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WSJ's Mossberg Calls For a Tougher Broadband Plan
GovTechGuy writes "Wall Street Journal tech columnist Walt Mossberg thinks the FCC's national broadband plan is long overdue, but he criticized it for being vague on the details and too focused on expanding access into rural areas. Mossberg pointed out that what passes for broadband in the US wouldn't even qualify as such in many other developed countries. He also noted that Americans pay more per unit of broadband speed than our competitors. He called on the government to devote time and resources to making sure Americans have the broadband access they need to stay competitive in the 21st century global economy."
1000 kbit/s is 40 times faster than what some rural residents currently have (28k or 33k analog). And it would be extremely easy to implement - just use the already-existing phone lines that lead in 99.9% of homes. All that's needed is to install the DSLAM and it's done. The entire US could be finished by 1/1/2012.
I've spoken to two people, who formerly had 26k and 33k respectively, and they love the new DSL. They jumped from those slow speed to 1500 and 3000 kbit/s respectively.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
I think the ROI in rural areas is going to be pretty slim, and won't help the cause much. Places like Korea and Japan have a much higher overall population density, so when fiber gets laid there it ends up being used by more people, helping their numbers compete against our rural and suburban areas where population density is low. I think the geography of the USA is set up to fall behind in this regard.
Internet is not funded by taxes in most of these countries, the government only sets up the rules so that there is more competition on the market, for example by forcing companies that own copper going into homes or fiber going between cities to sell access to these services for the same price to all competitors (including internal buyers). So the big players can't buy out all ISPs in town, take control of all backbones going out of town and of all the copper going into people homes and then raise prices tenfold (over 5 years) while not investing a single penny in infrastructure development.
Also government can setup rules like, if you have 100k urban customers, you must also have 10k rural customers. Or a rule like - if you want access to this government owned and operated hyperspeed backbone, then you must offer same connection price to all people in this area (which includes both profitable urban locations and unprofitable rural locations).
And in some places where actual municipal networks do exist and thus is very cheap or free for people to connect to and is funded by public funds, such network is usually pretty slow, boring and cheap as hell to maintain.
Government is not bad - it is there to force companies to do unprofitable things that benefit the people.
Ditto the US Constitution. Read it sometime. Carefully. It gives the nation-states of the US the power to completely abolish the US, and go off on their separate routes. You are trying to make a difference where none exists.
That would be false. Read up on the Civil War. All the Southern states wanted was to secede from the Union. Only Texas has that 'right' due to the peculiar way it joined the US.
The US and EU are more alike than different. Consider that 75% of laws are now passed, not by state parliaments, but by the central EU. We have a near-identical arrangement in the US.
All laws in Europe are written and passed by state parliaments. Some parts of some of the laws are written to satisfy the recommendations of the EU (issued as EU Directives), however there is a huge degree of variance between the laws that is allowed in the directives and sometimes the laws are written outside the specification of the directive and then the country and EU negotiate - EU could fine the country some amount of money or just forget the infraction if the country offers something else in return.
So before you go off and compare US and EU, better learn something about both.
You realize those service levels are not universal, right? My company's HQ is located between Bremen and Hamburg. The best data service available economically is 4Mbit DSL... anything better would require pulling a DS3 from Hamburg at phenomenal cost (>10k EUR/month). We have another site about 15 miles from Paris, and costs and availability are similar. Another office about 10 miles from Leeds in the UK. Similar story. Another office located in Shanghai, and the costs there were so high when we were shopping for an MPLS provider that it almost killed the project.
The most cost effective connectivity we have is in Bedford, NH, with the local cable co's lowest tier being 16mbit (they can live without comms for a few hours without suffering too much, so no SLA required).
(OTOH, our US HQ in east Tennessee can't get anything at all--not even consumer grade circuits--faster than DS1s at ~$750/month for each circuit).
Anyway, to get back on topic: whenever I hear that $COUNTRY is an absolute utopia for broadband that we have to emulate, I take it with a large grain of salt.
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
That could have been true if the assumption that only those living in clustered areas have high speed internet access in those countries. But that's not the case. Regulation ensures that the rest have access too, as far as practically possible (yes, there are cases of people living alone on an island who have to make do without for now, but those cases are few and far between).
And I say "could" instead of would because another premise is wrong too: That "not much distance between clusters to be bridged" is (a) correct, and (b) relevant.
First of all, it's dead wrong. One example: The City of Tromsø. For one thing, this city is far away from everything else (look at a Google map), but even inside its boundaries there are vast distances and difficult terrain. Yet this is one of the more technologically advanced cities in the world.
Secondly, the distance between clusters is irrelevant due to the variation in terrain. It costs a hell of a lot more to wire two communities divided by fjords or vertical mountains of gneiss than two communities separated by corn fields.
So tell me this, o Oracle: How come a farmer in Ohio who lives a 40 minute drive from the nearest city doesn't have access to the same level of Internet access as a farmer in Scandinavia who lives a 4 hour drive from the nearest city (and, for that matter, why can he enjoy 3G access throughout the drive)?
My guess is that it's due to legislation that prevents the type of anti-competitive behavior which is S.O.P. here in the US.
1: An internet provider in Scandinavia isn't given access to Big Lucrative City unless he also provides the same services for the same price to Small Rural Community. Take it or leave it (and by the looks, there's a lot of "take it").
2: For the last mile, whoever owns it must be a separate business entity, and has to rent it out for the same price to everyone, including parent, sibling and daughter companies.
3: The last few yards are owned by the premise owner, not by the service provider. They can't refuse your connecting to a different provider on "their" lines. You don't get situations like when AT&T pulled out the existing copper when installing u-verse to prevent competition.
4: The governments actually run backbones, where everybody is allowed access. You don't have to have a billion dollar company behind you, or risk being squeezed by the big players.