Slashdot Mirror
US Broadband Won't Catch Up With Japan's For 101 Years
An anonymous reader writes "Internet speeds of users nationwide shows that the United States has not made significant improvements in deploying high-speed broadband networks in the past year, and if the average US Internet speed continues to improve only at the same rate it did from 2007 to 2008, the country won't catch up with Japan's current download speed for another 100 years, according to findings released by the Communications Workers of America's (CWA's) Speed Matters campaign." With enough statistical mangling, nearly anything can be presented as plausible, but that's not enough to cover up my envy of Asian broadband speeds.
Yes, because we all know upgrade paths are all completely linear...
The speed might be good on Mars, but the latency to most websites is going to be horrible.
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
Yeah, like shorter work weeks, better insurance coverage, universal health care, more vacation time.
Really, people, lighten up!
Porn is better... ...in slow-motion.
US Broadband Won't Catch Up With Japan's for 101 Years
Uh, could you somehow spin (regardless of truth) this as related to war and/or military prowess so our administration will mindlessly throw money at it instead of mindlessly ignoring it?
Like:
US Cyber Attacking Infrastructure Embarrassingly Lags Japan's
Japanese Identify US Broadband as "Ripe for the Pickin'"
Cyber Pearl Harbor Imminent
US President's Netflix Downloads 1/10 as Fast as Japanese President's
US Administration Idles as US-Japanese Broadband Gap Widens
Come on, these things basically write themselves! Turn it into a dick measuring contest or it's meaningless.
My work here is dung.
The Japanese are also at least a hundred years ahead of us in cartoon porn, particularly tentacle rape porn. This "tentacle gap", as I call it, cannot be allowed to continue.
After reading this summary and feeling a sense of outrage rising in my stomach, I felt obliged to call the Japanese Internet Minister and set the story straight once and for all. After many hours of argument regarding relative price structures, exchange rates, and international broadband infrastructure, he assured me that I had a very large penis. He used such words to describe it such as 'gargantuan', 'mammoth', and 'really freakin huge', and that in comparison, his penis was microscopic. I for one applaud the Minister for his honesty. That is all.
I didn't take the time to check Google maps, but I'm fairly sure that Japan!=Asia. If you look at all of Asia, I would guess that it has quite a ways to go to catch up to Japan as well.
Or like better beer, a rich regional culture and history, better cuisine, better wine.
There's a 68.71% chance you're right.
God yeah, here I am in London, my boss is pushing me to take another two weeks holiday because I'm not using it up quickly enough. Might have done all my work by Thursday so can have a three day weekend. I'm annoyed that I pay nearly 2% of my gross wage (about average for programming in London) on insurance each year - car, buildings, contents, health, travel of course. Maybe I should buy a less powerful car...
Or I could work in the US, get like 2 hours holiday a year, get fired for turning up 1 minute late, pay all my money on health insurance.
Or maybe if you have skills in the US, you can bargain for better deals like 25 days holiday + national days, free healthcare, dental, etc. Maybe the US system encourages people to work hard, whereas laziness is often seen to be rewarded in the UK.
Proxy Servers.....big freakin' proxy servers...
Heck I bet they'll be owned by Google because instead of just cataloging the internet, Google will be cashing the internet.
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
I have a 20/20 fiber connection available to me for cheaper than what I'm currently paying for 1/0.25 ... how lame is that?
Well, that goes a long way toward explaining why you can't get Asian-style symmetric 100mbit broadband out in the sticks, but there ARE densely populated cities in the US. I could throw rocks from my apartment and hit 3 AT&T buildings. Why can't (won't) they provide better than 16mbit/512kbit ADSL to subscribers who are literally across the street from their switch? Because they don't have to. We don't have the regulation to make them, and thanks to the high cost of running new copper we will never have the competition to force them to offer more than lackluster speed at high prices. Hooray for deregulation and free markets...
0 1 - just my two bits
Wow, simply to plan on living in a hundred years is a fairly ambitious goal.
The Japanese do have universal health care, but compared to Americans they don't work fewer hours or get more vacation time. But the public transport sure is better.
Still, you'd think that we could at least get most of our larger cities wired at comparable speeds to the rest of the civilized world...
Not the old "but America is rural!" chestnut again. Scandinavian countries have lower population densities than we do yet have much better access. And the "rural" argument might make sense for why you can't get good access on a farm in Kansas, but then why don't we have 100 Mbps consumer connections in San Francisco or Manhattan?
