed.

A corollary to Niven's Law

[spun]

Any sufficiently stupid government initiative is indistinguishable from magic. That is to say, it doesn't work in the real world, but the masses like to watch the charlatans on stage do it any way.

Re:A corollary to Niven's Law

[spazdor]

it's the 2nd most important comment here (behind 'woot') and must therefore be placed as high on the page as possible, of course.

Re:A corollary to Niven's Law

[jo42]

"A bureaucracy's only competence is sheer incompetence."

Re:Wrong

[Xelios]

"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross." - Sinclair Lewis

What do we need more residential bandwidth for?

[Animats]

What's the point of more residential bandwidth? All most people will do with it is watch TV. Why should national policy be devoted to helping people watch TV, which is a fundamentally nonproductive activity?

Once you get to 1Mb/s or so, you can do everything most residential users do that isn't video-oriented. What's the problem?

The "gigabit connections" of some of the high density countries are illusory. You may have gigabit Ethernet to your apartment, but your 1000-unit apartment complex doesn't have a terabit pipe going out.

Re:Crawford right -- net should be publically owne

[sm62704]

I agree. A lot of people are sure that anything any government runs will be run badly, but health care in other countries belies that. All the retired people I know are happy as clams with their medicare, yet the youngsters don't want it. I think they're brainwashed fools who refuse to look at facts.

Here in Springfield the power company is owned and run by the city government. We have the lowest electric rates in Illinois.

When the tornados tore through here in 2006, they destroyed a very large portion of the electrical infrastructure here. Power was restored to everyone city-wide in a week.

In contrast, later that summer St Louis was hit by a single tornado. Its corporate owned power company, Ameren (IINM) took a month to get everyone affected back on line.

I would love to see CWLP take over broadband and cable.

-mcgrew

Magical Thinking

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me remind all citizens of the dangers of so-called Magical Thinking...We have scarcely begun to extract all the benefits provided to us by ..our benefactors...

Sounds like someone is channelling Dr.Breen.

Typical Slashdot

[operagost]

Monday through Thursday, Slashdot complains about the government interfering with our lives. On Friday, it demands more government intervention. The more power you give to government, the more it takes from you.

Re:Crawford right -- net should be publically owne

[Shishak]

We should have had a PUBLICLY OWNED 100GB optical fiber pipe across the nation FIFTEEN YEARS AGO but the cable and telcos reniged on their promise to build it after Congress gave them to money to do so in order to prevent local governments from building their own. Much of that pipe my city government installed is still buried and is still good. One line goes under my yard. We should demand that the cable and telcos FULFILL their promise and finish the job they were paid to do, and finish it without being paid a single penny more or raising their rates. That's right... take it out of the profits and stockholder dividends. The stockholder's didn't mind receiving windfall dividends while the cable and telcos management was taking the money and paying themselves huge salaries and bonuses and giving those dividends. It's time to pay up, with interest... just like they'd charge. What exactly are you smoking? 100Gb 15 years ago? 28.8 dialup was fast 15 years ago. The 100Gb Ethernet standard isn't even ratified TODAY how in the hell are the telcos supposed to build a 100Gig 'optical fiber pipe' when the technology doesn't even exist TODAY. There are NO routers that support 100Gb connections. OC-768, 40 Gb is the fastest you can get today and the are MILLIONS of dollars While I agree the telcos and cable cos can and should do more to promote broadband around the country. You have NO idea what you are talking about!

Re:Crawford right -- net should be publically owne

[atomicdoggy]

Why? I keep looking around in the constitution and don't see anything about a right to download porn fast. Why is it the government's job to even have a "broadband policy"?

Re:Crawford right -- net should be publically owne

[Anonymous Coward]

We pay $70 for 10MB and many European and Asian countries pay $15 for 40MB to 100MB.

Not in the UK they bloody don't!

Re:Wrong

[bhima]

"When fascism came to America, it was wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross."

There, fixed that for you!

Engineer

[ShawnCplus]

I'd say the pipe is twice as big as it needs to be!

Enough with the tubes

[clay_buster]

Geeks talk about the size of the pipe to their house. Some Senator talks about the internet being a bunch of tubes that can fill up because of file sharing or video on demand or whatever. It's exactly the same metaphor the technocrats use. So exactly why was the guy wrong other than he's old and from the wrong party?

Re:Enough with the tubes

[Anonymous Coward]

I still think it's a truck.

Re:Enough with the tubes

[Anonymous Coward]

Read the original statement for context. His statement is really, really stupid.

It was something along the lines of: An e-mail took several days to arrive because the internet is all clogged up. The internet is not a truck it's a series of tubes which is why something somthein.

It would probably have been faster to google for it instead of writing the above but fuck it. Today I'm only giving out semi-false information. Do your own googling.

The difference between a nerd using the term pipe and a senator calling the internet a series of tube is that the former realizes that it's a metafor while the latter obviously doesnt't

Re:Wrong

[highlander76]

Reminds me of some of the undercover documentaries about North Korea. When a society is afraid to honestly compare itself to others then that society is doomed to stagnate, or at least fall behind. You'd think with the internet it would be easy to get information about the situation in other countries. Oh, that's right, with our superior connectivity it still takes too long to download that information.

The last mile problem

[PPH]

The owners of the last mile are holding it hostage for a bigger cut of the profits.

East Boston access was, and is, fine

[Anonymous Coward]

I lived in East Boston for a couple years, about 5 years ago, and had GREAT access at that time. Now you can get that new-fangled FIOS....can't be all that bad in Boston.

Re:Wrong

[j.sanchez1]

It's sorta like being in love with a hot chick that's no good for you. She cheats, she lies, she does drugs, she does all your friends, yet, you still love her ... abuse and all.

You must be dating my ex-wife.

Re:Wrong

[Himring]

Your ex-wife must be my ex-wife....

