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2008 International Broadband Rankings
itif writes to let us know about a major new report, released yesterday by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, showing how the US and other countries compare in terms of broadband access, speed, and price. The rankings (PDF) place the US 15th, this country having fallen every year since 2001. Here's the full report (PDF). According to the report's executive summary: "The US broadband policy environment is characterized on the one hand by market fundamentalists who see little or no role for government, and see government as the problem; and on the other by digital populists who favor a vastly expanded role for government (including government ownership of networks and strict and comprehensive regulation, including mandatory unbundling of incumbent networks and strict net neutrality regulations) and who see big corporations providing broadband as a problem. Given the policy advocacy and advice they are getting, it is no wonder that Congress and the Administration have done so little."
I for one do not want the US government providing my broadband access. Consider that this administration has had to go out of its way to perform warrentless wiretapping, and this resulted in an open loop that was able to be leaked to the public. Can you imagine if the US government was in full control of all telecommunications? I doubt we would have even known about the wiretapping because there would be no middle man.
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
How many countries subsidize telcos with tax dollars to create their infrastructure? I'm curious.
I know we are a spread-out nation here in the US, but there is no reason why cities with people living on top of each other (LA, Boston, New York, etc) can't easily have the infrastructure that the rest of the world has.
I'd buy the spread-out excuse, except our big cities had poor broadband, and our rural areas are still on dial-up. In that regard, we are very much behind other nations.
That's your tax dollars at work!
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In this case, he is Chairman Brian Roberts. In other words, because there is almost none to zero competitors in most of the markets Comcast serves, they can get away with continually raising prices. That is why the U.S. continues to lag the world in broadband.
Yes, there is the whole issue of running fiber and cable long distances in the U.S. compared to other countries like South Korea and Japan, but when you look at places such as New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, etc, you see the same pattern. Only one, or if you're lucky maybe two, providers from which to choose your broadband service.
In my area, we have two choices; Comcast or Verizon. I can pay $100/month for Comcast's triple-play or I can pay $100/month for Verizon's triple-play. But I can't pay $33/month for just the broadband access or $33/month for just the cable subscription (I currently pay $53.31/month for the combined Basic and Standard cable service).
This is the overwhelming reason broadband penetration in the U.S. continues, and will continue, to lag behind the rest of the world. The only solution is, unfortunately, government interference. Force the providers to offer their lines to others based on the logic that it was taxpayers who helped to subsidize the laying of all the cable and fiber through tax breaks and such. Either the companies open their lines and allow competition or they have to pay back all the subsidies they got when they originally promised to bring broadband to the U.S. Ten years ago.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
You can't compare a country, say as Korea, to a country, say as the US in terms of broadband deployment. The physical size of Korea, which would fit in the state of California? If the land mass of the USA were the size of Japan, then yes, broadband would penetrate better.
Can you imagine if the US government was in full control of all telecommunications?
They learned long ago they don't need "full control" They learned where the choke points are and gather information there.
Legislators do nothing simply because it's not a high enough priority for the telcos. Right now the telcos are preparing to decimate cable/satellite and rid themselves of their public obligations (POTS) altogether.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
The sharp dichotomy presented in the executive summary is just plain wrong. Sure, the two extremes exist, but I think most supporters of net neutrality regulation don't actually want the government to take over networks. The summary is as accurate as "All people in the U.S. are either knuckle-dragging Bushtards or communists."
The point of net neutrality is not to change who is running networks, it's to prevent network operators from effectively blocking or slowing down connections based on who or what the user is trying to connect to.
For example Time Warner pays 15% of their net revenue back to the city of Cary, NC as an 'access fee'. This can only be described as a kickback, a bribe in exchange for monopoly access. And it's legal.
Here's the ranking:
Score on Specific Broadband Measures
Household Price5
penetration3 (Lowest monthly
Ranking2 (Subscribers Speed4 price per Mbps)
per (Average download (US $ purchasing Composite Score6
Nation household) speed in Mbps) power parity)
1 South Korea 0.93 49.5 0.37 15.92
2 Japan 0.55 63.6 0.13 15.05
3 Finland 0.61 21.7 0.42 12.20
4 Netherlands 0.77 8.8 1.90 11.77
5 France 0.54 17.6 0.33 11.59
6 Sweden 0.54 16.8 0.35 11.53
7 Denmark 0.76 4.6 1.65 11.44
8 Iceland 0.83 6.1 4.93 11.20
9 Norway 0.68 7.7 2.74 11.05
10 Switzerland 0.74 2.3 3.40 10.78
11 Canada 0.65 7.6 3.81 10.61
12 Australia
Why is this surprising to anyone? I know a lot of people will post responses regarding net neutrality, the roles of government, policies, politics, etc.
What about just the SIZE of the US? When some new fiber cable comes out that can dramatically increase the speed, or some other sort of technology, it takes a HECK of a lot longer to deploy in the US. If Japan, South Korea, Norway, Sweden, etc. did not catch up to us AND then start passing us, I would think there would be something wrong with them.
The fact we fell to 15th is of no surprise and was to be expected. Just the timetables and costs of deployment are radically different at our scale versus the scale of a country like Japan or South Korea. Does any of those top 5 countries have to deploy fiber runs as FAR as the US does? I don't think so. Is anyone surprised that our bandwidth costs more when the costs of deploying said bandwidth are considerably higher and the total number of customers serviced for a given segment of fiber is much lower?
People complaining about how the US is falling behind in bandwidth is getting old really fast. Let's stop complaining about the speed of our networks relative to small countries who have an infinitesimal fraction of deployment costs, and rather the intelligence being applied to the policies governing it's use now.
I am a little more concerned about censorship, throttling, deliberately dropped packets, premeditated "denial of service" attacks, monitoring, and just general BULLSHIT by our Telcoms and ISP's than I am that Japanese men get 100 Mb/s download speeds in their homes and I don't.
Well...
What if the government owns the physical infrastructure, or a non profit body, and then providers rent the infrastructure from them... And force them to reinvest any and all profits in improvements of the underlying network.
Kinda like the UK system, but where the owner of the infrastructure isnt trying to compete with the same companies they're providing infrastructure to.
In the UK, BT have to rent out lines wholesale to other ISPs as well as allowing the bigger isps to install kit in exchanges... Regulators actually keep the wholesale prices high, so that the companies installing kit in exchanges don't get priced out of the market by bt wholesale. The problem is that, installing kit in thousands of exchanges is still a high barrier to entry, and its not financially viable to do it everywhere, so some people are still stuck with no alternative to BT's service, which is kept priced high by the regulator.
If you instead do away with loop unbundling, and turn over the infrastructure to an independent non profit, then any isp and any end user will all be in the same boat.
As you've pointed out, privatised telecom provision will never be fair for everyone, and regulation can make things worse in some cases.
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I find it sad that the country that invented the Internet can't place higher then 15th.
Anyone know of a mirror?
The situation in the UK is peculiar and accidental. Back in 1982 the government sold off the state-owned telco, including all the lines in the ground (now worth a vast fortune) for not nearly what it was worth. But you could argue that at the time very few people really understood that the plain ol' telephones would turn into such an important service for the economy.
Since then it's been mismanagement all the way. A series of toothless regulators did nothing when BT basically refused to get into broadband (1995-2000), did nothing when BT refused to install fibre to the consumer (1992-today), actually backed down when BT refused to implement LLU deadlines required by law (2000-2003), and are still doing nothing about access speeds, the backhaul network, price of POTS, phony "unlimited DSL" adverts, premium line rip-offs, fibre again, etc. etc.
BT realised belatedly that they could make a bit of cash from one technology, ADSL, which didn't require them to dig anything up and only needed them to install a few racks of equipment at the exchange. The only thing the regulator did was force them to sell wholesale ADSL to themselves (BT) at the same price as to other providers. I was involved in the early days and the other providers still had to fight to access BT's order provisioning systems (which involved a lot of rekeying orders multiple times into slow BT-owned mainframes).