It is a GOOD thing that the US is not moronic enough to wire our large, open country to the same extent that a small, island country can.
And what about your major cities? Does it strike you as odd that the supposed hub of all technology, in California, has shitty internet access?
"Asian Pipe Envy"
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Even then when you compare with Finland or Sweden, which have a similar population density, the US compares badly. Saying that the US is larger isn't a worthwhile response, the $/potential customer is the same regardless of the scale of the operation. It's just that clearly one single company for the US is far worse than the dozens across Europe, and there isn't real competition or universal service requirements.
Then again the UK is pretty dire in my opinion, following the US model of cheap crappy DSL and lacking upstream bandwidth, rather than the Swedish model of fast fibre to the home. Virgin Media like to claim they're fibre to the cabinet, but it's still arse-slow on DSL if you're unfortunate to be stuck with them.
Whether or not the prediciton is statistically shaky, the fact remains that there is a huge gap between the US and many other, quite dissimilar countries. The big question is "Why?" Japan and Korea aren't the only ones that far outclass American broadband speed, though they do have quite a speed lead.
Chart of Broadband Speeds by Country
And sure, in the US you can get FiOS at 30Mbps, but it will cost you $200/month and you have to live in a very limited area. You can get 50Mbps from Comcast only if you live in the Twin Cities (right now), but it's still $150/month.
I could point to the geography of the US, saying how its a much bigger area than the smaller countries at the top of those charts. Sure, Japan and Korea have an incredible population density. But not Finland, Sweden, France, etc. They have population densities several orders of magnitude smaller than even cities like Houston, Miami, Phoenix, or Chicago. Why aren't these cities more like those countries?
I could also try it from the angle of regulation/free market/competition. But I'm pretty sure those countries at the top aren't all the same in that regard.
Is it because our companies tend to each have local monopolies over large areas? That seems less likely considering how just about everyone in a metro area can get cable. So they have two companies, phone and cable, to compete with each other.
Is there something unique about our infrastructure? Did we make some horrible mistake that seemed like a good idea at the time but is now haunting us?
Is the US just in a perfect storm of craptitude where all these factors come into play?
It's a nice argument, but kind of falls apart when you figure that even places like New York, which has some of the highest population densities in the world, have crap internet. If the free market and unregulated business practices was going to provide good internet at competitive rates it would have already materialized, at least in select markets.
I lived in Japan for three years, and when I got there in 2002, the *basic* package offered by Yahoo! Japan was 12Mbps DSL for an intro rate of ¥2000 a month (about US $20), bumping up to ¥3500 a month later on. By the time I left in 2005, the *basic* package cost the same, but the *lowest* speed available was 18Mbps -- something that still doesn't even *exist* at the consumer level anywhere in the US (that I'm aware of) in 2008.
The US broadband market is suffocating under the rank hypocrisy and greed of the telcos, and the bald corruption and bribeability of the congress. Somehow the Japanese broadband market has a heck of a lot more internal competition, yet the companies there can still make a profit offering much higher speeds for relatively lower rates.
Frustratedly,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Japan's taxes are about the same as ours, and half of Europe and Canada pay less than 10% more than the US does. If that's the downside to working less and having access to healthcare, I'll take it.
The answer to why we don't have faster broadband speeds is simple: scarcity pays.
It is not in the interests of U.S. telecom providers to roll out high-speed bandwidth all at once. Thus we have a tiered service model, with people paying a little for 1Mb connections and substantially more to get higher speeds, regardless of what the telecom carriers' networks can handle.
Granted, some of the scarcity may be real and based on telecom companies dragging their feet on upgrading, but even if they could carry 100 times the traffic the can now it still would be in their corporate interest to artificially create a bandwidth scarcity to keep prices high.
TLR
A man no more knows his destiny than a tea leaf knows the history of the East India Company
Manhattan is a relatively small island with an extremely dense population. Logically, it should be even better than Japan for broadband (since Japan has to run cable to comparatively lightly populated areas like Hokkaido). The fastest affordable broadband here is:
FiOS is apparently available in a small amount of downtown, but not in most of the island, and even that was only introduced within the past year.
According to the article, average broadband speed in Japan is 63 Mbps down. So in 5-10 years when Verizon finishes wiring Manhattan, we'll be up to consumer speeds *almost* one third that of Japan's *now*.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
I would have gotten it, but I'm posting from the damn slow U.S Broadband.
the US system encourages people to work hard, whereas laziness is often seen to be rewarded in the UK.
