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Why Is the Internet So Infuriatingly Slow?
Anti-Globalism writes "The major ISPs all tell a similar story: A mere 5 percent of their customers are using around 50 percent of the bandwidth, sometimes more, during peak hours. While these 'power users' are sharing three-gig movies and playing online games, poor granny is twiddling her thumbs waiting for Ancestry.com to load."
just the journalists who try to write about it.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I have on occasion used Firefox plugins that filter out most banner ads. I've found my pages load about 70% faster. I watch the little status line at the bottom of Firefox and I've found that most of my "waiting" time is for advertisements.
I've also found DNS to be slow for some reason. Things that aren't cached on the local machine slow browsing down significantly (something else adverts contribute to).
Of course the people who just leave P2P applications running non-stop are a bit of a pain.
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Is this a US phenomenon? My Internet seems to be pretty much as fast as always and I don't do filesharing. The reason Granny waits for her webpages is because she still uses dial-up and webpages have become increasingly dial-up unfriendly.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
A contract cuts both ways. People were ranting about personal responsibility when that family got hit by $18k roaming charges a few stories ago by AT&T. Companies need to hold themselves to the contract too, they signed the contract saying they'll provide a service under the given terms, so when a user takes advantage of it they have nothing to complain about. If they have oversold their capacity that is solely the ISPs problem.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
It's ok to blame the users for clogging up your pipes if the pipes you have a already the best in the world.
But it's not ok to do so when there're plenty of people in the likes of France, South Korea, Japan and Hogn Kong who're already having 100Mbps+ at home, at a much cheaper price, and not-so-clogged up.
Nah, it's more because website designers still haven't figured out how to make compact, fast-loading websites. They swear by flash, while we swear at it. They forget to set content expiry properly so your browser reloads all their little images every time you revisit their site (yes Greg Dean of Real Life Comics, I'm looking at you). They consider their site to be "unfinished" if its frontpage is below 500 kbyte.
That site mentioned in the article, ancestry.com, has 59,6 kbyte of HTML, 56,99 kbyte of CSS, 64,88 kbyte of images and a whopping 314,39 kbyte of scripts, totalling 495,91 kbyte. And most of the non-image content isn't even compressed! No wonder it's slow.
Error: password can't contain reverse spelling of ancient Chinese emperor
If the premise of the article is right let's cut the Internet connections of that 5% of power users. We end up using only 50% of the available bandwidth and ISP paying more than they should. I bet that they'll quickly sell the unused bandwidth (it's called cost reduction and profit maximization) and poor granny will start waiting for Ancestry.com again.
The Internet will never be fast because ISPs will give us no more than what we need to use it in a more or less acceptable way.
By the way, how it comes that poor granny's connection is slow while power users play WoW without problems?
Have online games started using large amounts of bandwidth (instead of trying to minimise traffic in the interests of latency) since I last played a new game?
Or are they just something that the aforementioned Granny doesn't do, and therefore probably antisocial?
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
In other words, ISPs sell more bandwidth than they can cover because they assume you will only use 5% of what you pay for.
I know why they do that, but hey, a little more headroom wouldn't hurt. If a few saturated consumer connections can make your entire net sluggish, you are cutting it too close.
Because of improperly implemented ad or site statistics scripts. I cannot even begin to count how many times I have thought a site was being served up slow due to network congestion only to see "waiting for doubleclick/google/etc" in the status bar...
The reason Granny waits for her webpages is because she still uses dial-up
The reason Granny still uses dial-up is because the broadband providers haven't reached her house yet. Instead of spending money on rolling copper or fiber into less-urban areas, the providers are spending all their spare money on backbone transit for bandwidth-hogging customers' packets.
If we let ISP's vilify a minority as an excuse for their aging copper-wire infrastructure, instead of forcing them to upgrade it to European/Asian standards, then their greed with stifle and choke the last growth market the USA has: intellectual property. Good luck selling your movies and music online if downloading is strictly rationed.
...and it couldn't be any other way. Even if they built 100 times the bandwidth we have now, it would still be slow. Like George Carlin's routine about people buying stuff that fills up their home, and when it's full they move all their stuff to a bigger house, so they can buy.. more.. stuff.