So now most peole in Britain have, almost accidentally, access to speeds around 2-20 Mbps (mostly 2-8) for still quite a lot of money.
But, here's the thing. Where is the investment in speeds over ADSL 2+? BT have spent a few billion implementing what they call their 21st Century Network, which amounts to replacing a bunch of ATM and Frame Relay switches with IP routers, which will allow BT to reduce their costs. But where's the fibre into homes and offices? Where's 100 Mbps+ going to come from? What about the 3/4G mobile access that isn't charged at ££/megabyte?
None of this bodes well for the future of Internet access or indeed the economy as a whole.
Rich.
libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
happened to our automotive, electronic or spam industry, errr wait...
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Eh, excuse me, but take a look on the list and you will find that Finland is third. Finland is geographically large country with a small population having population density of 15.6 per km where as US has 31 per km. The telecommunication sector is one of the freest in Europe with fierce competition between communication providers. You can get broadband, be it based on DSL or 3G wireless networks, in whole country. The government doesn't subsides the industry nor usage of telecommunication. So you have country with low population density and free markets, and things are still working.
Now, you might wonder why. Well, it's the competition. Providing telecommunication is lucrative business with healthy profit margins, so healthy actually that goverment can regulate and allow competition to emerge. In Finland all network providers have obligation to rent their network to other communication providers, and the price that they take from it must be the internal price based on the price of their infrastructure value and up keeping. To make sure that companies follow this obligation goverment monitors the companies and makes sure that the game is fare and played by the rules. Still even with these regulations and obligations in place, telecommunication companies do business, get healthy profits and invest to new infrastructure. DSL is nowadays ubiquitous. GRPS and EDGE work country wide. 3G networks that are soon whole nation wide. Actually when the 3G networks cover whole country, there has been talk about shutting down 2G networks and deploying them as 3G. There is also EV-DO based @450 wireless network, especially targeted to remote areas. In bigger cities network providers have started projects to connect new fiber optic networks directly to houses, mainly to housing cooperatives.
Actually providing Internet connections have become so cheap that in my town, Turku (pop 178 000, metro 235 000), the local cable operator, a private company, has started to provide free Internet connections to every household on one of the town's low income neighborhoods, Varissuo, where all inhabitants can get 256kb connection free. Basically it's bait and switch, were they think as people get the free connection they will eventually take a more faster service from them. I would say that having good broadband service is more about having healthy competition than anything else.
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Well, there's progress being made by companies filling the rural access gaps. Dial-up isn't the big thing in rural markets that it used to be. Now it's 512Kb to 1Mb per second wireless.
My cousin for example has 768k down and 256k up via wireless. She lives smack in the middle of a 42-acre plot of land that's 6 miles from the closest town, and that town only has about 900 people in it.
The price is high, the latency's high, the throughput is lower than cable or DSL, and weather can have pretty bad effects on the signal in winter. It's still better than dialup. It even includes a dialup account for the rare event when the wireless isn't working or for when she travels.
A good friend of mine lives in a town of 4500 people which is the largest town for 30 miles in any direction. He has 3.5Mb DSL, and when he moves a little closed to the phone company's building he can have 7.5Mb DSL. That's far better service than was available just a couple of years ago.
AT&T is supposed to be rolling out fiber service in my town of 43,000 people this year. From the rumors I've heard, it's supposed to be up to 100Mb down and 12Mb up. I'd be happy with 20Mb and 2Mb, honestly, but I'd probably find a way to use 100Mb once in a while.
In all, the US is making progress, but it's not as fast as people would like. My main complaint isn't how slowly the speeds are improving, but the high prices for how crappy the network management (Comcast, for example), speeds, and service maintenance are.
Anyone else beginning to smell a scam? Seems every time these reports are released, it's bawling for more money from the public purse.
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Cause they sure have bad bandwidth.
Actually, you're wrong. DSL in the USA is apparently crappy, but it's the ISPs that are at fault, not the technology. In France, with a 20Mbps/1Mbps (down/up) triple play access for 30/month, I have at very most 40ms ping time to any server in the country, more often around 20ms. However, over here, it's the cable access that's crappy.
DSL is a perfectly decent technology. Not always reliable as it depends on the line length, and quality of the wiring, but the ISPs here have made serious progress on those issues, and I've seen people with 6-7km long lines still able to get several Mbps - enough for IPTV (ie: the equivalent to cable TV). So it's actually very few people who have major problems due to the technology itself (of course, there are the usual mess ups like with any other technology).
The question you should be asking yourself, is there such a thing as "laissez faire" market. In US you too have regulation starting from laws regarding consumer protection to competition laws, so where you draw a line on when a market is regulated and when it's not? If we look a "laissez faire" market it's actually a market where there is no competition as eventually market will turn into a monopoly, duopoly or cartels. Now, competition is good, market economy is good, free markets are good, but free markets aren't natural born, they are born out regulation. That's why we have anti-trust legislation, that's why we have competition regulators, to make sure that the market and economy works. So why not to regulate?
Why not regulate when in example communication networks you are market where competition is restricted naturally, as there is only so much opportunities to build wire to homes and only so much air frequencies to use. Why not use regulations? It makes the market work, it allows everyone have a connection, it allows everyone to have a connection at a fair price, it allows investment to new telecommunication networks, etc.. Why not regulate? The thing in here is that the one thing that matters are the end results. In US the "laissez faire" attitude has gone way overboard and you are now paying it in form of antiquate and over priced telecommunications or collapsing high way bridges. The end results matter only.
PS. In US 79% of population lives in urban areas where as in Finland only 61% live in urban areas.
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also got wireless access here through Sasktel. 2m/256k. 15 miles from the nearest town and about 25 miles from the tower (which is just a cell tower with some extra stuff bolted on) and i get maximum signal strength (it's DOCSIS-based), so it'll likely reach all the way until you fall out of the LOS. not cheap ($60/month) but it's extremely reliable (currently at 83 days uptime and counting, and that's only because i had to unplug the modem to reorganize my cables.) and it's far nicer than satalite (as it's terestrial) and it's barely affected by weather at all (heavy fog knocks the signal strength down a bit, but it keeps working fine)
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Isn't there anyone who realizes that the problem is in the monopoly rights the government continually grants the big corporations? If they were exposed to actual free market conditions, none of them would be able to sustain their business models for a minute.
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
The report is now available to download from SSRN: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1128203
I live in the middle of French sugar beet field ( Seine et Marne) and with an 60dB of attenuation on my line i got, TV, Free phone call and 3Mbps down. XKCD: DSL it's work bitch! /XKCD
I find it interesting that the report encourages looking to other countries to see how they do it and specifically mentions several countries that are politically and/or geographically nothing like the U.S. instead of noting that Canada is ranked 11th despite being politically, economically, and geographically very similar. In fact, I would venture Canada has had to beat the odds to succeed since we have a smaller economy and many of our best and brightest get recruited to work in the U.S. (I moved to the U.S. 8 years ago).
When I left Canada my dad lived on an acerage in the middle of nowhere and had spotty dial-up access. He now has a fiber optic junction box sitting on his property and can pay for as much bandwidth as he wants and the entire area has high-speed wireless and/or cable available.
I think it's great that Canada has done so well and I think it would make sense for the U.S. policy-makers to ask their neighbors up North what the secret is.
> It's quite obvius that ITIF does not have broadband, I'm downloading the PDF-file at 1.5 Kbps.....
Your transfer speed has no correlation with whether or not something is ``broadband''. Is the bandwidth shared by more than one discrete signal frequency? That's broadband.
No, it really is that we're falling. After all, we did *invent* the Internet (and the personal computer, microprocessor, and transistor...). We had connectivity before any other country. Now other countries have had the technology handed to them and have surpassed our broadband connectivity. How is that "rising" when all the fundamentals were developed in the US? Its obvious that we have in fact fallen, and unfortunately for us here in the US, the biggest reason is greed.
