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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.'"
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.
Anything coming out of the White House at the moment is "Magical Thinking" alright.
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've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
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.
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
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.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
"When fascism came to America, it was wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross."
There, fixed that for you!
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
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.
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.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
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.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.