Canada is even bigger

[FreeUser]

Canada is even bigger, with a much lower population density. Rural Canadians typically pay $20/month for ADSL bandwidth I couldn't buy in downtown Chicago at any price. I could get equivalent bandwidth, but not ADSL, and prices were in the multi-$100s/month for leased lines. The US was woefully behind its northern neighbour, and the rest of the developed world, three years ago.

Now that I live in Europe, I'm able to get 24Mbit/2Mbit ADSL for a fraction of what I paid for 1/12th the bandwidth in Chicago (and having spoken to a friend of mine who lives there now, it seems things haven't improved much in the last 18 months). Seeing as 100Mbit is coming in the next few months, I'd say the US is not only not ahead, it is falling behind at a geometric rate.

Re:Canada is even bigger

[sumdumass]

Canada has more land area per person but their population tend to ignore a good portion of that area making a real population density a low larger.

Also, you comparison of DSL prices is a bit misleading. The prices are different from city to city and market to market but DSL can be had in Chicago for about $20 a month. I only payed $35 a month for a 3 meg connection and my father was is paying $10 or $15 for a 1.5 or 1 meg connection that suits his need. That was about 2 to 3 years ago when we temporarily located in the Chicago area for a job that lasted about 8 months.

I don't think this says what you want it to say.

Re:Canada is even bigger

[GiovanniZero]

That's pretty cool I guess. I live in Utah(obviously a cultural hub) and pay 40 bucks a month for 15Mbit/15Mbit fiber. Unfortunately Im on the slow side of town, the other side gets 50Mbit/50Mbit fiber.

I guess I can only dream of being as cool as a european.

Re:Canada is even bigger

[maxume]

Population density, bah! The proper measure is subscribers per infrastructure dollar. Population density-density gets you quite a bit closer.

What the hell am I talking about? Wiring Anchorage is easy. Wiring Alaska is hard. The population density of Canada doesn't have much to do with the population density your typical Canadian lives at(or average American in the US).

None of this has much to do with the crappy broadband in the US.

Re:Canada is even bigger

[element-o.p.]

True, but even though wiring Anchorage is easy, we've still got really crappy speeds here. I've got a 720K/320K DSL connection in Anchorage's east side. I *could* upgrade to ADSL, but I really don't like the Paradyne and Westell modems ACS uses, so I stick with the slow Nortel cDSL modem. While you can get megabit speeds from GCI's cable service it is still a far cry from the 10-50M speeds I hear people bragging about in the lower-48 and Europe.

Re:Canada is even bigger

[Anonymous Coward]

As a Canadian, I say - hah! I wish!

I pay $29/month for 3Mb DSL from Teksavvy, which I carefully comparison-shopped for; if I had gone with the Sympatico (the incumbent), I'd be paying $45 per month for exactly the same service.

Re:Canada is even bigger

[Anonymous Coward]

Canada isnt bigger when you think of population placement. Your land mass may be bigger but 95% of that nobody lives on.

funny, very funny

[Morrigu]

I'm only laughing since I've been on WildBlue's satellite service at home since November-ish of 2005, when I moved into a house in the Shenandoah Valley.

Please note that this is a mere 70 miles west from DULLES INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT and the crowded den of datacenters and fiber connectivity that infest western Fairfax County and eastern Loudoun County VA. For people not familiar with the United States, this is (by some measures) the Internet hub of the eastern seaboard, with a huge number of peering/exchange points and hosting facilities. I work at one of those datacenters where we have a primary 10GB (yes, ten gigabit Ethernet) link to our upstream provider.

You probably would not notice it for web surfing, but anything requiring two communication would suffer.

You notice this when web surfing. 900ms typical latency and 2% packet loss on a good day. Bad days are more like 2000ms latency and 30% packet loss, or "let's reset the modem again and maybe it'll sync up and shove some packets across before it dies from rain fade" or whatever is causing loss today. It's not so bad on static HTML pages or plain text, but AJAX pages can suffer horribly if they're coded to constantly pump data back and forth, and without AdBlock or similar addons/extensions for a browser, it's horrible. Flash-based pages actually work well, once they download.

Imagine a terminal application with a 1 second latency, each keystroke would have a 2 second delay.

SSH over a VPN is pretty painful, but if you have your environment set up decently (i.e., alias the top 50 commands you run most often to two-letter combinations) it's workable for remote admin. Character-interactive apps like `vi` are still bad, but with patience you may prevail.

Remote desktop access is just out of the question. I've tried TightVNC and variants, and it's still just baaaaad.

Online gaming would be pretty bad too. VOIP would have an added pause.

Yeah, I cancelled Xbox Live since any multiplayer game was unplayable. WoW can be playable, under certain conditions, and MMORPGs fare better (i.e. it's theoretically playable) than other online games, but it's still painful. Ended up cancelling WoW too.

VOIP just doesn't work. Skype screeches along and you get a 1.5s-delayed echo. Oh yay.

I'm not bitter. I'm just pissed off, since I literally can't get anything better where I am.

Re:funny, very funny

[bmwm3nut]

I'm also on wild blue: I live 15 miles from the nearest CO, so I can't get DSL and a T1 is $300/mo. I agree with the parent, while it's great that I can get some type of high speed access, the latency is terrible. I can't wait for the day that I can get a low-latency, high-speed connection.

Re:funny, very funny

[pipatron]

Character-interactive apps like `vi` are still bad, but with patience you may prevail.

ED! ED is the standard editor!

Re:funny, very funny

[Achromatic1978]

MMORPGs fare better (i.e. it's theoretically playable) than other online games, but it's still painful.

Play EVE. Doesn't seem to have the issue of lag at all (in the traditional sense).

My options in Tacoma were nice enough... plenty of DSL, City-provided cable TV and internet, Comcast.

In Olympia? Hah, where I am, just off the freeway, T-mobile reception is one bar. DSL? No chance. "iDSL" or ISDN proper (haha). Comcast cable, though, but nothing else. Comcast is actually nice here, none of the BT throttling issues (though I am on a business account, so I have no server/port restrictions either, and 5 static IPs. 8mbps/1mbps for $89 a month, not bad), though I am yet to see the practical effects of "PowerBoost" (to 16/2, in theory) /ever/ kick in.

Getting off topic, we decided not to touch Comcast TV with a bargepole though. Talk about nickel and diming.... "basic package", $26 a month for 6 months (then up to $53, ew). Oh, plus $6 a month for HD. Plus $6 a month per STB. Gah. Dish Network, $42 a month, plus $5 a month for local channels, for the 722 HD DVR, cable of acting as a STB for 2 TVs. Much nicer. But I'd never go with satellite internet unless unavoidable.

I feel your pain, though. As recently as a couple of years ago, due to crappy exchange, my best option for internet was 19.2kbps dialup.

Speed is relative...

[rickb928]

Back in the day I worked for an ISP/consultancy. I was at a client site which was also our POP, and had dual T-1s, and I shared that with our users. It was blazing fast for the day. Then I got RoadRunner (one of the early users in our city) and damn, that was fast. I would mirror vendor FTP sites overnight, swapping 1GB/hr one night. Woot!

Today, my cable service is the equal of what I had back then, but the download speeds suck. Why?

Demand, and of course backbone capacity.

So, does that nice Korean grandmother with the GB Ethernet connection get GB BitTorrent downloads? It's not up to the last mile how fast your connection is. It's the source(s) and the backbone. And your ISP's gateways, of course.

Our broadband problem in the U.S. doesn't seem to be, IMHO, the last mile. It's the ISP's gateways, just inside the gateways, and the backbones.

How do they fix this? Well, for most ISPs, they ignore the capacity issue as long as possible, either waiting for the next generation of switching equipment or a capital infusion to spend some money on the NOC. This takes years either way.

I just saw a story on Nokia apparently offering changes to GPRS, doubling and then increasing again data speeds. this might be a software change, which while not free would be cheaper than new boxes. Sounds like they wanna keep GPRS alive and competitive with EV-DO, HSPDA, et al. This sort of competition is not working in the landline/wired ISP business.

For a while, a DSL provider in Southern Maine was advertising that they offered faster connections than the cable company did. Oh, man, the cable co threatened to sue for false advertising. And the DSL provider basically said 'bring it on'. They could back their claims. In none of this did the telco, Verizon, ever speak up about *their* speeds, Cause their speeds sucked. That little spark of competition is not happening over much of the nation. The incumbents are so entrenched there is no getting past them.

Perhaps wireless gives us a hope to get past the incumbents, but with the C Block auction going to the highest bidders^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H incumbents, we're probably not going to get any more there. The 'open network' spec is a joke. Any device will operate on the 700MHz band, it will just operate at the pokey, laggy speed every other device works at. Nice. I have no hope that the bidders will build out their networks to accomodate the potential demand of true broadband - BitTorrent, 1080p, large file transfers for online storage/backup are the drivers for this.

We need to change things at the FCC, open up the marketplace, and let someone/something come on and deliver what is wanted.

Fat chance.

Re:Speed is relative...

[jayp00001]

I think the countrywide marketplace IS open. There is no federal law stopping you from stringing fiber from point a to point b anywhere in the US. The real problem is that all the local municipalities in the middle look at anyone thinking about running any type of cable as a.) a potential cash cow and b.) a threat to the local cable company monopoly that they have already granted. The cable company, of course, threatens to sue the town if they even consider letting another company run fiber. The sole exception potentially being verizon because they are already there. So who wants to invest in new fiber with a limited prospect of a profit? I thought about doing it in my town but relaized that if I wanted to start turning a profit it'd be at 15 years that I break even (assuming 5-10% penetration growth per year starting at the 1% penetration that the cable company as ISP seems to have ). While wireless is easy to deploy it's not a good answer either.

Re:Speed is relative...

[2short]

"So, does that nice Korean grandmother with the GB Ethernet connection get GB BitTorrent downloads? "

Almost certainly. Korean network build-out is famously fantabulous, top to bottom.

Re:Speed is relative...

[rickb928]

Ah, so many issues, so little time...

It isn't federal law that is the issue. Stringing FTTH requires hanging it off of poles in most of the country. Paying for access to the right-of-way. Even burying requires ROW. Local communities control most of this, while common carriers usually have a deal with the local authorities also. In Maine, most of the poles were owned by the power cos., and everyone paid them for access. The local community took a cut of the action. To go into business as a FTTH ISP, you'd need to pay for the pole rights. That DSL competitor leased lines from Verizon as a CLEC.

Wireless sucks. In a state like Maine, vegetation makes the number of access points skyrocket, and the system is too expensive to deploy. Philadelphia learned this - similar topology. Even in Tempe, Arizona, the real performace of WiFi ends up being too darned expensive.

In Maine, the calbe co has good market penetration (+20% at least), if you define the market as those wanting internet service. If you define the market as all housholds, well, not so good. And the Telco and all DSL providers lag only slightly. Dialup is not so prevalent.

In America, there is *no* nationwide market for broadband. The local constraints on laying fiber prevent that.

Re:Speed is relative...

[rickb928]

And if there are 2 seeds, and neither has more than 2MB upload bandwidth?

It's not about your local pipe. The source needs to be able to deliver, and the intervening nets also. This is why content delivery systems use distributed serves, to overcome the limitations of single-source systems. And BitTorrent uses many, many sources to overcome the bandwidth limitations of any one.

But if I serve up a single seed of a torrent, no matter how fast your link is, you cannot download an faster than I can upload. And if I get a few hundred seeds out there, none of this means a thing if your ISP is lame enough to not be able to handle the trafic of your torrent, many others, YouTube/CNN/MySpace and other high-bandwidth services, all at once. Either the ISP builds out their NAP to handle the traffic, or they 'manage' the demand (ala Comcast), or they shut you off for 'hogging' bandwidth.

Or they ignore you. The most common tactic.

So Grambo in Korea ain't getting GB downloads unless everything in between can handle the traffic.

I America, we are deficient in the 'everthing in between' area, right down to the ISP's NAP.

ps- DOCSIS 3.0 doesn't fix this. It just ensures your packets are dropped faster, unless the cable co upgrades their connections out as well.

Re:Speed is relative...

[2short]

Yes, if she's trying to download something only being uploaded by a couple people with slow American connections, it will be slow. This doesn't strike me as particularly relevant in comparing Korean and American broadband. Their so much better, because in certain circumstances, we're so lame we drag them down a bit with us?

If "Grambo in Korea" is pulling down a torrent of something somewhat popular whose seeds are spread about, then only the limitations of network links fairly near her will be relevant, as after a few hops the load will be spread out over different parts of the lame, non-Korean network.

You don't get the advantages of a fast network and a protocol that can pull from multiple sources when you're pulling from a single source on a slow network. This is a fine tautology, but it's not much of an argument.

Re:Speed is relative...

[rickb928]

My point is simple. Focusing on your last mile link is seriously inadequate. You need to know how your ISP is provisioned along the way out. Or more precisely, it doesn't much matter if I have GB at the house if my ISP can't funnel much more than 200MB at their NAPs. And that being shared...

Speed tests help with this. DOCSIS systems can throttle bandwidth, so you're looking to get close to what your ISP claims. But I wonder how Grambo in Korea does on DSLReports... does she get any speed test close to 100MB? I kinda doubt it, since that would take a lot of horsepower at the other end.

Now, a BitTorrent speed tester gizmo, with a buncha well-tiered seeds, that would be fun.

For the real-world application of this, consider HD video, which is certainly going to be a future service. If it were delivered Torrent-style, then your last mile might be the choke point. But not many DOCSIS 2.x systems will provide >9MB/s to a subscriber. And how many viewers in your neighborhood would it take to choke your local ring? Not many, I bet, so watching the Super Bowl will be a challenge over the cable modem.

Ah, we should be petitioning for proper Multicast support, too. Wonder if that would solve the problem...

Re:Speed is relative...

[2short]

"My point is simple. Focusing on your last mile link is seriously inadequate."

Yes, I understand all that. My point is also simple: Looking not just at the last mile, but also at the next several links up the chain; looking at it in any way that is not inadequate, but that actually measures the real useful speed of the connection: Most anyone in Korea will have a much better connection than most anyone in the US.

It varies widely

[zogger]

I live in north georgia on a two lane blacktop road, more suburban now than rural (although this is a farm), and there is no broadband here, and the line technician told me quite clearly they would *never* offer broadband unless it was mandated by law.. The last place we lived in north georgia was much farther out in the sticks, down several dirt roads (miles of them with few houses) leading to a third of a mile private dirt driveway, serious boonies with bears in the yard and so on, and they were rolling out broadband all over, just when we were moving unfortunately, but they did do it. The difference, where we are now is hell south territory, the last place was a local community telco-ETC- that actually cared. They ran new good copper underground everyplace (14 pairs, I looked), here, hell south uses the same cheap overhead vulnerable to every windstorm thin lines crap forever and just doesn't care, probably conflicts with Cxx salaries and "shareholder value!!!"

Broadband Utilities

[Doc Ruby]

The US still has to make the cultural leap to seeing broadband Internet as essential a utility as is electric, heat, water and sewage. We still don't even see TV that way, or we'd never put up with its high prices and monopolies - partly because we allowed cartels in exchange for "free" (ad supported, FCC regulated) air/radio broadcasts.

Small experiments in the US have shown that when municipal or other governments introduce network service, it finally spurs competition among the incumbent network operators, who stop putting off the less profitable market segments (who then get no service) while they pursue the "lowest hanging fruit". These municipal networks, whether wired or wireless, can support the increasing municipal network operations without paying tax money to private profit. If they permanently introduce real competition among the private operators, they can recede back into carrying only government traffic, like fire/police/medical comms, public websites, and the government's IT operations (including voice). In the meantime they let public policy make direct changes in what's available, to guide their constituents into a more competitive position with everyone else on the Internet.

Or we can just trust the phone company to invest time and money into keeping American communities competitive with all our foreign competitors, on the Internet that we invented and shared with them.

government is best which governs least

[mbaGeek]

I'll accept the argument that "national broadband" is in the interest of interstate commerce and therefore falls under the authority of the federal government

I'll also argue that the federal government has never been good at running any commercial activity (and if you say that the Internet isn't for commerce then the federal government shouldn't be involved at all)

this is also an instance where being late to the party gives you a big relative advantage (i.e. if you are starting out with nothing you can get going much faster than if you have to deal with a bunch of old systems that people still use). the technology was in flux for a long time (and a "high speed" connection was once 128kbps) - and the acceptance of the "commercial nature" of the 'net is only 10 - 15 years old (everybody remember the "dot com bubble"?) - so we aren't doing that bad

the government is going to be involved (due to the large amount of money involved) but they are more likely to screw things up than magically fix things (which is why "government is best which governs least")

Broadband is NOT utility!

[sciop101]

"high-speed Internet connections are considered entertainment and not essential"

Defining high-speed Internet connections as a utility (necessary for education maybe) would lead to a public-private cooperative to get broadband into more residences.

Connectivity could be satellite, cable (DOCSIS), or ADSL.

Parents would be responsible for children surfing the web.

We don't need the feds. We need sane state and

[Brian Stretch]

local governments that will allow new companies to run FTTH and to not grant legal monopolies to anyone. You'd have to deal with the feds for wireless communications but not landline.

Yes, AT&T and Comcast have scary amounts of money, but AT&T in particular is run by morons. Could a new competitor with their own FTTH network prosper? I think so. With state and local governments fast-track the paperwork and not demand bribes ("free" access for this and that, "franchise fees", etc)? Well...