I am so totally moving to the UK.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
Actually according to the International Labour Organization and the Japan Productivity Center for Socio-Economic Development, Americans work on average almost 100 hours more per year than Japanese. Mostly due to the fact that Japanese get 7 more vacation days per year on average.
Report on Productivity and Vacation
Go read the numbers before spouting off about things like this.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
I live in Canada, and from talking to a couple Americans, my taxes seem to be right on pay with what they are paying, possibly a little higher. Once I count in all the benefits my government provides me, like free health care, I would probably say I pay less taxes than many Americans. Americans think they have less taxes, but if you really look into it, you'll find that logic flawed. They pay a little less, but get a lot less out of their government.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I live in Boston and can't get anything more than 8 down 768 up from Comcast or 3.0 down (something slow up) DSL. No other options. (No Fios in Boston proper).
Even if Fios were available I don't think there are any options that will give 63mbps download speeds. And that's the apparently the Japanese average...
What's the excuse here?
You're blaming government-granted monopolies on the free market?
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
You say that, but I'll be you're too lazy to follow through with it.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
you know, it could simply be that there isn't a demand for it. Premium services are offered, and mayhaps the ISPs simply don't see an actual demand.
I know that it might seem like a silly argument that you don't want to deal with, but really...why would 99% of the population care about anything higher than the 16Mps that is already pretty commonly available (with 45Mbps in some areas)? My content is already not waiting on the pipe between me and the provider, it is waiting on my client (at least, when I'm using my old laptop), or the server trying to generate the dynamic page.
That being said, the convo has been heavy on residential connections...the place I work would love 10x the speed, business rates are just horrible and it would be too expensive. That's a different ball of wax, though.
Ahem... 46 years and counting, just manually compiled and dropped in a new 2.6.26 kernel on my Linux server, now off to smash teenager butt on "World Of Padman".
Anyway, sonny, your music is rubbish!
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
They pay a little less, but get a lot less out of their government.
Personally, I'd like to pay even less and get even less from government.
Canadians also benefit from having very low military spending compared to the size of the territory.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
The lack of fast internet in America is crippling all the business that relies on fast internet speeds. Sorry to burst your bubble but the Internet is actually used for more that just surfing the web. If America is supposed to be moving away from a manufacturing economy and toward a service economy (specifically an information service economy) then we need to have the infrastructure to handle the demands of that economy. Just like when we invested tons of money in the railroad infrastructure in the beginnings of the Industrial revolution and then again on our highway system in the 50â(TM)s for trucking; we need to invest heavily in our Internet infrastructure. If we donâ(TM)t then we will surely fail as an Information Economy. Iâ(TM)ve had direct experience with this as I worked for a Medical ASP and we were constantly crippled by crappy Internet speeds that would not have been an issue in most of Europe and much of Asia. Itâ(TM)s shameful how our economic growth is being hampered by a few very greedy Telco companies.
The word is "gypped." It's a racist slur meant to evoke images of conniving gypsies tricking you out of your treasure.
In light of TFA, I'd rather be "japped" racial slur or not.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
I'm on NTT East Japan's Hikari Flets.
I -really do- get greater than 60Mbps sustained.
NTT provides the pipe and OCN provides the packets... it's cheaper than Rogers Cable was in canada (1/2 the price) and they throw in phone service (VoIP of course) all for $20/mo.
At my office we also have NTT East and OCN... it's guaranteed bandwidth and costs me less than $200/mo, can max out it's 100Mbps PPPoE to the Cisco and gives us 8 IPs. If you want gauranteed service in US or Canada it's T1s at $1000's/mo.
The telcos in Canada and the US are terrified that cheap IP will cost them their business.
I back up my important documents to amazon S3. While I really am happy with my 5MB down, the 512k up really, really sucks when I need to backup another couple gigs of photo's. Last backup took about 26 hours, and really, really hurt the downloads I was trying to do, since the upload was saturated. I'm soon going to start doing digital home videos.. (planning on having a family with the wife soon) and I can't even comprehend how much time its going to take to upload those files. Increasing the upload speed will change the course of the internet, as people will stop looking at it as a "one way" communication, where you "browse" the web.
