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.'"

Comments

Right

[sopssa]

Checklist:

[ ] Can I get 1 Gb/s to home in Canada? (I can in my home town Stockholm)
[ ] Is the true broadbrand penetration 98+% like in most of the Europe?
[ ] Is the quality of line actually such that you get angry when the line goes down for a few minutes once per every 1-3 years?

Seeing all the complaints here on slashdot too, I really don't think it's the same. Often times I am even surprised how you put up with it.

Hell, even in the beginning of 2000 the competition was so bad that features that usually only came with business lines were offered to tech-savvy home users. Needed static ip's or a block of 32 or larger ip's? Ask for it and they gave.

I also seriously doubt North Americans using Internet more intensively. Even if I personally dislike it, P2P is pretty damn rampant and that takes a lot of bandwidth. Also everyone uses YouTube and other high bandwidth sites (which obviously have local datacenters because of the demand)

What comes to business lines, I think they are quite equivalent to each other. Premium, fail-proof lines cost in both NA and EU. But as the home-lines in EU are reliable and theres no bullshit terms to deny such, a lot of businesses who directly aren't working on the Internet use those.

Re:Right

[Pharmboy]

I'm leaving AT&T to go to cable based solutions for a dozen users in an office. I know the reliability will be only 99%, but my 99.99% SLA is useless, as they go down all the time (and compensating me, which is a joke since I need the service, not $50 credits). Moving from ATT's service of 12 phone lines and two bonded T1s to cable phone lines and two 5/1.5 internet circuits will save me over $30,000 per year and have me at a FIXED PRICE, unlimited LD. In the current economy, this means three people won't have to get their hours cut to 50% time during the slow half the year. Since the level of service that I actually get will be the same, I would rather give the money to the employees who would otherwise be cut back, rather than AT&T who has failed on every level since they bought out Bell South.

For the servers that need better than 99% uptime (credit applications, etc.), we rented a box on Server Beach, their special unmetered 10mb connection for less than $150 a month. As a side note, Bell South was actually good in service and product before AT&T bought them out. The other day AT&T wouldn't issue a trouble ticket and told us that they would have someone there 24 hours later, at 5pm the next day, in spite of our 4 hour SLA. I get better service from Time Warner for my $100 home internet/tv than I do from AT&T under contract for several thousand per month.

Re:Right

[mikael_j]

Yeah, where I live (Östersund, northern part of Sweden, population ~40k) the choices are FTTH through the citynet which has five different ISPs offering everything from 1/1 Mbps to 100/100 Mbps with the most expensive 100/100 service costing SEK 459 ($65) per month, ADSL through a multitude of ISPs offering their services through DSLAMs and networks owned by TDC, Telia or Telenor and finally cable (DOCSIS) through ComHem who offer speeds from 5 Mbps to 25 Mbps (although Comhem are being booted out by the landlord since the citynet is a much better solution and not tied to any one ISP like Comhem's network).

Also, as you said, downtime even with DSL is generally quite low (at least if you live in an apartment building, if you live in some shack in the woods and the copper runs as overhead cables then you'll probably have some issues but that's like expecting to be able to drive your new Ferrari at 200 km/h on a dirt road that hasn't been maintained since the 1920s...). Total downtime due to DSL outages for me has definitely been less than two or three hours in the last year.

As for caps, they seem very common in the US and I don't know of a single ISP where I live that has any caps except for when it comes to 3/3.5/4G connections.

/Mikael

BS

[Tiro]

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 live in San Francisco, where Comcast advertises 8Mbps. We actually get 1Mbps down. If you want the full 6Mbps, you have to live some place like San Mateo County, where they don't have insane oversubscription.

The Comcast drone I chatted with online asked me: "Would you like to avail the Comcast?" I don't even know what the F that means.

Let's follow the money...

[divisionbyzero]

Usually when a study comes to such dramatically different conclusions from a fairly respectable institution my alarm bells start ringing. It usually smells like media manipulation. So, let's see. The Globe and Mail is owned by CTVGlobemedia which in turn is owned by among others Bell Canada. Bell Canada (as well as the other former Bells) were excoriated by the Harvard report for being anti-competitive and providing poor value. Hrm... Nothing definitive but fairly fishy.