You could have been far more insightful without showing your hatred of America.
We get one of these stories every month, sometimes more often. There are always the same explanations, some of which are debunked and some of which are not. There's always the same bashing of US ISPs and the US government, and we are told how "great" things supposedly are in countries where people can get "100mbps" internet connectivity.
I don't care anymore.
Yeah, I would like to see more competition in the US. It's coming. Qwest is finally rolling out FTTN and ADSL2+, which will put more pressure on Comcast. Out in Verizon territory, FiOS is doing the same.
But, you know, of all the problems that the US has, the fact that I have to deal with 8mbps Comcast isn't exactly pressing.
They're going to destroy 10% of cables and satellites? Wow.
It's the same as every other technology.
We discover it. Other people take it and make it better and drive us out of business due to our corrupt plutocracy.
Also, you're misunderstanding the gp completely on the laissez-faire thing, he's not talking about regulation in a laissez-faire market, he's talking about regulation in a free market and how that's different from (and better than) a complete laissez-faire system, thus I don't see how he's trying to redefine anything.
Nobody expects the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal.
Is it just me or are the statistics for canada wrong? First they list the average high speed account to be 7.6Mbps... I know some companies offer 7Mbps and there are a few wich have very expencive plans whihc are more than that. Most i would say are only 5Mbps especialy at peak hours. Aswell there are all those "light" accounts which are only about 1Mbps. I find it very hard to beleive that the average is higher than what I have LOL. Next is there $/Mbps. They quote $3.81/Mbps Average. One of the cheapest companies i know of are teksavvy (www.teksavvy.com) which charges $29 for a 5Mbps account. Thats $5.8/Mbps and i'd say thats on the cheap side. So... where did they get there canadian statistics... and can they point me in the direction of their "average" canadian ISP? David
And how is absolute distance relevant in any way? Obviously the absolute cost of infrastructure will be higher, but it'll cost less per person. You also have a higher GDP, thus could afford *more* per person to do it. That makes it easier, not harder.
Also, by your definition, there is no such thing as a free market in the world right now. However, there are degrees of freedom, and the term is commonly used for markets that are goverment regulated to an extent but where prices are mainly determined by supply and demand. It's not a contradiction of terms if you use the commonly accepted range of freedom rather than the absolute. Obviously if you don't agree with that definition, you're free to do so, have fun railing against the bloody English language for not using words like you want them to be used.
Nobody expects the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal.
... that the United States Interet sucks because of big buisness (especially Comcast) who care more for $ than expanding and speeding up the Internet...
That, plus the damn website, which was most likely hosted in the United States, has such poor bandwidth......
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You're right about rural areas, of course. Other countries have managed just fine tho, despite being less urbanized. Regardless, you claim that they're the reason for the US slipping down the charts, yet one of the most glaring issues with broadband availability in the country is the ridiculously high costs, even in heavily populated areas. The chart has a reference for the lowest available cost per mbps, and it's way beyond ours. If, as you suggest, this is due to geography and city dwellers not subsidizing the country hicks (which they don't do here either), then how is it that pricing is consistently so high even in major cities with population densities way beyond anything in Finland?
And off on the tangent again, the problem with an absolutely free market for internet connectivity is that without regulation it's prohibitively difficult for new players to enter the market, which leads to massive monopolization and thus isn't free in any way but the strictly laissez-faire one. Supply and demand can't work when supply is controlled by just one company in any given area. Also, why do you think the term laissez-faire as it applies to market economy exists (and is in use) in the first place? Here's a hint: the point of regulation in a free market is not to restrict supply and demand, it's to keep companies from using a position of power to alter them to their own benefit. Regulation, in fact, *keeps* supply and demand from being regulated. Jives rather well with the dictionary (disregarding the point that dictionaries very rarely capture the subtleties of language correctly anyhow) definition, dontcha think?
Nobody expects the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal.
Interesting to note that Singapore is not listed - with 100 mbps cable service widely available (at a decent rate as well).
Not to mention rates of 8mbps to 25 mbps being offered even cheaper as well.
Last I heard there is sizable internet usage here, with most government services available online thru the "Singpass" system.
I guess they only rated a few countries. (am sure at the very least Czech / Slovak Republics got worst connectivity compared to here.
The "price" column is misleading especially for Australia. For instance if you compare the LOWEST monthly price this is a capped download limit plan which allows you to download 500meg. Sure this is the lowest cost, however most people can't survive on it, and it doesn't account for anyone else.
For instance, me and my friends are all nerds with reasonably heavy usage habits. This means we use 80gb per month, which is basically the largest limits you can get.
These plans cost $100+ AUD and we on average get 5mbit. This means our price column there would be 20 and the highest value possible on this chart.
Taking the average download limit of 20gb per month for $55 (on my ISP) and 5mbit means I would get a score of 11, which is still above average since most people don't have or don't get 5mbit. If we take their average of 1.7mbit we get a score of 32.35 which is more accurate.
The reason why most of our country is on 1.5mbit, is that you can download more than your cap on 1.5mbit so you usually don't need more. Also, the infrastructure wasn't there till this past year.
Anyhow, at least with Australia, our score needs to be a lot lower.
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I recall a clue here I followed here on Slashdot to an interesting story. It happens that in the 90's there was literally no interest in building out broadband to rural areas of the state because of the enormous cost of wiring sparsely populated areas. Three state power districts (PUDs) had embarrassing surplus funds from their overbuilt hydro installations they needed to get rid of. They got permission to pilot broadband over fiber to the home (FTTH) to dissipate some of the excess. After some time building out their networks (circa 2000) Farmer John on his tractor can reap the grain and enjoy VOIP and streaming hi-def video to his laptop because his household network has a symmetrical 100mbps with ridiculously low latency. This costs him $40 a month and installation is $100 or free. Unfortunately charging these rates is enormously profitable even though most homes are miles apart. You can imagine the economic disaster this was. The PUDs are government agencies and are not supposed to be earning the absurd profits they're making on this transaction.
The economic impacts kept getting worse. Major server farms and hosting companies are building out huge factory style hosting plants where once nothing grew but grass. This gained huge new tax revenues, and of course highly paid server room techs and managers need places to live so property values increased tenfold (with the accompanying dizzying increase in property taxes of course). This of course drew attention to the unspoiled natural beauty of the land, which began to draw tourism. Now they have no idea what they're going to do with this excess money and are considering some sort of negative income tax or dividend fund similar to Alaska.
Recently it was proposed that the ability to offer this service to the residents of the other public utility districts in some sort of Senate Bill. Fortunately it may have drawn the attention of public minded lobbyists because it was sent to die quietly in committee unread and the crisis was averted.
I wish I could remember where I found that clue. I think it was in a sig.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
This sounded way better than any offer I've seen. So I did some digging in to their methodology.
FTA: Our methodology for calculating broadband speed in the ITIF Broadband Rankings involves averaging the speeds of the incumbent DSL, cable and fiber offerings provided in the OECDâ(TM)s April 2006 âoeMultiple Play,â report...
Looking at their study "MULTIPLE PLAY: PRICING AND POLICY TRENDS", 2006.
In this report they look at only providers of "multiple play". So that would be providers that provide TV, Phone, and Internet. Of these providers they look at only 3. Incumbent ADSL (Bell Canada), Cable Provider (Cogeco), and Alternative DSL (Aliant). They say that Bell Canada provides internet @ 5Mbps. Aliant provides access @ 5Mbps. Cogeco provides access @ 10Mbs. There are hundreds of ISPs in Canada, so this is not a representative sample at all. Most are resellers of Bell's lines. Rogers Cable is the major Cable ISP at least in Ontario. Fiber to the home is essentially non-existent in Canada. (Please someone prove me wrong if that's the case; I'd love the option)
From the report mentioned in the article they say that 52% of the Canadian Broadband users use Cable and 48% use DSL.