Utah has taken a workable approach with their UTopia network. Verizon is building out their FiOS network, fighting various local bureaucrats along the way. FTTH can be done in America. Let's not get distracted by the irrelevant feds.

Re:Crawford right -- net should be publically owne

[witherstaff]

The 1996 telco reform act forced the monopolies to let anyone use the ILEC lines. Not quite publicly owned but pretty close. This saw the real emergence of CLECs, companies able to use better equipment/methods than the standard companies and make a profit. It also was the first real competition for local service that most of the nation had. Sure there were real problems but it was a step in the right direction.

Of course ex-Sec of State Powel's kid, who was put in charge of the FCC, stopped this in the early 2000s.

You are correct - considering we've spent over 200 billion in tax dollars for telco infrastructure enhancements, we should have some amazing broadband everywhere. And that's just the federal level spending, not all the state level waste spending. If they had put that sort of funding out for open bidding we'd have some very amazing broadband.

Dudes...

[spazdor]

Small fuckin' world, you guys. ...*snif*..

But that is a result of evil government socialism

[Anonymous Coward]

Eventually South Korea will suffer the consequences of violating the sacred laws of free markets - tyranny, poverty, and other bad things

Letting the free market decide will give people the Internet access they deserve. Your boss' mother obviously doesn't deserve her high speed Internet.

Government intervention into the free market will result in the complete collapse of civilization. You just wait.

Magic is real.

I agree with Russell

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, maybe not about net neutrality and preserving competition at the macro level, but..

"More pipes into the home is the key," Russell said.

Everything I see about my local ISP market confirms this. We seem to have very few choices here, and they're all expensive. I wouldn't terribly mind some government intervention to preserve/renew/create competition (since government intervention is what caused the lack of competition in the first place).

So you'd think I'd be complaining about how Russell and The Bush Administration are wrong, right? Nope.

The key with the last mile is that it's local. Why have Congress try to fix this problem, when your local city council or state government could do it just as well? Congress will be pressured by a relatively easy lobbying effort (i.e. ISPs, xxAA, etc just need to send a few people to Washington DC) to water things down, throw in weird riders, etc. They can be purchased affordably.

Buying local governments is possible too, but harder. ISPs would need to send their lobbyists to hundreds of places. Hundreds of media outlets would be watching, instead of a few. Citizens can walk to city hall and watch the debate and maybe even speak directly to the lawmakers.

And best of all: the local governments could do it. It's within their power. So why get The Dreaded Bush Administration (or their replacement) involved with this?

Keeping the federal government out if it, is not the same as leaving it to the free market. There's another way.

Ill communication...

[spazdor]

Ma Bell doesn't care about black people.

Re:Ill communication...

[compro01]

i think those last 3 words are redundant.

Re:Crawford right -- net should be publically owne

[Wavebreak]

Very true, and in general I'd say that the 15$ figure mostly applies to Japan and South Korea, maybe Norway/Sweden, not sure about their prices tho. I'm in Finland and pay 43 for 100Mb. Not that I'm complaining, it's bloody awesome.

Competetive broadband markets

[Mentorix]

You should be looking at enabling consumers to make an actual choice. Where I live (western Europe) I can choose between 20+ DSL providers, they'll install in a week and moving between them is done with virtually no interruption of service. If anything this is the big reason for the high broadband penetration here. The owner of the copper (former state monopolist usually) gets to charge a low maintenance charge and is obliged to cooperate with anyone that wants to sell DSL service over their copper.

I'm sure quite a few people will be on 512k lines but then this is still a world of difference to dial-up or nothing at all. Oh, and bandwidth use is not a big issue at all at most ISP's, I can burn 100GB of traffic a month and nothing will happen, I can spike to 200GB or 300GB in a month once in a while and nothing will happen. The ISP's could whine about it, but then I'd take my money elsewhere, so they just make sure their networks can deal with however people choose to use it. The consumer rules the broadband market, anything else, and your broadband economy is really just a pie in the sky.

The comment from Richard Russell is nothing but denial and sillyness. I'm skeptical that the US ever had the most dynamic broadband economy in the world, claiming that title for this very moment is even more ludicrous. I'd say this man is reality-challenged and incompetent. A common theme in this US administration it seems.

Re:Competetive broadband markets

[evilviper]

I can spike to 200GB or 300GB in a month once in a while and nothing will happen. The ISP's could whine about it, but then I'd take my money elsewhere,

Sounds like ISPs where you are just haven't caught-up. In the US, companies have figured out that 2% of users make up 50% of bandwidth usage. In that light, it's in their best interest that those people switch to someone else, and be unprofitable to their competitors... Of course there is occasional collateral damage, but it's still the most profitable model.

It sounds like one CEO from a US ISP could take over an ISP where you are, and quickly make a killing, and push the rest out of business.

Re:Competetive broadband markets

[Mentorix]

Those statistics have been known since broadband was first rolled out over here which was by cable, in '94, '95 or so and mostly applies to the flagship product of an ISP. Your tactic sounds odd to me, it sounds like you are encouraging your customers to use your services less that way. It might work for a company in your market but I don't see it being effective here. Power users will flock to the ISP with the best terms of service and pay for their flagship product. You might try breaking into that market but your terms of service will be more strict, and people here are very keen on not getting bothered about their usage. I suppose there's still a lot of trauma from the pay-by-the-minute dial-up days.

Anyway, here, power users are sought after most, they bring in the money because they are willing to pay for good terms of service and high-speed connections. They are the cherry on top in a sense. The base of cheap subs is certainly not going to make you your money, it's a warzone there in terms of margins and competition.

Re:Crawford right -- net should be publically owne

[Wavebreak]

What the hell happened to my euro sign?

Indeed, no "magic" solution, backhoes aren't magic

[rbrander]

It's several years now since then-active industry pundit and Ethernet inventor Robert Metcalfe commented on his frustration with the "teleopolies" (hooray for that word not catching on) not providing broadband like they could.