She's being victimized by the file traders! And we, the ISPs, are powerless to help! If only there were some way to make Granny's internet connection higher priority. Some kind of . . . service quality protocol. Quality of Service, perhaps. We could call it that. But no such thing exists, of course, because if it did, we'd be using it by now. And we aren't. So.
But even if it did, it would rely on web traffic being easily recognizable. And it isn't! It's not like virtually all web traffic goes through a specific "port" or anything. And it's not like HTTP connections are easy to check for and flag as "higher priority". The technology *just doesn't exist*, and can never be developed. Ever.
And even if that all existed, well, of course it would be impossible to implement it! For reasons I don't feel like explaining right now. Just trust me. And I suppose we *could* just buy more bandwidth but, whoops, that takes too much money! Money which we've spent on . . . uh, we just don't have it. That's right. We don't have it. It's . . . I think someone else has it. Ask them. I guess, instead of solving the problem, we'll just have to whine at the lawmakers until they prop up our badly-designed business. Wait that's not right. Let me try that again. We'll have to complain in news articles and attempt to villainize our customers who foolishly took our contracts as contracts. No, no, no, that's not right at all. Man I just can't think of the proper solution right now.
Well, to make a long story short, we're too cheap to solve the problem QUICK LOOK OVER THERE it's an elderly person who's being inconvenienced by those damn hoodlums again! Think of your grandmother!
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
Realize, though, the population densities are much, much higher in the Asian countries you mentioned (>300 people/km^2) as compared to the US (31 people/km^2), which likely makes it much, much more cost effective to connect all of those people together at high rates. I, for one, would rather have slow internet than 10 more people per every one person who already lives in the square km around me (I live in a suburban area).
Name: Mr. Anon E Mouse; SSN: 555-55-5555
Seriously, why do we need a bloated, plodding DHTML frontend on a glorified forum? Between that and the ever-increasing ads, the user experience is really starting to suck lately. Please stop.
And 9/10 those 5 meg pictures were taken on digital cameras with shit optics and look like utter crap, but the camera manufacturer added a whole bunch of interpolation to boost the resolution in order to make it sound like it was so awesome, "OMG, 5 megapixels for less than $100! I rule the school!"
Monstar L
I watch the little status line at the bottom of Firefox and I've found that most of my "waiting" time is for advertisements.
The personal experience of myself and countless other users concurs : Most of the waiting is due to downloading flash monstrosities used by ads. Complete with annoying blinking title, stupid music and sometimes even embed video.
I think the web would be a much more supportable place if flash could just manage to die. ISP are always pointing to the "Torrent" scapegoat.
But probably if "Adblock plus"-like plug-ins were more popular on browsers (or even better, if content provider started to use much lighter textual ads like googe - but whom am I fooling ? this is never going to happen) the bandwidth usage would probably drop significaly.
Well, all that. And virus.
I'm ready to bet that at least 75% of times when Joe 6-pack bring his computer to technical service "because it is really slow and un responsive these days", or even more accurately (and worse) each time Joe decides to buy a new computer because the last one is starting to be a bit slow and crash-prone, the unstabilities and slowdowns are due to the computer being member of at least 3 bot nets, with a dozen of rogue process running in the background and spitting "p3n!s enl@rgmentz" mails, recording every keystroke, injecting pop-ups for "online casino and m0rtgage and hammering every IP within range trying to propagate.
That's also why multi-core CPU are going to be big hit in the near future on the desktop. Not that reading web pages and writing "lol" in MSN requires tremendous processing power. But the average users will finally be able to use their machine even with all the crap running on them.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I use a modified HOSTS file. Before I'd frequently get websites that would refuse to load for 10 seconds or more, because some ad server was taking its sweet time. Now any calls to ad servers are blocked and pages generally load up in less than a second. 90% of the time ads are blocked by the HOSTS file, the other 10% of the time I use the content blocker in Opera.
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
I'd be more concerned if Timmy wasn't doing that.
>>>"poor granny is twiddling her thumbs waiting for Ancestry.com to load."
SOLUTION: People who use less than, say, 10 gigabytes per month, should get a $10 rebate for that month. Make granny happy & encourage others to save resources too. (Save energy; save the planet; et cetera.) Of course, that idea will never fly past the greedy corporations who enjoy pocketing $50 a month from granny even though she only costs them $10 in actual usage.
The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.
Unfortunately 'The Tragedy of the Commons' does not apply in this case.
1) The resource is not technically 'shared'.
The ISP gives you a set amount of bandwidth but expect you to use only a minuscule fraction of what they give you. Typically they'll expect you to use maybe 5% of the speed of your connection for about 5% of the time in any given day. The problem with that is that it might have been representative of the connected populace during the Dial-Up Era and maybe early into the Broadband Era... However, as leisure time tends to be spent more on the internet the speed of your connection tends to get used more with things like Youtube (NOTE: A single video on Youtube can potentially use as much as 100mb or more, watch 10 videos in a day and you've eaten up 1 GB) and web browsing as someone said with flash and lots of video content now the average webpages are typically hitting about 1MB. People also spend more time in front of the monitor now and may be there as much as 10% of the day. Bittorrent users typically use 90%+ of the bandwidth 100% of the time. However, the way to deal with bittorrent is not by criminalizing it (although it may be used for copyright infringement), the idea would be to rework the protocol so it prefers to use seeds with shorter number of hops over ones with longer number of hops so as to keep bandwidth within the network which presumably keeps the ISP's own costs down. The reason the 'resource' is 'shared' is because of overselling and more overselling when users even the average user are demanding more and more bandwidth.
2) The providers somewhat brought this on themselves by advertising in such a way that people equate SPEED with BANDWIDTH.
This is 100% the ISPs own fault. They've spent so much money advertising their speeds that Joe Sixpack thinks speed is the only thing and that things are generally unlimited.
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
+2 Troll is Slashdot's way of saying groupthink is confused
or do what smart businesses have done all throughout history: increase supply to satisfy demand. we have some of the slowest and simultaneously most expensive internet service in the world. as the richest nation in the world, and the global leader in science and technology, this should not be occurring.
check out this chart of broadband prices around the world. then take a look at this map of broadband speeds around the globe.
i refuse to believe that South-Korea, Sweden, and Japan have fewer "power users" per capita than the U.S. or that they don't have file sharing in those countries. blaming the problem on consumers to try and divert blame ignores the most obvious and logical solution.
perhaps ISPs should spend less money and energy on packet shaping technology and trying to curb p2p file sharing, and spend more resources on what we're actually paying them for: internet access. i'm not paying $50/month for them to tell me what i can or can't use my bandwidth for, or how i should be using my bandwidth. if they want customers to only use their connection for web access, then they should just call themselves "Web Access Providers."
I don't like that solution at all. You shouldn't encourage people to use less bandwidth because that will just kill the potential new products that use bandwidth. I'd like to see even more things using internet bandwidth, like my mailbox, my car, television, etc... Just let the free markets continue to evolve and come up with faster hardware as they always have in the past. I can't believe how fast it is compared to five years ago. Remember modems? Usually slowness has to do with the server, not the infrastructure. The article is a little misleading.
I have a problem with charging per gigabyte. The thing is its very ambiguous how much gigabytes you're using. Theres nothing like an odometer to measure you're overall useage of bandwidth.
It's not ambiguous at all, it simply takes a lot of hardware to measure.
These ISPs are SERIOUSLY overselling their network capacity to create an artificial scarcity.
Bullshit. ISPs are selling you a volume limited, high bandwidth account. They simply haven't been imposing the volume caps because it's hard and costly to measure.
In other words they're being greedy and their own actions (overselling)
No, *you* are being greedy. They could simply bandwidth limit everybody to 1Mbit/sec, charge you the same amount, and be done with it. Everybody can max out their lines.
But it's preferable to give people high burst bandwidth because it's nice when pages load fast. And it's nice not to have to spend billions on bandwidth metering when statistics say that there are only a few bad apples that try to get a maxed out line on a consumer priced subscription.
So, take your pick: for your $30/month, you can get 16Mbps burst bandwidth with an (implicit) volume cap, or 1Mbps sustained. You can pick either one. You can't get 16Mbps sustained for $30/month, it's just not economically feasible yet.
When your money devalues exponentially, it makes absolutely no sense to spend it on "quality", it makes far more sense to simply get rid of it as fast as you can on any old crap.
Deleted
So you are trying to watching streaming video, and are calling other people bandwidth hogs???
As for my online games: while they tax the heck out of my CPU & GPU, the last time I checked the bandwidth requirements were a mere trickle ... in the kbps range (though they do seem to demand low ping times).
I think I take exception at saying it is ISP greed; I'm more inclined to say it is a small handful of P2P users that can rationalize their theft of copyrighted material as (astonishingly) helping the people they are stealing from.
Although I agree with most of what you say about bandwidth, as an ISP, you have no business judging what I send across the line. Whether it is "theft of copyrighted material" or fair use is up to me and the copyright holder.
P2P and home servers are enormously important for private and personal use, as well as for not-for-profit redistribution of CC material (e.g., Miro).
As an ISP, your best bet is to shut up and completely forget about what people transmit over your lines or you open a Pandora's box.
but if you look at current trends, it seems like Americans are spending more to get less. if our rates were as low as South Korea, Amsterdam, Japan, France, Finland, etc. then i could understand the slow internet speeds. but we have some of the highest broadband prices for non-rural populations.
Yikes! I decided to look at corrupt.org... Their posision on leadership is quite frightening:
Democratic leaders do not lead. They listen to polls and propose nice-sounding but impractical plans. We need strong leaders who are willing to do what is unpopular if it is the right thing to do. Banning SUVs or destructive plastic products will generate cries of "oppression," but if all of humanity benefits, it is a freedom from oppression. No one can make a decision for a society at large without stepping on some toes, but as most individuals are inclined to see detail and not the whole, their desires are often inappropriate. Among our people there are those who lead intelligently, nobly and compassionately. Rigorous education in history and philosophy can round these people out, and we can start them out as local leaders and promote those that do the best job. Further, we should breed them in a special category of people, or "caste," so that we pass on the genes that produce great leaders.
To hell with that!
It's practically straight out of Plato. Now isn't that scary in itself?
It isn't the internet that is slow, not really. Three things have a disproportionate effect on users perception of the internet: (1) Web site load times and (2) Horrible packet management by your DSL/Cable modem for outgoing and (3) Massive packet backlogs on the ISP side of the router in the download direction, mainly due to YOUR devices advertising ridiculously huge TCP windows or otherwise not doing any management of the incoming bandwidth at all. Those three issues cover 90% of the problem space and none of them are really the ISP's fault.
* Web sites access all sorts of crap these days, mostly related to ad content. Many also run horrible javascript all over the page which slows the site way down even once the page has been loaded. Ad content sources often present a larger responsiveness issue then the site itself. Using ad site blockers will improve site responsiveness.
* Many home systems these days have more then a few devices accessing the internet. Very few of these devices do any sort of packet management or bandwidth control. The result is that your interactive traffic is not prioritized over all your other traffic.
* Most consumer (read: windows) boxes, and most cable and dsl modems either have no bandwidth management or have only very primitive bandwidth management for uplink data. They might be capable of separating out various types of traffic, such as VOIP, but they usually can't handle more then a few simultaneous connections and then only under very strict conditions. They simply do not have enough memory to buffer more then two or three packet streams.
* Programs like bittorrent will easily blow-out the downlink direction of an ISPs DSLAM or cable provider side router. It is virtually impossible to manage the downlink packet rate with a cable modem, even with the configuration options available. In fact, the many ways people use to mask bittorent traffic ends up making things worse by defeating attempts by ISPs to simply manage the packet stream (verses cutting it off).
None of these issues are really the ISP's fault. People who know what they are doing throw a unix-based (aka linux, bsd) router inbetween their home network and their cable/dsl modem. Simple QOS filtering doesn't do the job, you really need to run a full-blown fair-share sub-scheduler on top of your basic QOS separation and pre-restrict the bandwidth to move all the packet queues onto your router, for both directions. That will take care of the uplink direction at the very least.
Incoming bandwidth is harder to deal with because you often do not have direct control over the devices trying to downlink the data. The best you can do there is create an artificial bandwidth constriction between your unix-based router and the target devices in the incoming direction. This will shift the bulk of the packet backlog away from the ISP's DSLAM/router and onto your router. Your router has enough memory to deal with megabytes of stream backlog if necessary so you can control all incoming bulk data streams while letting all the interactive traffic bypass the queues.
Here's an example: Take a single TCP stream downloading a movie. If the TCP connection is advertising a very large data window, such as a megabyte, then what winds up happening is that a megabyte of data winds up getting backlogged on the ISP-side of your connection as the bandwidth is constricted down to your cable/dsl modem's capabilities. The ISP cannot handle that large a backlog, particularly if you are downlinking several things simultaneously (each with a megabyte of backlog). Traditionally ISPs have used RED or other congestion control algorithms but the plain truth of the matter is that THEY DO NOT WORK VERY WELL FROM THE POINT OF VIEW AND PERCEPTIONS OF THE END USER. It is far better to not have the backlog to deal with in the first place, at least not on the ISP side of the connection.
In anycase, the issue is more due to the many applications trying to use your pipe as if they owned the whole thing then it
I agree.
Corporate greed, along with job outsourcing, HB1 importing and illegal immigration is rapidly turning the USA into a 2nd world nation.
I pay $72/mo for a "10Mb/s" bandwidth that clocks out at 8.5Mb/s. No cable TV.
Almost fifteen years ago my city fathers decided that the Ingernet was too important a national resource to be monopolized by the cable and telcoms for profit. They decided to install a city owned fiber optic cable. Why not? We have a city owned police force, fire department and school system. A city owned local, state, national and international communication system affordable and accessible by the poorest of us was, and still is, and excellent idea.
The cable and telcos went crying to Congress about "unfair" competition and their lobbyists paid enough Congressmen of so that Congress passed a law making it illegal for cities to "compete" with cable and telcoms in furnishing the Internet. To "help" the telcoms finish the job the villages, towns and cities started Congress GAVE the cable and telcoms $200B to "finish" laying the fiber optic cables in this country. The greedy cable and telcoms immediately POCKETED the money and promptly forgot about their obligation to finish laying the cable. Classic corporate greed, approved by congress because congress included no provisions to FORCE the cable and telcoms to finish the job. That's right - there were no punishments for non-performance in that 200B Congressional giveaway.
IF the US voters had any brains, and their politicians had any ethics, they'd DEMAND the cable and telcoms FINISH the job of laying the optical cable and converting from Copper wire to fiber optics, AT NO COST TO THE CONSUMERS. Then we'd have 100Mb bandwidth and the ISPs wouldn't be able to play the "pipe" game and extort more money from consumers for "better" service. As it is, they are playing word games with Net Neutrality, and using it as justification for their extortions.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
Well done, thank you sir. Perhaps the solution is to do away with Slashdot's user link and only provide links relevant to the story. There seems to be nothing but corruption from these, and it leads to the likes of Roland and other terrible bloggers as well as these jerks who are trying to fish people in and raise their website hits (be it for advertising dollars or for their stupid agenda). I'm not sure that linking to a user's chosen website brings any value to Slashdot articles.
If your ISP promised to ignore the content, would you be willing to pay a fair price/GB in exchange for a correspondingly lower base rate for the first GB?
In other words, if your ISP lowered its flat-rate for average users and imposed per-GB prices that were in line with or cheaper than the first-GB price, would that be okay with you?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I ... actually see no connection between who posted the original story (Anti Globalism) and any of the sites the above poster mentioned. The linked story in the OP goes to Slate.com (a microsoft-owned publication, IIRC), which itself points to various respected URLs (chicagotribune.com, msnbc.com, washingtonpost.com, fcc.gov, techcrunch.com, infoworld.com....)
While "Anti-Fascism"'s post is very interesting, in this particular case, I don't see a reason to discredit this story simply based on who posted it to /.
When every republican administration eviscerates the labor and consumer rights laws, and at the same time eviscerates the regulations which promoted actual competition, you get this kind of thing.
People work more, make less, and get fewer choices in an increasingly consolidated market.
Do you think people like to buy particle board furniture?
Of course they don't!, but they make less, and the fact that smaller suppliers are squeezed out by global particle-board furniture holdings limited means there is less choice/competition among people providing real wood.
The same can be said of pretty much every sector, and is exemplified by the broadband and media markets.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Ahhhh yes. Anytime someone tries to inject some common sense into the argument, the conspiracy theories come out and allegations that someone is being bought by the "enemy". Grow up. Try to talk about the arguments instead of just attacking someone. Besides, if you could read, you would see that I was not supporting the side of the ISPS. In fact, if you weren't so busy being part of the moron brigade blindly labeling anyone that is not yelling as loudly as you are that the enemy must die, the enemy himself... you would see that what I said was a scathing indictment of their behaviors. You could only possibly misconstrue what I said, if you were in fact not trying to comprehend it all.