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
In the meantime, we've got areas with Fios, and 50/50Mbit symmetrical fiber connections to the 'net. So instead of moving to Japan, you can move to Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, or Texas
Specifically, move to a limited amount of affluent, white suburbs in those states. Don't bother with big cities, either. Yes, there are areas with crazy-fast FiOS service, but Verizon is really only rolling it out in the areas that require less work: rich suburbs. More folks that are willing to pay for the service (and higher-level service), and stringing up fiber to individual homes is a bit simpler than dealing with apartments. Everywhere else they're seriously dragging their feet.
Lots of nerds praise FiOS and recommend it all the goddamn time, but it really isn't as available as it is often made out to be.
So how come, even in Silicon Valley, I can't get a consumer connection faster than 5Mbps? In 2008? Yet, when I moved to Japan in 2002, the *slowest* most *basic* package I could get (excepting dial-up, which was being phased out) was 12Mbps.
Fine, we get it, the US is huge. That's no excuse. The simple fact of the matter is that the telcos are much happier to sit there and overcharge for crappy service, as they have no compelling reason to upgrade. If population density and geography alone were the only limiting factors, US residents would still be able to get decent high-speed connections in the urban areas. But they don't exist. I mean, jebus, FINLAND has better download speeds, by a factor of almost 9x (2.4Mbps US vs 21Mbps Finland), despite a population density of about half the US (31/sq km US vs 16/sq km Finland).
So quit the hyperbole, and look at the basic facts -- we're getting shafted in the name of telco profits.
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Or like better beer, a rich regional culture and history, better cuisine, better wine.
The United States doesn't have rich regional cultures? I guess you've never been to New York City or New Orleans?
And the rest of those are purely subjective. Most of the mass market European beers (Heineken comes to mind) are just as crappy as the mass market American beers. Start talking about microbrews though I think you'll find a few American beers that stack up favorably. American wine came of age a long time ago and competes successfully on the world stage. And 'better cuisine'? Cuisine varies so much between regions (even within small countries -- ever traveled across Italy?) that I'm really interested to hear how you define "better".
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
They are interesting numbers considering the phenomenon of karoshi, which, AFAIK, is unique to Japan.
There is also a study about the growth of mental health problems in the workplace and the increased use of prolonged employee leaves.
So maybe it's not just the hours, but how intense those hours are.
It would also be interesting to know how the numbers were calculated and if they measure work times based on tools like Blackberry usage and VPNs, two things that "help" me work more hours than just those when I'm in the office. I couldn't find the report gaebler referenced. Quick googling didn't show it and the search function at JPC-SED is broken.
I mean, take it from me. I'm up here in Canada, where the average internet connection is
Really. I thought that in Canada the average internet connection is not.
Not at all! We are probably the first generation that has a serious chance of living to a Thousand...
I live in Boston UK, and I can't get anything more than 2 down, 400 up. And that is dropping out all of the time, and throttled to hell.
Cry me a river.
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
And in the UK, where we have a dense poulation, we are doing worse than the US. What's our excuse?
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
Since you ignored it the first time:
Scandinavian countries have lower population densities than we do yet have much better access. And the "rural" argument might make sense for why you can't get good access on a farm in Kansas, but then why don't we have 100 Mbps consumer connections in San Francisco or Manhattan?
Your post didn't answer the first point, and ignored the second. Finland has 5.3 million people in 130,000 square miles. Wisconsin has 5.7 million people in 65,000 square miles. So, obviously Finland is gong to have a lot more open areas than Wisconsin, yet it has a median download speed of 21 Mbps, compared to less than 2 Mbps for the United States. I don't have figures for Wisconsin, but what do you think the chances are they will be remotely close to Finland?
And I have yet to see any apologists offer a reason why you can't get access in densely populated American cities like Manhattan to match what Europe is able to deliver to their people in the sticks.
The provider's point of view: 1. Bandwidth is not for the user, it's for us to make "premium content" available to the user. Premium content is anything we can up-charge for. 2. Premium content is compressable. We have not yet reached the limits of compression. Compression may degrade subjective quality, but if we label it HD, the end used will believe us not notice it's worse than SD.* 3. Since our primary goal can be reached through more compression, additional bandwith is not necessary. ----------------- *God should strike down UHD for showing beach volleyball so compressed that swinging ponytails morphed into oozing blobs.
Wow, good argument. Touche.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Yeah, I for one want to move to western Europe so that I can be lazy and get paid a whopping 400 euros per month or so (Germany). I'll be rich! My god, I'll almost be able to afford food along with my cardboard box!
I lived in rural Japan for 15 months. I'm not talking about way up in the mountains, mind you, maybe about an hour's drive away from Utsunomiya.
The only broadband option was DSL from Yahoo. It was decently fast and only about $25 a month, but it wasn't light-years ahead or anything. I can drive an hour out from Indianapolis and find equally good service, probably from more than one provider.
If anything, my connection in Japan was slower because anything I wanted to access was coming over a trans-ocean link. I easily get 2x or 3x speed on most downloads now that I'm back in Indy and I only pay about 2x more. Sounds fair to me.
Also, my broadband was the only thing in Japan that was cheaper than in the USA.
So, yeah. Lies, damn lies, and statistics.
Never approach a vast undertaking with a half-vast plan.
I think they prefer "Nomadicly swindled"
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
If you think we have a snowball's chance in hell of seeing a thousand then you're being WAY too optimistic about medical advances. Average lifespan of 100 for our gen? Quite possible. 125? Stretching, but maybe. Anything over 150 ain't happening.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
It depends on who is defining "high speed".
Youtube is basically unusable over the speeds that the FCC defines as broadband, for example.
I mean, take it from me. I'm up here in Canada, where the average internet connection is
The grandparent poster probably made a judgement based on reputation of the country. In Europe, Belgium has some fabulous beers. France has a huge reputation in wines. When talking about European cuisine, what comes to mind are the italian pastas, French haute cuisine, Swedish smoked salmon, Spanish tapas, and wonderful cheese from all over. Every European country has their specialties, and the differences between those specialties are like day and night.
The average non-American is familiar with exactly two brands of American beer: Budweiser (which sounds very, very German) and Duff. The Californians are known for their wines (and they're good value for money) but we don't see an awful lot of Californian wine over a decade old on the shelves here (whereas I'm sure the opposite is true). As for American cuisine, the most well-known dishes to the outside world are hamburgers, pizza, hot dogs, KFC and Thanksgiving turkey. The burgers, hot dogs and pizza (and the fries with that) aren't even American by origin.
Obviously, this is not the entire picture, and I'm sure that actual US cuisine is a lot more varied than the picture I just painted. But I can see why the grandparent poster thinks Europe has better food and drink.
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
You're blaming government-granted monopolies on the free market?
...and you can always count on Republican Dogma to be backed up with misdirection and red herrings.
Government doesn't create utility monopolies, The Last Mile does. It isn't realistic to expect two or more companies to make massive investments in infrastructure if only 1 line can be used at a time, so agreements are made with local governments so one company can serve all the customers in an area, yet have to put up with some regulation in order to prevent abuse of a captive audience.
And yes, internet access speeds have been entirely left to the free market in the U.S. You may have only one cable line and one phone line to your house, but the competition between the two has left us with an anemic average download speed of 1.97 Mpbs, compared to Finland (21) or Japan (63!).
The one decision that really saddled us with crappy access was the FCC ruling that internet access was an information service rather than a telecommunication service - so telecos no longer had to lease their lines at wholesale prices to competitors.
I have a 20/20 fiber connection available to me for cheaper than what I'm currently paying for 1/0.25 ... how lame is that?
You have a far faster connection available to you but you continue to pay higher prices for vastly inferior bandwidth? That is incredibly lame -- switch already!
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Mr. President, we must not allow a broadband gap!
Proverbs 21:19
Nah, we'll have the ansible by then...and alien bugs to contend with =/
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
And 'better cuisine'? Cuisine varies so much between regions (even within small countries -- ever traveled across Italy?) that I'm really interested to hear how you define "better".
If you ask most people what cuisine America is most famous for, the answer will probably be "fast food" or "junk food" (actual answers may also include supersize me-burgers, american pizza, fried chicken and so on). France isn't all about cheese and wine, Germany beer and sausages, Italy pizza, Japan sushi and so on but in the game of cuisine stereotypes America is pretty much bottom of the barrel. You can find good food everywhere, good local cafes and restaurants are in every city but the question is what's common and abundant. And from my slim anecdotal experience the US reputation is not entirely undeserved...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The average non-American is familiar with exactly two brands of American beer: Budweiser (which sounds very, very German) and Duff
Eh, then familiarize yourself with more before you make a blanket statement that all American beer sucks. I wouldn't presume to think that all European beer sucks just because Heineken tastes like skunky piss water.
but we don't see an awful lot of Californian wine over a decade old on the shelves here
Well, for starters California doesn't have a monopoly on American wine. Most American states produce small amounts of wine and at least three of them (New York, Oregon and Washington) have well developed wine industries that compete favorably with anything that comes out of California.