I'm a waterworks/sewer engineer and wrote him to ask why is it that *real*, fiber-to-the-home broadband isn't cheaper than water and sewer service, which run about $30-$40 /month. To supply you with that, local utilities have to bury large, heavy pipes in the ground up to your house, and every day, they have to run multi-hundred-million-dollar plants to clean, sterilize and pump a ton or more of water (usually some ways uphill from your local river) to your house.

Offhand, that SOUNDS more expensive than running a hair-thin fiber to your house and maintaining the operation of some silent, no-moving-parts routers in your neighbourhood and downtown.

After water treatment, transmission and delivery became possible, within a few decades, they'd been run to every house in major cities; utilities took out some big loans and started paying them off from part of your $30/month.

Metcalfe replied that he had no idea why there was not fiber to the home for the same price as water, sewer, gas, phone and electric to the home. Neither could any of his readers who posted reply comments. There just is no answer to why we were able to do the first five and not the sixth, "utility install".

The Internet providers have instead been charging that $40 and up per month to provide service over infrastructure that was already paid for - phone wires by 1960, cable by 1995, about 25 years after they were put in. So they were free, from an ISP point of view.

The Canadian and European broadband penetrations are the result of tighter regulation of the monopolies - they were just told to spend more of that $40/month on providing service to rural areas or at higher quality in urban, by regulators who knew damn well they could still make a VERY decent profit.

But only Asia has solved the problem the way American and Europe just called out the backhoes and put in water, sewer, electric and phone lines as soon as they were practicable. Asia got out the backhoes and put in fiber to the home, and that's why they have many, many MB/s to the home.

So could we, if the internet-providing companies had not largely completed a "regulatory capture" and told their own regulators what to tell them to do.

Re:Wrong

[budgenator]

dynamic is not necessarily a GoodThing(tm); the only broadband ISP that treats it's customers like customers instead of prey getting taken over by the vampire ISP would be an example of dynamic.

Do Americans really want broadband?

[Anonymous Coward]

I understand that what we have is really far from a free market, but isn't part of the problem one of demand?
Yes, the Slashdot geeks all want multi-petabit wireless connections directly to their brains, but very few people in my neighborhood even use the Internet.
Dialup is still hugely popular, and it's good enough for most people.

Half would be good

[fm6]

Is the pipe half full or half empty?

Given the difference between broadband access in the U.S. and abroad, the question needs to be rephrased: is the pipe 1/10 full or 9/10 empty?

Like your mom?

[Anonymous Coward]

n/t

Re:Crawford right -- net should be publically owne

[incorporalis]

I thought the existing internet was publicly funded?

Wrong question

[whitehatlurker]

What's in your pipe, man? Smells like good stuff. Lemme have a drag on it.

Re:Crawford right -- net should be publically owne

[DrgnDancer]

My city power company is planning to do just that. It's an ambitious plan and I'm curious to see its long term outcome. I've read literature both for and against the idea, and found that while I really want cheap high-speed Internet access, several municipalities have had trouble making them revenue positive (necessary, not for profits obviously, but to pay for upgrades and repay the loans and bonds that initially fund the project.) I think Lafayette may have more success than other places, we're fairly large, fairly rich (in a Louisiana sense), and have a reasonably technical user base (Big university, Lots of Oil Industry, even our own little super computing facility), but these things are hard to predict. Certainly I plan to sign up, It would be hard pressed to be worse than Cox.

Difference in Perspective

[pleappleappleap]

The reason why Russell has a different perspective from Crawford is that Crawford is comparing the US to other industrialized countries, and Russell is comparing the US to ALL countries, including places that have trouble providing electricity and running water, let alone internet.

Re:Crawford right -- net should be publically owne

[Seraphim_72]

read G as M. Lower your blood pressure.

from tfa once removed

[razorh]

from this link imbeded in the article http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Infrastructure/Politics-Warms-Up-Tech-Policy-Summit/

For all the inflammatory debate, though, former Congressman Rick White noted, "Tech policy drives zero votes. The president and any administration are going to focus on what people care about."

I don't know about anyone else here, but that's pretty high on my list of what drives my vote...

Re:Crawford right -- net should be publically owne

[cloakable]

Slashdot.

Multiparty Live video conferencing?

[Tungbo]

If that was widely available, more people might be able to work from home and we can save on communting costs in terms of money and energy and road infrastructure....

AT&T's "U-Verse"

[Anonymous Coward]

No comments (ranked high at least) on AT&T's "U-Verse". This "broadband" service comes at the price of ditching your satellite or cable provider. They can't just sell broadband. They can dig up the streets for weeks but they can't just do broadband. The glass is not half empty, more like three-quarters empty. Also they have no DSL a few miles outside CHICAGO. AT&T wants it to be all or nothing. My money is on nothing.

Sweden

[Anonymous Coward]

Broadband in USA sucks. In Sweden is awesome.
I have 100 mbit/s broadband.

I download from packages from the local Ubuntu mirror in 6-9 mbyte/s. :)

Re:Sweden

[Chutulu]

that's cool but i'm sure you always have your butt frozen

"very expensive"

[saleenS281]

Would it be "VERY expensive"? If only we had the money to pay for it... I mean, it didn't cost NEARLY as much for a smaller country like Sweden to run fiber everywhere.

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/eco_gdp-economy-gdp-nominal

Then again, we could dip out of Iraq, have the government pay for fiber to every home with the savings in 6 months, and actually keep all that money in our own economy instead of shipping it around the world. Then they could lease access to providers, thus breaking the barrier to entry, and creating some real competition... NAAAAA, that would NEVER work. Instead, lets just continue letting the mega-corporations of America bleed our economy dry.

Re:Indeed, no "magic" solution, backhoes aren't ma

[evilviper]

The cost of city water and sewer aren't the REAL costs. Many billions of dollars in subsidies are going into it, part from the local, state, and federal government. No doubt the EPA has thrown many millions in to help with cleaning up the pollution, you may be drawing water from a dam, aqueduct, etc. But, if water and sewer were thought of as non-essential luxuries, then they would be priced closer to the real costs, which would probably be more than twice as much, and higher in some areas.