Far from it.
Ummmm, are you sure about that? Don't want to think about that again? How about the "initial investment" part? There have been advancements in fiber optic cable and not just the control units. To say otherwise is misinformed and naive. Of course it costs more overall to transmit data over fiber when the distances are greater. The fiber run does not stretch. Be realistic. The total runs of fiber from Los Angeles to New York COST more than a run of fiber from the north tip of Japan to the southern tip. Same for South Korea. That investment needs to be paid off, which means that they need to recoup more money, hence the cost of bandwidth must rise. It's not all that hard to comprehend. Capacity is finite, and cannot currently support 10 Mb/s for every residential user. You have to lie to them.
The capacity you seem to think exists, or should exist, cannot be realized by just a "minimal outlay" of cash. If they could increase the bandwidth that easily, they would. Those telcoms are not just selling to residential customers. They could make more money with more capacity. Now even with retrofitting the existing fiber runs, you cannot increase the capacity "exponentially". Exponentially? Are you serious? You sound like you are going to start talking about an Oscillation Overthruster any minute.
There is a capacity problem, unlimited bandwidth contracts are damaging to all concerned and the biggest source of our problem, and the last mile of copper is the least of our problems.
If they delivered a fiber optic cable right into your telco box at the side of your house, gave you a fiber optic modem and could deliver VOIP, Internet, IPTV, etc., they would NOT have the capacity to service you all at the street anymore than they are now.
If they were forced to be honest about how they can sell you the bandwidth, and you only paid for what you used and what you were guaranteed to receive, they would be forced to increase the capacity at the street. It's not as easy as you make it out to be, but it would be done. It would have to be, since over selling would be illegal and they could only add users by adding capacity.
Why are they going to increase capacity any faster than they are now, even if it just as easy as you say, when they can keep dicking with the residential users? The first step is to make unlimited contracts illegal, or at least mandatory performance requirements. None of that exists now for the consumer.
Now try saying again that I some paid stooge for the ISPS. It makes you sound stupid.
...I worked for an ISP, and the reason we oversold...
Are not many, if not all utility services oversold? If everybody flushes their toilet at once, does the water pressure in the mains not drop? If everybody picks up their telephone at once, do many users NOT get a dial tone? The electrical service of the average home is 200 amps. If every home started using that full capacity, will the electrical grid not collapse? Just last week, when about 2 million people suddenly had to get out of New Orleans. Were there are not many miles long traffic jams on at other times perfectly serviceable roads? In LA, and other large cities, are the freeways not often long parking lots during rush hour? Why should the Internet be any different? After all, it has been called the information HIGHWAY.
Is there a power company or water service that offers unlimited service for a fixed price? Is there not a water meter or electric meter on every house? Does the service company not come out periodically and read such a meter? Do the customers not get charged according to how much they use? Why then, should the Internet be any different? Every utility has only limited resources which they sell for prices the users are willing or able to pay. If your electric bill is too high, you find ways to save power.
All utilities and many other business services are scaled to average projected use. When you want to make a phone call, most of the time you to get a dial tone and there is no problem. The same is true of your other utility services. ISPs only need to and do scale the networks for average service, not the peak. They should be easily able to determine how much use there is by the average subscriber as well as the highest and lowest users. Then they can structure their prices according to use, just as any other utility does. I don't think that Internet service providers are any greedier than the average utility company.
All theory is gray
"A packet has to travel over VASTLY LARGER DISTANCES to get from Los Angeles to New York. Plain and Simple. The US could be the leader in the world as far as Mb/s per citizen, but it would cost at least 10x the money than any other country"
Bullshit. American has 80 people per square mile. Norway has 32 people per square mile. I'm originally from Finnmark, Norways northernmost, harshest and sparsest county with 5.2 people per square mile (even Montana and Wyoming are more densily populated).
My home town has less than 3000 inhabitants and it is at least 2.5 hours drive away from any other settlements larger than 1000 inhabitants.
Yet, if I decided to move back I could order 12Megabit ADSL tomorrow.