To get their magic 7.6Mbps number they do (5Mbps)*0.48 + (10Mbps)*0.52 = 7.6Mbps.
I live in the heart of Canada's technology triangle and I can't get Cogeco cable. Of that 52%, Cogeco has a *very* small portion I'm sure.
Bell Canada now offers a 6Mbps service, their resellers offer 5Mbps. Just because you pay for 6Mbps service doesn't mean your line can support it, so you're often downgraded to a speed your line can handle. Average ADSL speed I would estimate being 3Mbps. Average cable speed I would estimate being 4Mbps.
The average download speed in Canada is no where near 7.6Mbps. To get the 3-4Mbps speeds I mentioned most people are paying $40-60 per month.
I wouldn't be surprised if their methodology for getting their other metrics were equally flawed.
What kind of idiot thinks that the highway between producers of goods and their markets, between the markets and consumers, are in the domain of government responsibility?
Oh... wait... never mind.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Don't believe the major information providers. The boom of the 90's was all about the information infrastructure and the insanely huge margins available in delivering bandwidth at monopoly prices. They cook the books to make it look like it's a loss-making enterprise and then lobby aggressively for every advantage they can get.
Remember $1.10 a minute to the town just across the county line when calls to the far side of the country were $.10/min or less? What do you suppose that was about?
Rural areas of my state get symmetrical 100mbps broadband for $40/month from their public utility and the utility makes money at this. No joke. Low latency Fiber To The Premises. In the urban counties we are protected by Qwest and Comcast from this government abuse so we pay twice as much for 1% as much uplink with over 500 times the population density.
Yeah, it's not about the density.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
"Hamas, I guess, has done so much for the freedom and stability of Gaza?"
/rant
Not that I am supporting the actions of Hamas, nor the Israelies for that matter, but Hamas were elected by the Palestinian people in what was judged by international observers from the democratic world as a "free and fair" election. Hamas won 70% of the popular vote, obstensibly because of their habit of providing material aid to their own people and their refusal to "bow their knee" to Israel.
One major reason Hamas are ineffective for their people (of course there are other reasons of their own making), is that the rest of the so called democratic world deliberately ignored thier landslide victory and their (one sided) year long cease-fire against Israel that immediately followed the election.
The democratic world effectively side-lined Hamas in favour of their PLO sock-puppet to the detriment of all those now living in Gazza. Not to mention the US giving the nod to a massive arms shipment to Abbas in the hope of inciting (and winning) a Palestinian civil war while the rest of the world was watching the fireworks in Lebannon. (To Abbas' credit he did not comply).
Now maybe you can argue that because Abbas won the position of president in the same election and is therfore entitled to control arms in Palestine. And it's all well and good for the democratic world to argue that position as they have done for a good number of years. However if that is the democratic world's rationale then why did the same democratic world push the exact opposite argument when Arrafat was the (elected) president, Abbas was the (elected) PM, and both were members of the PLO?
"Making them [governments] accountable to the people is a prerequisite to "fixing your government".
Indeed, but the weak are no match for the machevellian actions of the democratic world or any other large power block for that matter. So therefore another (and I would argue more fundemental), prerequisite to "fixing your government" is to insure that it's free from hostile interferance by external powers.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I live on the other side of the planet yet 'amazingly' I managed to deduce that Gore never meant his words to be construde as a technical contribution to the internet and that the "Gore invented the net" meme is in fact nothing more than spin from his political opponents. Gore's own spin is that he claims that without his funding efforts the internet would not have been invented.
As for the quality of the posts - The US people deserve the politicians they vote for, the rest of the world just want you to keep a muzzle on them.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I just moved from Australia to Germany, and after my pitiful 10Mbit cable (capped at 36GB a month) with Optus in Australia for $64.95/month, I'm LOVING my 16Mbit DSL (uncapped) with Alice here in Germany for only 29,95€
My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan