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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.'"
Yes, California is a lot denser populated than Sweden. Hence, it is a lot cheaper to build out infrastructure in California. The actual size does not matter. Larger country with more people => same as several smaller countries, or likely even better due to economics of scale.
Why does Sweden (sparsley populated) have a lot of fiber build out + really large ADSL build out and low prices?
It's not just size and population density.
For example, consider a large North American city like New York. Very high population density, very wealthy, lots of demand. By your logic, broadband there should be cheap and fast, but it isn't (or not at Scandinavian levels anyway).
(don't worry about moral superiority, this debate is really just frustration almost everywhere that we can't get the astonishing service they have in Sweden, argh)
It's Harvard. If they write in normal English people might discover that the study is stupid. See also: every sociology department in the world.