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High-Speed Broadband Making Headway In the US
darthcamaro writes "No, the US isn't the fastest nation on Earth, and it's not the most connected. But according to a new report, it sure is getting a whole lot better lately. 'I think the US growth rate is something we expected,' David Belson, Akamai's director of market intelligence and author of the report, told InternetNews.com. 'If you look at the money being spent to build out the fiber to the home infrastructure, and if you look at the competitive deals that are going on, vendors are trying hard to make it affordable and "outspeed" each other.'"
>>> "vendors are trying hard to make it affordable and "outspeed" each other"
Yeah...by introducing limits on customers usage of bandwidth and the most popular protocols. This is NOT a net win (pun intended) for end-users. I'd rather have slower link with unrestricted access than have a theoretically faster link that I can't use to do what I want.
"...and if you look at the competitive deals that are going on, vendors are trying hard to make it affordable and "outspeed" each other."
As opposed to, uh, slapping each other on the back while they fix prices and swallow up any hope of independent providers and actual competition while they stretch their already-inadequate infrastructure to a taffy-like consistency as they arbitrarily mess with their own traffic, routing it through mysterious big boxes that read, "NSA SEKRIT BOX -- DON'T TOUCH" after they force their customers to sign EULA's which read like some Kafka-esque road to nothing(except certain death).
And their commercials suck, too.
They need to stop working on getting people with high speed internet faster internet, and work on getting people that only get dialup high speed internet.
"Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they AREN'T after you."
I haven't seen much in the way of vendors are trying to outspeed each other. Verizon did recently just lay down some fiber where my parents live (in virginia) but speed has been stagnating since I remember first getting cable internet sometime in 1999, maybe verizon may spearhead the switch to fiber and increased speeds.
Vendors may be increasing areas of coverage slowly but I'd say gaining customers is their priority, not upgrading networks. Lack of competition may be the source of this stagnation since only 4 names come to mind when I think broadband: Time-Warner, Comcast, Cox, and Verizon FIoS. Who else is rolling out fiber?
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
Do you think you're alone? I'm sure most of the customers are unhappy as well. High prices. Bad service. No choice. So if there is such a high demand for better service, why doesn't your current service provide it? There's no incentive. You all keep paying for it. If you all chose to go on strike, they'd listen up. But if you go on strike, you lose the service, which is not the best solution. So what's the other possibility for incentive? Competition. If there was another company providing similar service, your existing company would want to keep your service, and persuade people from the other company to switch to their services. The only way they can persuade customers is through trade to mutual benefit. You get your money's worth, and they get your money. Right now, that is not happening.
So what is preventing competition from existing? What is stopping someone from springing up to start a local alternative to their crappy service? Or, what is stopping an existing large company that provides a similar service from expanding to provide this service that you and so many others demand? See my subject for the answer.
As long as you don't read the fine print, anyway.
I've looked at the offers available here, and the funny thing is that they pretty much permanently lock in the duopoly.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
I'd like some Slashdotters' feedback on the following problem:
I live in an area of Northern New England where most people don't have broadband. It's somewhat rural, but certainly not 'very rural'. There are maybe 12-15 homes per linear mile in most areas. The ILEC was, until recently, Verizon.
The main issue was that Verizon is a big public company with a huge market. Yet, it necessarily has limited resources. It's not that running DSL up a residential road would be unprofitable, it's that for the n dollars it would cost, they could spend that same n dollars in Jersey City and get a better return on investment. You can't blame them for seeking that return. For this reason they continue to upgrade and invest in their dense plant and do nothing in their sparse plant. When they still owned the area, an engineer told me their plan went to 2014 and our county wasn't on the plan.
Now, since then Fairpoint has taken ownership of the plant. They want to sell voice and data, sure, but they also want to sell video service over DSL, which is where the real money is (for now anyway). So, they're sending trucks around, surveying lines and poles, figuring out the fastest way to get DSL in. Their logistics make Northern New England look like a huge market, where Verizon saw it as a distraction. They're even finding CO's where Verizon installed DSLAM's 3 years ago but never offered service, simply because they couldn't be bothered. Some people are getting lit up the next business day after calling. This is very positive, we're lucky the plant was sold.
However, for any sized market, there's still a long-tail where people aren't going to be profitable enough to serve. We had Rural Electrification in 1936 which is largely parallel because both served/would-serve to improve total overall economic efficiency. There are also PUC's which can force changes (in theory), and towns can bond for their own fiber plants. However, Government is always the easy 'big stick', but it would be nicer, more sustainable, and more peaceful, if there was a creative third-way. Besides that, the US Federal Government already charged us all for FTTH and it never materialized. So it's not just violent, it's dysfunctional. And the municipal fiber projects are very slow to meet market need, and seemingly often have management and funding problems.
So, I'm asking folks here for great 'third-way' ideas. I've come up empty, but there are lots of clever thinkers in these parts.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Does this mean that someday soon, I may see speeds in excess of 768K/384K [1] to my very own home? You know, what AT&T calls "High Speed Internet?" Oh, frabjous joy!
1. Actual speeds based on DSL synch rate, may vary, and are not guaranteed. Many factors affect speed. Service and speed not available in all areas.
"If someone can "hog all the bandwidth", that is a sign of a badly managed network."
Or a sign of users who don't understand what "shared resource" means.
"Ensuring that each user gets their fair share without artifically limiting the whole network is one of the main responsibilities of an ISP."
"Fair share" is right up there with "unlimited" as the most abused words in a discussion about broadband.
If life was fair, then people wouldn't be leaving their P2P connections running full-tilt 24/7 and giving everyone else affected the middle-finger.
"Ten years ago I could have understood it, but with todays technology it should no problem ensuring that each user gets their fair share."
Good thing US schools are teaching a healthy dose of economics right along side their technology courses.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"