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Why Broadband In North America Is Not That Slow
An anonymous reader writes "The Globe & Mail has an article written in response to a recent study done by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard about how far behind the rest of the world the US and Canada are with regard to broadband internet. The refutation basically tears apart Harvard's analysis and shows why the US and Canada are actually far ahead of most European countries. 'Canada has a true broadband penetration rate of close to 70 per cent of households. And North Americans use the Internet somewhat more intensively than do Europeans, according to Cisco Systems data on Internet traffic. Further, business Internet traffic in North America appears to be at levels substantially higher than elsewhere in the world. Sadly, there is little systematic effort by international agencies to measure the intensity of Internet usage. Instead, we see comparisons of advertised speeds and "price per advertised megabit," which are especially misleading. Advertised broadband speeds vary from actual speeds. In North America, this is largely a result of "network overhead," and is quite modest. In Europe, however, the variation is often dramatic.'"
I have 40Mbit/s with no caps for $60USD/month. I live in a small town about an hour north of tampa, in florida. My ISP is Brighthouse networks/roadrunner.
I can personally say that you do. Of course I won't be getting that 1Gb/s from most http sites especially if they're in the US, just because they either don't have the bandwidth, are limiting per user or that you just can't deliver that fast from other countries - but the bandwidth is still available and will work 99% of the time to its full extend, provided you have the hardware capability. Now you don't really need that fast yet, but that's an another matter and will change over time.
Also, we have quite strict laws regarding advertising. What you describe wouldn't cut it.