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Global Broadband Speeds Dropped At the End of 2011
darthcamaro writes "A strange thing happened at the end of 2011. For the first time in years, global broadband adoption and speeds dropped. According to Akamai, broadband adoption declined by 4.6 percent and average speeds declined by 14 percent. In a somewhat strange twist, New Jersey now also dominates the top 5 list of fastest broadband cities in the U.S, though Boston is the fastest overall at 8.4 Mbps."
...I'm not surprised.
Instead of providing superior service (at various levels) on a flat-rate connection, you get a degraded connection(at any level) that is metered.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
its one huge suburb of NYC
Jersey City is right near NYC. wouldn't surprise me if the reason everyone wants broadband is so they can VPN into the office instead of taking the train to work
For those that didn't read the article and were confused by New Jersey's new status as a city, what it actually means is New Jersey cities are in the #2, #3 and #5 spots of the top five list.
It says New Jersey "dominates" the list. One entry can't dominate a list, so obviously they are saying that the list is dominated by cities IN New Jersey. If you RTFA you'll see that 3 of the top 5 cities in the US are all in NJ. It's always such a surprise when people are snarky and dumb on the interwebs.
Maybe people are switching to mobile net?
Hey, Hey! Now you wait just one second. There are a few million that still consider themselves apart of the Philly Burbs.
People seriously need to go back to school and get some reading comprehension.
"New Jersey now also dominates the top 5 list of fastest broadband cities in the U.S"
The phrase "New Jersey dominates the list" means that the majority of cities on that list are in New Jersey.
Oh look (FTA): The fastest city in the US is Boston at 8.4 Mbps; fractionally ahead of North Bergen, NJ for average connection speed. Jersey City, NJ came in third at 8.3 Mbps, Monterey Park, CA fourth at 8.2 Mbps and Clifton, NJ fifth at 8.0 Mbps
3/5 cities on that list are in NJ. Hence, NJ dominates the list.
Take where I live for instance:
The cable company hasn't done much in 4-5 years for increasing bandwidth. However they did put in metering.
The telco, similar. DSL speeds have remained static, while there are now bandwidth charges.
Phones? Yes, that 4G phone might be cool, but it doesn't take much to burn through its bandwidth. Paying half a C-note to transfer a DVD? Bullshit.
It is no wonder why people are seeing this. There is zero incentive to add infrastructure, other than real time monitoring with indefinite log retention. So, the only things added for the consumer are fees.
Wake me up when I can actually pay less than $400 a month for a smartphone and Internet connection combined in a TX metropolitian area, and I am nowhere near a heavy user (no torrenting.)
"Freedom" for whom, that's the question. We, the people, who need more network capacity, and could easily get it for pennies if we paid for it with taxes, like our roads, are now paying enormously more for shrinking, monitored, censored communications. And it's going to get worse.
Image what our roads would be like if we had built them with a "free market" model. Constricted, gated, metered, and ten times more expensive. And most of us would walk.
The good news is, the country's fastest broadband can be found in New Jersey. The bad news is, the country's fastest broadband is in New Jersey.
I opted for the 20 Mbps VDSL here in Denver (Qwest/CenturyLink's alternative to fiber, the plans for which they dropped in the wake of the 2008 worldwide financial crisis) and restrained myself from splurging on the 40 Mbps VDSL. Even the 20 Mbps is a waste. Most servers only let data out at 10 Mbps tops. I've gotten 20 Mbps only once -- downloading 1940 census images from archives.gov. I suspect people are catching on and are stepping down their last-mile bandwidth choices.
Its the big historic cable stations, New Jersey has a lot of optical and federal interest due to the international traffic that enters/exits the USA from around the world.
A lot of that traffic passes/passed via NJ and to a lesser part Rhode Island. So the area by default would be over served by private telco and NSA interests over many years e.g. TAT-14.
Add in huge loops that span Europe, the Caribbean, and South America and link to parts Middle East - it all gets back to parts of New Jersey.
Would state-wide density really show a bump if everybody was on the same fly over state "old copper, cable or average new optical roll out speeds" vs say massive hardened backhaul?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Paying $40 for 5mbit is price gouging. I can get 25/25 for $50 here in the USA, and that's high compared to some places. That one Cali start-up ISP is offering 25/25 for $30 and 50/50 for $50 and 1Gb for $75.
The point about tech isn't how much bandwidth people use today, but how bandwidth could be used tomorrow. You get a chicken and the egg issue. Certain services require high bandwidth, like true 1080p BR quality streaming, or weekly cloud back-ups of your 1TB drive.
There are an infinite amount of possible services that we have not yet thought of because we don't have the bandwidth for them. The same thing happened with computers. Pffft, who needs an electronic calculator? Who needs an 8086? Who need a Pentium? Who needs a dual core cpu? We now have quad core 1.5ghz cpus with GPU acceleration and 2GB of ram, packed into a cell-phone.
Build it, and they will come.
i thought the same thing for about a split second, then i realized it was a joke on new jersey, which is always appropriate and funny. what was that about reading comprehension?
insensitive clod overlords obligatory xkcd car analogy russian reversals whoosh pedant fanbois ftfy in 3...2...1..PROFIT
A couple things to consider, as someone who works in the industry, and lives in New Jersey.
NJ has the highest population density (1189/sq mile). It is surrounded by two major cities (New York and Philadelphia).
AT&T is not based here, but they used to be, before SBC bought and renamed themselves. That company is now based in Dallas. There are still a lot of AT&Ters around the state in large facilities. This doesn't really matter though, considering AT&T probably provides local access to less than 1% of the NJ population.
Verizon is based here. Their actual headquarters is located in New York City, but all of the executives sit in Basking Ridge, NJ. This is important, because almost all of the Verizon employees at a director level and above are now in New Jersey. Different from AT&T, they are the local telco in almost every town.
Comcast is based in Philly. Lots of Comcast employees live in New Jersey. Comcast is a major cable franchise in NJ (as it is in most places).
The state of NJ, a few years ago, granted Verizon a state wide video franchise. This is a big deal. It means that Verizon can offer FiOS everywhere in the state without negotiating with the 566 different municipalities in the state. (566 municipalities for 8.8 Million people - NJ is a a good example of local government gone awry. Compare to 351 for 6.6M in MA, or 482 for 37M in California)
As the result of the above, FiOS is available in most towns, offering 20-50Mbps internet. Comcast Xfinity offers their highest tier service wherever there is FiOS, so nearly everyone in the state can get fast internet if they're willing to pay $30-$60/month. Notice to governments: reducing the amount of regulation (state wide franchise) can create more competition which can yield better results for citizens.
Disagreeing with me does not mean you get to mod me troll.
As a resident of Jersey City, I am not surprised we are on that list. They pretty much started ripping up the entire waterfront starting about 15 years ago, and just rebuilt the whole thing from scratch. I actually had fiber running into my last apartment, which was a new building. Multiple data jacks in each room- topped off with a real patch panel in one of the closets, it was a dork's dream...
Many people have never heard of it, but Jersey City is directly across from Manhattan on the other side of the Hudson river, and many financial firms, which have big data requirements, have relocated their technology departments (or their entire offices) there. Verizon Fios is available in most parts of the city, and they offer 150/35Mbps, though the "standard" is 50/20 or 25/25.
I do think that we're reaching a point where it's hard to actually use all of the bandwidth available to us
I know how to use all of a household's allocated bandwidth: a household with multiple computers all trying to download a recently released service pack for the operating system over a single satellite connection. Or is there a version of WSUS designed for home use so that each computer doesn't have to download the service pack separately?
We don't regulate electric, natural gas, or sewer companies because they are utilities. We regulate them because they are natural monopolies
According to TJ DiLorenzo's "The Myth of Natural Monopoly" (PDF), all the natural monopolies that people ordinarily associate with public utilities originate with the city's natural monopoly on roads and the city's resulting inability to find an efficient price for permits to tear them up to install conduit.
You can squeeze 100 fibers into the space of one sewer pipe. There is no reason why we should be limited to just one company
In that case, why should people be limited to one power company or one wired pay-TV company? How many power lines can one squeeze into a sewer pipe?