Besides that, I've been to Europe. Most of the liquor stores that I visited had a rather depressing selection of American wine. I actually saw a bottle of Sutter Homes white zin in Florence that was going for around 40 Euros. Here in the states that would sell for $4-$5 a bottle and would be considered the budweiser of the wine world. It made me wonder if all the European wines that I see on my liquor store shelves also represent the bottom of the barrel ;)
The burgers, hot dogs and pizza (and the fries with that) aren't even American by origin.
America is a nation of immigrants from different cultures and countries. Each of them have brought a unique piece of their own culture to this country. Eventually those different cultures assimilate into something that's uniquely American. Hamburgers and hot dogs weren't invented here but does anybody really think of them as German any longer?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Basically Japan is ahead because telecom companies are too busy squabbling over net neutrality and locking its customers into spartan agreements. US Telecom companies have very little incentive to innovate because they are all members of virtual cartel where there is no need to spend money to improve technology because they control the marketplace. You've only got a select few number of companies that you can use and, for all intents and purposes, they are one and the same. The only possible exception is Verizon FiOS. But, when compared to Japan, Verizon FiOS doesn't really stand a chance. In summary, the telecom cartel is really holding us technologically back.
No budget is in irretrievable deficit when you have missiles large enough to level any bank that tries to get back what you owe them :)
You can always find statistics to make one country look bad. This happens to the US far too often.
There's one fairly simple measure of a country's success, and that's how willing its occupants are to leave if they get the chance. You could offer free emigration to all US citizens, and I bet hardly any would take up the offer.
Sure it has problems, and to be honest, for the country that 'invented' the internet, your connection speed is a joke, seriously.
On the other hand, and American can get in a car and drive thousands of miles without crossing national borders or having their right to travel questioned.
That's a pretty big thing in my opinion, something to be proud of in fact.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
The key difference between network connectivity and electricity or telephones is that you're not used to having decent internet connectivity yet. I see your comment as being basically the same as having said that electricity was an unnecessary luxury back in the 1930's.
We don't really need high quality VoIP telephony, and we didn't really need electric lights because kerosene lamps worked fine. We don't really need video conferencing and real-time video presentations, and we didn't really need refrigerators because iceboxes worked fine.
Infrastructure advances like electricity or high speed internet don't result in revolutionary changes overnight. First they make existing tasks much more efficient - which makes the economy much more productive overall. Only much later do they allow for revolutionary breakthroughs (e.g. electricity allowed for modern computers).
The key thing here isn't that VoIP telephones are going to make everyone a millionaire tomorrow. It's that in 30 years when Asia and Europe have modern infrastructure and all the benefits thereof and the USA doesn't the USA will be a backwards country of poor people who can't compete in the modern economy. If we want to avoid that, Manhattan better keep up with Tokyo and Boston better keep up with Helsinki. Right now we're about a decade behind.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
I run a subversion server at home for various uses, including international projects. As soon as I can be bothered, I'll also set it up to stream my music to me wherever I am. It's currently hosting my pictures for sharing with people. Are you saying I don't need good bandwidth at home for that?
And, for the record, I'm also in IT, though not for decades, and let me tell you, if you've ever gone to a partner company's office to download the VPN client to their computers only to find that they're on some 512Kbps DSL line shared with eight people, you'll understand the need for faster connections. (I do realize you conceded that businesses might need faster connections.)
Imagine a hypothetical home with five children and two computers in the home office. Three kids have their own computers. There's a Wii in the basement and a PS2 and/or PS3 upstairs (the kids like Final Fantasy XI online).
So you've got three kids upstairs watching youtube and/or pirating stuff (they think Dad doesn't know, I'm sure), or downloading music on iTunes, or watching TV on Netflix, or playing games, two kids on the two consoles, Dad is in the office playing Counter-Strike: Source, and Mom is watching re-broadcasts of Oprah online.
18Mbps can run out pretty quick.
US data is taken from speedmatters at 2.3Mbps
International data taken from theInformation Technology and
Innovation Foundation at http://www.itif.org/files/2008BBRankings.pdf
This report shows US at 4.9Mbps
A significant difference in findings between the two. Ill let you draw the conclusions