Of course you could make fiber to the home as cheap as you want, just as you could make ANYTHING ELSE as cheap as you want to, provided you're willing to subsidize much of it. Cars and gasoline could be damn near free.

The question is only one of what is the least inefficient way of the necessary money being collected and allocated... The government all too often throws tons of money into bureaucratic waste, and/or unsupervised grants to private companies, and ends up getting nothing of value. Of course companies all too often charge far over cost, provide terrible service, and have little or no interest in maintaining or upgrading infrastructure. If a company is a monopoly, they do the bare minimum to provide something that resembles the service you'll need, and be forced to buy only from them. If they're not a monopoly, then they go to great lengths to "cut costs" no matter what, and end up horrendously over-subscribing, being cheap by failing to perform maintenance and infrastructure upgrades, and generally just ending up eating their own seed corn...

So, pick your poison; or invent and publish a new economic theory that doesn't have these problem.

Better disconnects in China

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah yes the usual geek call for universal broadband, and all they can come up with using it for is porn and illegal downloads. But seriously fast broadband isn't the force that changes any more than phones in a wide variety of speeds and standards is. No what made phones the social force they are was near universal availabiity. You could almost always count on the person you were trying to reach having one. The counterpart for broadband was the near universal expectation of an always on connnection.* Think about how that changed your behaviour when you first got broadband (before you got addicted to speed),and think even more when computing gets designed around the assumption of a permanently on world?

*NOT *always fast*. Always on!

Re:Indeed, no "magic" solution, backhoes aren't ma

[rbrander]

>>The cost of city water and sewer aren't the REAL costs. Many billions of dollars in subsidies are going into it,

I think you're confusing utilities with roads. Provincial (or State) money is often provided for major roads, interchanges, bridges, and so on, within cities. Utilities, especially electric, are strictly user-pay.

Indeed, it's much more common for the municipality that runs/owns the water utilities, to make money off the utility; the public reacts better to raised utility rates than raised taxes.

Gas utilities are almost always wholly private (but regulated) firms; their costs are, if anything, inflated above the regulated profit level, via creative accounting. Ditto on TV Cable companies.

And all these businesses that have to bury the connectors of a network that branches out from very centralized supplies to every building, were able to do so for an annualized cost per customer of about $20-$30/month. That includes perpetual maintenance and replacement of the infrastructure. The rest of your gas/electric/water/sewer/phone/TV bill is the cost of supplying whatever's coming down the pipe.

So I was puzzled that the new technology of fiber, which was clearly, before 1990, the future of telephone, TV, data, and more...was not rolled out to every building, like gas and water and so on before it. For $30/month, plus whatever your bandwidth deal was.

I'm joking, of course - it sounds technologically obvious, but politically it was too hot for comfort. It would be the first network to compete with a previous network. Indeed, two of them, cable and phone. They weren't about to allow new companies to rise up to run fiber, or municipally-owned fiber to the home. Neither industry could allow the other to switch to fiber to the home, as it would immediately allow them to supplant the other. (As it is, cable is making a bid for the local phone market, and vice-versa in a few spots).

So there we are, 20 years later, nobody but a few experimental neighbourhoods has fiber to the home, and Internet is delivered in single-digit Mb/s, at best. Using networks designed for other purposes.

Re:Indeed, no "magic" solution, backhoes aren't ma

[TM22721]

First, septic and water service is not usually provided to truly rural customers.

Second, the internet is unnecessary to your well being, it is not a necessity like electricity.

Re:Indeed, no "magic" solution, backhoes aren't ma

[evilviper]

I think you're confusing utilities with roads.

Not at all. If you'd read past the first sentence you'd have seen plenty of examples. The EPA is always paying out truck loads of money to municipalities to help clean up their water. States are very often paying as well, since water problems very often span municipalities. A city can charge a rate for water, and draw it from local aquifers, but when it's being drawn down and someone needs to replenish it, you can bet they don't raise their rates to astronomical levels to pay for their short-sightedness. When their local sources are overdrawn, they don't pay to build an interstate pipeline to bring in more. etc.

Utilities, especially electric, are strictly user-pay.

They absolutely are not.

Your city's water utility didn't build the dam you're drawing water from, or the aqueducts, or the flood control channels. etc., etc. When a subterranean line breaks and destroys a road, home, etc., they don't have to pay for it all.

Even wholly private companies are getting the benefits of infrastructure paid for by state and federal taxes. How many nuclear power plants are supplying you with electricity? How many dams? Your local power co didn't pay to build them from your monthly bill.

Indeed, it's much more common for the municipality that runs/owns the water utilities, to make money off the utility;

I look forward to seeing a source for that. In the mean time, I call bullshit. I'm not making things up, I'm talking about specific cases I see. You are just brushing it off as not true, because it doesn't agree with what you happen to want to believe.

Re:Indeed, no "magic" solution, backhoes aren't ma

[rbrander]

Very well, I am your source on that.

I have worked for what was Waterworks, (now called "Water Resources" since we merged with the Sewer dept.) for the City of Calgary, for 20 years.

We are a fully self-supporting utility. Utilities in Calgary pay "franchise fees" for the use of the public right-of-way to bury their pipes or cables in. The City-owned utilities in lieu of that, paid a "return on equity", I think being changed to a "return on capital", an accounting distinction that escapes me. But whatever the payments are called, they are a significant portion of our total income from sending out water/sewer bills. It's not a "profit", as such, indeed we are forbidden to make one; but it's the same return-on-investment of the huge capital invested that the City would otherwise get if it put it in good bank funds, something like that.

Control of the overall watershed of the Bow and Elbow Rivers from which we abstract our water is indeed a provincial responsibility, but it doesn't benefit the City of Calgary any more than anybody else who lives in the watershed, protected from floods, their consumption for irrigation uses recorded, any substance releases checked, and so on.

The Glenmore Dam that provides us with a 30-day retention of water for clarification, etc, was built by the City of Calgary using a special loan bylaw in 1930. But the debt was paid off entirely by the utility from utility bills, no money crossed the other way from the tax-supported side of the corporation.

All of the accounting for this is traceable through public documents; our budget is published in our annual report, showing all income from utility bills, and how we balance that with expenses, debt service, etc. You can get all the detail documents with a Freedom of Information request, but we wouldn't put you to the trouble of filing one, if you came into the office and just asked to see them, like as not.

You can get a good start just by going to calgary.ca , then "city hall", "business units" and "water services", browse around and look at the Rates section.

I've worked with those budget documents for many years, and there are no kinds of subsidies from our own, or other, levels of government in them.

From American Waterworks Association conferences, I've met a lot of my opposite numbers and this is all the same across at least the prairie provinces of Canada, and several more in the US that I've swapped notes with. Basically, we're all "uni-cities", as opposed to amalgamations of smaller separate municipalities, the most extreme of which has got to be Phoenix. Conurbations can have complex arrangements of sharing costs for plants, or buying/selling water at city limits, and so on. I wouldn't be surprised if tax money crept into some of the arrangements. I'd be much less surprised to hear that the tax-supported side of some municipal corporations "made money" on the deals; that's the more common case, at least with large cities, as utility rate increases usually have less backlash than tax increases.

The situation is even clearer with the Calgary-owned Electrical utility, now called "Enmax" and run like a private corporation, not using the City IT, Fleet, HR or Finance departments, buildings, etc. There's one share and the City owns it, but otherwise it runs as a private corporation, supported entirely by utility bills; that's carefully regulated as competition to private electrical suppliers is open and the competition must be fair. Any competitor suspecting any kind of subsidy could have it investigated.

Enmax' financials are on the web, here's a link to the page about their profits, with links to quarterly and annual reports:

http://www.enmax.com/Corporation/About+Enmax/Financials/ENMAX+Earnings+and+You.htm

Where it comes to gas utilities, most of southern Alberta is supplied by "ATCO", a company private but regulated, supposedly to an agreed, fixed pr

Re:Indeed, no "magic" solution, backhoes aren't ma

[rbrander]

I guess you're never going to reply...you're off to do the next bit of sharply-worded commentary and "calling bullshit" and so forth.

Hey, "evilviper", when a 20-year veteran of an industry takes an hour out of his day to educate you, it's a common courtesy to reply. Key words recommended for the reply content are "Oh, I guess I was wrong" and "Thank you".

By the way, a quick way to have educated yourself on the relative numbers of tax- and self-supported utilities would have been to google the phrase "self-supporting utility" (394 pages of results) and "tax-supported utility" (10 pages of results), hinting at a 39:1 ratio of the former to the latter. That sounds about right to me. I have heard of tax-supported utilities, but I don't have any colleagues who work for one, not that I've met with at conferences or corresponded with or read papers by over the last 20 years.

Oh, and I did forget to address one claim you made without supporting references. When a water or sewer main leaks and damages a road, the utility pays for the repairs to the public infrastructure.

Laws running back a century or more were passed to keep utilities from being hit up by private landowners every time they believe there's been damage. (It can be hard to tell whether soil erosion or water infiltrating a basement was from natural flows or a water main leak.) As long as we can show we've been maintaining the infrastructure to commonly-held industry standards we are "saved harmless" from lawsuit when they, inevitably, do break or leak. The private landowners insurance has to handle it. If they can show we reasonably could have predicted the break or otherwise were negligent at maintenance, they have a case -- buy there aren't many such.

This is also why you get no compensation when your internet or phone or TV or even power goes out, even for longish periods in real weather disasters (Katrina), not even a reduction in your bill; not unless you have some specific language in your contract to that effect, as some industrial power and water consumers do have.

If you want perfect reliability, you have to go around doubling the number of connections to the building, providing alternate network paths to the building, and so on. At least doubles the bill, and most people would rather have $40/month and 0.1% outage time (~ 8 hrs/year) than $80/month and 0.001% outage time and an $800 refund per hour lost. (Just thought I'd drag the content back in the direction of the original topic.)

Re:Indeed, no "magic" solution, backhoes aren't ma

[evilviper]

when a 20-year veteran of an industry takes an hour out of his day to educate you, it's a common courtesy to reply.

Either you have a very different set of values than the majority of the rest of the world and haven't handled the adjustment communications on the internet well... Or you are just an incredibly self-centered person, and assume your time and opinion is worth much, much more than anyone else here.

google the phrase "self-supporting utility" (394 pages of results) and "tax-supported utility" (10 pages of results),

Anecdotes aren't conclusive. Google isn't a structured database of organizations and events, either.

Your experience is an interesting footnote, but that's about it. My points are all based on fully researched accounting figures of several specific utilities around my area... Although my knowledge of the subject certainly isn't necessarily a conclusive and balance view of things on a larger scale, and can't necessarily be extrapolated as such, it is certainly far more credible evidence than you've offered, and I will continue to prefer my sources to your word.

Now, do you feel better that I wasted a few more minutes and replied? Do you feel better having wasted even more of your time complaining that I hadn't?

Re:Indeed, no "magic" solution, backhoes aren't ma

[rbrander]

Pardon me for asking for an apology for my factual statements being called bullshit, also for wanting the courtesy of a reply. I won't ask for either again.

I'm glad to hear you've done so much research. Care to share any?

You don't have to go on at length, just pass on the names of several north american water and/or sewer utilities that are tax-supported rather than self-supporting.

Well - in the event that they have declared themselves to be self-supporting and you believe the opposite because of hidden subsidies, a sentence describing these subsidies in each case, and a link or paper reference to supporting research about that, will prevent readers from thinking you pulled the names of the utilities from your phone book.

Thanks!