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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.'"
...but not here. We can choose Clearwire, Verizon or Time-Warner. Time-Warner keeps inching up peak rates, currently 8Mbps downstream, but average throughput is a lot lower. Clearwire and Verizon aren't even in the running speed-wise.
FIOS isn't even on the drawing board yet.
Don't get me wrong, 8MBps peak is better than the 3Mbps peak we had when we signed up, which is better than the 768Mbps we got from Verizon DSL, which is better than the 56K we got from a local dialup. But when I look at what we bring down the pipe now vs. then, well, the load is way outpacing the capacity.
I wonder if these reports will start taking into account usage caps employed by some ISPs. After all, what would be the point of upgrading from a 5 Mbps line to a hypothetical 500 Mbps line if your ISP caps your usage to the same number of GB in both cases? It would LOOK like ISPs are offering faster speeds, but you wouldn't be able to use that faster line to do more than you could with the slower line.
Respect the laws of physics, for the laws of physics have no respect for you.
From the article:
Despite such efforts, the country still sits sixth on Akamai's list of the most widely broadband-enabled counties, with only 26 percent of U.S. Internet connections having been clocked at speeds of 5Mb/sec or greater. South Korea continues to hold the top spot with 64 percent of its Internet user's connection at speeds of 5 Mb/sec or greater.
Given the nature of the market, I don't think we'll see 60 to 70 percent high-speed broadband penetration in the U.S. for quite some time," he added.
So speeds are going up in areas that have service but fast service still isn't widely available. And only 26% of what's out there now is faster than 5MB/sec.
Belson noted that California came in 21st in the nation, with its 7 percent growth rate over first quarter having been outpaced by other states' growing broadband infrastructures. In Akamai's last report, California ranked 17th.
Slicon Valley is still pretty much only ATT DSL or Comcast Cable.
but the most bizarre thing [at least for me, even though I'm not in the US], is that small towns, after asking the telco/cableco's to provide the town with higher-speed internet access and being told no [generally because of the relatively small population], when the town then plans to setup their own high-speed service, the very companies that told them "No, we can't be bothered", turn around 180 degree's and sue the town to stop the implementation [not that they would then provide the service if the lawsuit succeeds, but just to delay and/or prevent the town from providing the service].
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
...to FIOS from Comcast and have been thoroughly enjoying the 15mb download speeds. Pretty much everything I do now on the net is blazing fast whether it's downloading large video files or playing games. Plus there's bandwidth for TV as well since I use FIOS for that too.
I couldn't be any happier.
It's funny, I was discussing this earlier on the drive to work. We both live in a rural area and commute into an urban environment, and experience the pains and joys that both bring.
We both basically reached the same conclusion -- The United States, she is a big place. It's always going to be easier to wire up a thousand people living within a few blocks of each other than that same thousand living within a few miles.
If we really intend to catch up, we need to take a cue from cellular networks and increase the emphasis, availability, efficiency, and cost of satellite internet.
It's basically a matter of a high tech, potentially high-cost solution, or a low-tech, lower-cost band-aid that only treats the screaming wound -- the large urban environments. We have 300+ million people living in this country, and even our biggest city, New York, has only around 8-10 million of that encapsulated. We are a big suburban / rural society still, albeit a lot of times by choice now, and having a large, open-air data network is going to be more key to us than trying to cover each and every house in the U.S. with optical fiber.
This is like the "most improved player" trophy that little leagues award to kids that used to stink, but now don't create too much trouble for their teams.
Many areas of the US can not get broadband. (ISDN and T1 are not broadband - it's not 1993 anymore). I live in a fairly middle-class neighborhood in the North East, and I have a choice of ONE broadband provider. That's right, my local cable co.
DSL - too far away. FIOS - it's always 6 months away. Satellite ok, I can get that, but $50 a month for 512k down and 128k up sucks. I don't consider that broadband.
Broadband in MOST of the US is still pathetic - slow and expensive.
-ted
That's not fair off from the situation in Australia, where bandwidth caps are the norm. It's possible to get an ADSL2+ plan where you could exceed the monthly download cap in less than 5 minutes!
Sure I use to have my house fully connected with cable. I loved it. Six years ago I decided to move to the country. Having the belief system that America was great when it came to internet connectivity I just assumed that where ever I moved I could plug into high speed internet. Not the case, in rural Florida. In fact, I am paying $130+ a month for business internet services via Hughes.net. While waiting for a page to load I was able to load my cloths in the wash, collect the mail, feed my horse and brush my teeth. This is business class folks! The chance of any other competing service entering the market here is null. So while the city folks are enjoying there cheap access and complaining about their bandwidth, I am blowing at clouds to go away and being held hostage by the mafiosoâ(TM)s of the internet world.
My big telco keeps bugging me to get rid of my DSL ($19/month for life plus a landline so about $41/month total I need to landline til Feb for my analog 2000-era TiVo). My rabbit ears are working fine for all the major networks since I am near a major city. Look forward to converter box for digital over the air, too.
I would love to go to fibre after they open the network so that other ISPs can sell data services and only honest competition is what keeps prices low.
Can you believe some dummies are shelling out $104/month for STARTERS for basic fibre cable TV + internet when you can get TV for free over the air here (lots more choices with the converter box for over the air, too) and internet for less than half that?
Without competition, I see telco starting to charge fibre disconnect/reconnect charges to discourage people from flipping back to the cable tv vendor for price.
The phone company doesn't offer any guarantee on price for fibre beyond basic bait-and-switch after you are wired up they intend to up the charges forever just like my original cable was $6.95/month in 1986 stayed until when I left in 2005 it had inflated to $90/month with no change in content.
There's no use on having a formula 1 race car if you're only allowed to do 10 laps a month. On a track filled with mandatory diversions.
Sure there is. I only need to go to stop on the other side of the store once or twice a week, but when I have to go there I want it to take the minimal amount of time possible (because obviously my time is very valuable - I drive a formula 1 race car for god's sake).
Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns